Ok, here is my idea.
I was thinking about getting a few sheep to keep me in lamb plus a little to give away at times. I have about ten acres of orchardgrass pastures with GREAT perimeter fencing (woven wire w/ electric) that I run my two cows on. I would get two or three Katahdin ewes and a ram and run them with the cows or behind the cows. I use single strand polywire to fence off pasture for the cows but could easily switch to three strand.
My question is: is running the ram with the ewes year round possible or would it cause problems? And if it did, what problems? I don't really want to rent a ram or pen up a ram for part of the year or anything.
Also, I wouldn't be trying to build a flock up so I'd simply keep the same ram and ewes for a long time I imagine and buy replacements when I needed them. So I would possibly crossbreed the Katahdins using a Dorper ram, or possibly a Soay? Something to make nice tasty low maintenance lambs. I also would only have a few animals to feed hay to each winter and a few animals to house in bad weather.
Would this work, what problems am I missing?
I was thinking about getting a few sheep to keep me in lamb plus a little to give away at times. I have about ten acres of orchardgrass pastures with GREAT perimeter fencing (woven wire w/ electric) that I run my two cows on. I would get two or three Katahdin ewes and a ram and run them with the cows or behind the cows. I use single strand polywire to fence off pasture for the cows but could easily switch to three strand.
My question is: is running the ram with the ewes year round possible or would it cause problems? And if it did, what problems? I don't really want to rent a ram or pen up a ram for part of the year or anything.
Also, I wouldn't be trying to build a flock up so I'd simply keep the same ram and ewes for a long time I imagine and buy replacements when I needed them. So I would possibly crossbreed the Katahdins using a Dorper ram, or possibly a Soay? Something to make nice tasty low maintenance lambs. I also would only have a few animals to feed hay to each winter and a few animals to house in bad weather.
Would this work, what problems am I missing?