New sheep on the farm.

My oldest son got stabbed in his leg by our six year old Rocky Mountain goat.  After that the billy has turned very dangerous.  My son Scott is fine but with all the grand children the goat had to go.  We traded the goat off for some Stone sheep and traded some mule deer for some Alaskan dalls.  I now have three of the north American wild sheep under high fence.


We raise rocky Mountain bighorns and hybrids from the same.  Sheep are easy to raise if set up right.  Quite frankly they make much more money than my whitetail ever have for me.


I have Stone semen for the stone sheep I have as we have 50 straws at this time.  I plan to LAP AI my hybrid rocky bighorns to this semen in hopes of making some wild looking sheep.  That will use up the Stone semen for this year.


I love new projects so this fits right in with my white mule deer project and I have wanted Stone sheep for awhile.  This industry has always been good to me.  It is not a job when you wake up thinking about breeding this to that and it still makes you happy even after 35 years in this business.

Good luck with the new venture. Looking forward to seeing some results.

I have sold stone looking rams at four years old for 15K so expect to raise many for my hunting friends that have those facilities with good clients.  I know they sell for 30K so we have room to work with them like in the old days with whitetail.  My hybrid rocky bighorns have been very good to me.  It is nice to be thirty miles from good sheep hunting areas as this gives me many sires to work with.


I have lined up stone semen for this year.  In years to come this may be a problem in the future.


I see some stone looking sheep from Canada were made from the crossing of Alaskan dall to Rocky Mountain bighorns.  From pictures I'm not able to tell they are not pure stone sheep.  Worst case I will cross my Alaskan dall to my rocky bighorns.


In the hunting community they feel that is how the stones were created by nature.  Stone sheep live where Alaskan dalls and rocky bighorns overlap in nature in most cases.


Thanks for the kind wishes Arrowed1

Jack,


do you worry about sheep having mcf???

Jerrilee,


In the past I would run my sheep after my whitetail ate the best food down in the pen.  Two years ago I started to run my sheep and whitetail and mule deer together as I felt if my sheep had MCF they would have spread it to them in the last twenty years I have had sheep.  We have not had a case of MCF at this point so I feel my sheep are not carriers.  I know wild sheep don't carry MCF.  I might have got lucky on the haired sheep I have as they don't seem to have the problem either.


As I said my sheep out preform my whitetail money wise by leaps and bounds and if I had a problem my whitetail would be down the road as they run in the red every year.

Jack, do you have any pure bighorn for sale?

I do sell pure bighorns but your in Texas and they don't allow pure bighorns only bighorns hybrids. I also have bighorn hybrids.

Bighorn hybrids

Hi Jack. I visited your ranch in Vaughn around 2012. I live in Jackson Wyoming but just bought 200 acres in Kentucky for retirement. Are you still in the sheep business? Thanks. Shawn [email protected]

Hi Shawn, We have talked and as you know we are big in sheep. We will get bigger when deer and elk sales are not allowed because of wild CWD when it gets into our county. We have reduced our whitetail and elk herd to a hobby level. We are doing the same with mule deer. So will have more room for sheep. Sheep Don't get CWD but do get scrapie which is another type of CWD but handled very differently by the livestock agencies. Sheep are just as much fun.