Our first lamp crop of organic lambs is on the way! They are due to be born in November and early December so they should be ready for the Easter Season market in March and early April. We are offering or first flock of lambs for sale now.  We are selling them either on the hoof or processed, double wrapped, and frozen.  Our price for lamb on the hoof is $2.49 per pound. We can deliver free of charge the lamb of your choice to our local slaughter house for processing.  This butcher shop charges 65 cents/pound (wt. after dressing, the “hanging weight”) plus $25.00 killing fee. This price includes wrapping and freezing. The lambs are slaughtered on Mondays. We will provide you with their phone number so that you can arrange the cuts and style of preparation with the butcher.  Then you can pay the butcher shop directly. We also have 25 bales of organic hay for sale. Large (5 ft wide) round bales that I am asking $85 for each bale, to be picked up near Talpa or Wingate, Texas. Please call us in the evening at 325-365-9160, or email us, and we can tell you more about our product.

	Our farm is a dream of ours after having lived in several places in the United States .  Karen, my wife, and I grew up in west Texas .  Karen’s family has been the central west Texas near Talpa and Content since the late 1800’s.  Our farm is located on her family’s land.  I grew up near Blackwell and spent many summers working the sheep and goats and plowing the fields with my two  grandfather’s, residents of Hylton and Shep, respectively.  Small towns and communities in a vast open oak savannahs of west Texas .  It is a special place to both of us. Karen has owned and operated her own greenhouse plant business in Bryan , Texas .  She is an Aggie having gotten a degree in Floriculture while our sons were in elementary school.  I graduated from Texas A&M in Entomology and got my graduate degees, a M.S. and a PhD, in Insect and Plant Ecology and Entomology.  My interest has always been in the production of crops without pesticides.  I did research in and taught a graduate course in biological control of insect pests.  Nature has a bounteous supply of natural enemies of pests if we are only wise enough and patient enough to take advantage of them.  This philosophy led me to start a business producing beneficial nematodes, parasitic nematodes that attacked insect larvae, usually in the soil.

			When Karen and I had the opportunity to move back home I seized the opportunity to try my hand at organic livestock farming.  I liked organic for two main reasons: 1) the organic philosophy is one of building a farm from the base, the soil, up and avoiding synthetic pesticides and fertilizers; and 2) marketing organically produced livestock and feedstuffs is a way to add value to the farm produced product.  With agricultural margins being so very slim, it seemed necessary to me to make my labor worth something and market a more valuable product.

	Organic agriculture has another strong feature in that if practiced widely, it would help make the family farm a reality again.  The heavily subsidized agricultural production of today with the attendant mass marketing and shipping of produce all over the nation and world, is not sustainable.  There is an alternative, organic agriculture, farmer’s markets, and family farms. Our 80 acres of land at Talpa and our 192 acres of land at Wingate has not had pesticides or synthetic fertilizers used on it in at least five years.  We are ready to apply for organic certification of this land.  However, we have not gone full organic just yet because we have some problems to solve. Internal parasites of our sheep need organic controls.  We have not used toxic drenches on our lambs, but have instead experimented with a mixture of diatomaceous earth and minerals.  Currently we are doing O.K. with this treatment, but we want more testing of our results.  We do not want our animals to suffer from parasites or any other sicknesses, so we will medicate them when necessary.  We have not had to medicate them yet, but we will have our results in this year so that we will know if we can fully depend upon the diatomaceous earth mix for parasite control.

			Our land needs a better and cheaper supply of organic fertilizer.  We have not used synthetic fertilizers, but this has left us with using no fertilizer at all.  Currently, we are working to establish a workable strategy and a reliable supply of manure for fertilization of our fields. We expect to have these problems resolved by the end of 2007. We have two sheep flocks.  One is a commercial flock of ewes that are crossbred between Suffock and Rambolett.  These ewes are a good quality ewe and we have bred them to a Dorper Fullblood ram.  This ram is a registered and exceptional and he has produced a great group of lambs for our first crop of lambs.  These lambs will be sold to the public either on the hoof or butchered and packaged frozen.  This is our commercial flock.  We likely will keep the female offspring to produce “purebred” Dorper of various percentages. The second flock is fullblood Dorper ewes.  These are new for us.  We will breed these registered ewes to our fullblood Dorper ram to produce high quality Dorper breeding stock.  This is our breeding stock flock.

