Sheep Industry News June 2025

“I couldn’t have done it without them,” JR said. “They could have given up on me, but they didn’t. They still might not see all of the vision I have, but they’ve supported me through it all and been along for the whole ride.” Now the Texas Solar Sheep crew consists of roughly 40 full time employees and another 12 to 15 seasonal hands in the summer. College kids and teachers on summer break fill most of those roles. “It’s just like a farm and ranch job, just on a solar site,” JR said. “They might be checking sheep in the morning, mowing in the afternoon and spraying weeds the next day. In the win tertime, we are building lots of electric fence and other things that aren’t so much vegetation management. It’s not very often they do the exact same thing from one day to the next. Most of our people live within 20 minutes of the site they work on. We like to hire local people because they get to know the O&M (operations and maintenance) guys on the site. They’re friends and know how to work together. Then everyone is on the same page.” The addition of employees and more sites has pushed JR into more of a management role, which has been an adjust ment from those early days. He’s found it difficult to be less hands-on, even checking almost hourly on a crew working

sheep while he was on vacation. “I’m getting better,” he claimed. “But I’m not there yet. If you get too detached, you’re not in tune with what your team needs to do their job more efficiently. I don’t think I’ll ever be too detached from running out here and jumping on a tractor or whatever else might need to be done. I probably do more with the sheep than I should. But that’s the part I enjoy the most. It’s hard to give that up.” THE RIGHT SHEEP Bringing full-bred Dorpers from the San Angelo, Texas, area taught JR a thing or two about the type of sheep he needs to run on solar fields east of Dallas. While Dorpers are gener ally good grazers, they didn’t bring the parasite resistance he needed in an area that gets around 50 inches of rain a year. That’s two to three times what they were used to out west. Researchers at Texas A&M AgriLife introduced JR to the National Sheep Improvement Program and the merits of Estimated Breeding Values. He started buying rams with NSIP data for parasite resistance and crossbreeding with White Dorpers and Katahdins to develop the type of sheep he needed to thrive in a wet, humid climate. “Basically, we started with sheep that we really had to

JR Howard’s family – Kellye, Hunter and Carter – were invaluable in the early days of Texas Solar Sheep.