Sheep Industry News September 2023

Opportunities Abound For Georgia Producers

G eorgia producers Nathan and Tina Nix always keep an eye out for opportunities to expand and diversi fy their family farming operation, which produces lamb, eggs, broiler chickens, pork and beef. So, when Nathan heard a livestock buyer in Illinois men tion that he was shipping lamb carcasses into the Atlanta market every week, he perked up immediately. “I’m listening to him talk about shipping these animals in from Illinois and here I am 65 miles northeast of Atlanta,” Nathan recalls. “So, that really opened my eyes.” The family’s Double N Farms direct markets its products under the 5N Pastures brand. Meat and eggs from the farm now end up in select restaurants, butcher shops and farm ers markets all around Atlanta and the surrounding area. Customers can also order online through the 5N Pastures website. “Like most people who live in the rural areas of Georgia, we really dislike the drive to Atlanta,” Nathan admits. “The traffic is terrible, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that Atlanta is very diverse. We saw that there are six million people 65 miles from us who are looking for what we have to offer. We’d be foolish not to go down there and sell our products. So, every Tuesday I drive to Atlanta.” And in some cases, Atlanta residents make the drive northeast to Cleveland. “We’ve had people drive here on Saturday mornings to pick up what seems like a relatively small amount of meat,” said Tina, who serves as secretary of the Georgia Sheep and Wool Growers Association. “These customers want to know where that meat is coming from, how it’s raised and who’s growing it.” SHEEP OPERATION A longtime egg producer – the family runs up to 3,000 hens each year and operates a state-inspected egg facility – the Nix family was a bit burned out on commercial chicken production when Nathan and Tina took a liking to sheep after buying six head less than a decade ago. That flock has grown to roughly 175 Dorper and Dorper-cross ewes. The farm operates an accelerated lambing program with non seasonal breeding that produces a new lamb crop every two months. “We started doing a monthly breeding program about 18 months ago, but it was just too much work,” Nathan says.

“So, we’ve moved to two months. That gives us a steady sup ply of lambs to process every month. We found out pretty quickly that we enjoyed the sheep, and we saw the opportu nity that was there with our markets in the Southeast. We’re trying to take advantage of that opportunity.” With processors several hours away in Western Georgia and Alabama, the family put freezers in its combo-stock trailers to make the most of monthly trips. Every time a load of sheep heads west, a load of carcasses and retail cuts comes East back to the farm. Breeding stock is also available for sale, and the operation routinely purchases lambs that are sired by its rams sold to other producers as replacements and for processing. Getting into sheep was a numbers game for Double N Farms. The state’s fertile pastures can support more sheep than cattle, and those sheep are bred three times in two years and produce an average lamb crop of 170 percent. “There’s no way cattle can compare to that,” says Nathan, who also serves as pastor at Zion Hill Baptist Church. “Again, we saw that opportunity. My dad worked in poultry

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