	Dorper sheep have several advantages over other breeds in west Texas .  First of all they are a “meat” sheep.  They were developed in South Africa to produce quality lamb meat.  They will grow to 100 pounds in 100 days of birth.  Their growth rate is spectacular.  Also, they breed at any time of the year.  It is reasonable to produce three lamb crops in two years with the Dorper ewes – more income per ewe and per acre. This sheep will eat almost anything.  They are excellent grazers, eating many of the shrubs and small trees and weedy plants that other sheep will not touch.  They are gentle and they often produce 130 to 150% lamb crops with much twining and even triplets. The Dorper is a hair sheep.  It never needs to be sheared.  With the cost of shearing and the low price of wool, this eliminates one more job in the farm enterprise.  The Dorper breeders have a strong organization and the breed is very well promoted in Texas and the rest of the United States .  It is a great breed.

			Dorper sheep offer a number of distinct advantages for the small, possibly organic, farmer who wants to sell directly from the farm to the consumer.  First, Dorper sheep were bred to grow optimally feeding on pasture grasses and forbs and even bushes.  They were not bred for the feedlot as U.S. sheep are.  Consequently, Dorper lambs are ready to butcher at about 100 pounds which they reach in about 100 days from birth feeding on pasture, only  Second, most folks claim that the Dorper lamb meat is more tender and milder than other lamb.  It is a very desirable meat.  Thirdly, while this is not a normal consumer item, the leather made from Dorper sheep is among the finest of all hides.  In other parts of the world, it brings a premium.  This market has not been developed in the United States .  Fourthly, the fact that the Dorper does not need shearing provides a way to escape on of the most severe sheep and goat diseases in the U.S. and world -- Caseous Lymphadenitis.  This disease is transmitted from farm to farm by the nicks and wounds made by shearers.  Since the Dorper sheep does not need to be sheared, it is feasible to produce this breed of sheep free of the disease with proper testing, diligence, and surveillance.  Currently, our flock has tested repeatedly negative for Caseous lymphadenitis.  We hope to keep it that way for our sheep and our clients.

	CL is a serious disease in Sheep and Goats, second only to Scrapie in sheep.  For more information on CL and to learn about what Boothill Dorpers is doing to avoid and resolve this situation, please read this informational sheet, available as a PDF download.

			We grow about 75 acres of hay grasses and oats each for our sheep.  We use no pesticides, herbicides, or inorganic fertilizers on that farmland.  We have 200 acres of pastureland with some of the most beautiful native grasses of west Texas .  We stock our pastures on the light side so as to assure healthy pastures and sheep.  We guard our sheep from coyotes and other predators by using guard donkeys, Cactus Jack is vigilant and on duty 24/7. We have used chemical drenches in the past to control stomach and intestinal parasites, but for the past year, we have used only Diatomaceous Earth mixed with either feed or powder mineral mix to combat the internal parasites.  We are still experimenting with the DE, but we feel like it is doing a good job.  Our lambs for sale have not been treated with chemicals for internal parasites.

	We have two flocks of sheep, one is a commercial flock, and one is for the purpose of producing fullblood, Dorper breeding stock.  We have been in business for two years and still have a lot to learn, but we enjoy our clientele and our sheep. Our commercial flock has produced 24 lambs this year.  They weigh between 60 and 100 pounds and are ready to sell.  These lambs were produced from Suffolk and Ramboullet crossbred ewes that are CL-free.  These ewes have been crossed with a premium quality Dorper ram, Brutus.  The lambs inherited much of the Dorper breed and very robust and vigorous, meat lambs.