Our lambs are born in December and will grow out to 80-90 pounds live weight on forage alone by late spring. We bring a freezer full of individual cuts of frozen lamb to the Rice University farmers market every Tuesday evening during the harvest season. We can also sell 1/2 lamb in a box at a savings, or a whole lamb custom cut to your specifications at even greater savings.
We raise tropical hair sheep because we feel they are better adapted to our climate and conditions. Wool is a genetic trait developed by man over thousands of years in domestic sheep, wild sheep are not wooley. Throughout the world, usually in hotter climates, you can find domestic sheep which were never bred for wool, they retain their primitive hair coat, like a goat. The fiber needs of these cultures were met with cotton, linen, or silk. In North America the principal "hair" breeds are the Barbado, the Katahdin, the Dorper and the St. Croix. These breeds are the basis of our flock. I am told that meat from hair sheep tastes "sweeter" than meat from wool sheep even if raised the same. Don't ask me, I only raise hair sheep. Hair sheep are generally smaller than wool sheep, if you're hungry you have to eat two.
Our sheep are raised on forage and we don't fatten our sheep on grain. Personally, I think it is wasteful to feed grain to ruminants. Grassfed is a popular trend right now, with numerous alleged health benefits. That's not really why we do it this way. Grassfed animals take longer to reach market weight than feedlotted animals, the flavor of the meat becomes richer with the additional age. If you've ever been disappointed in the bland taste of lamb bought elsewhere, it's because the lamb was pushed to market weight too fast by feeding grain. Tenderness in lamb has most to do with the way the animal was handled at slaughter, specifically how quickly they were cooled (slower is better) and how long they were aged before cutting ( 7-10 days is about right). If you have tough lamb, it's not because it was grassfed. Same for beef. Don't blame the farmer. Hogget and mutton are usually aged longer than lamb for tenderness and flavor.
Traditionally a hogg is a young sheep older than nine months but too young to have been sheared yet. Meat from a hogg is hogget. Real lamb should be less than 9 months old, spring lamb is less than 6 months old. Mutton is meat from a sheep older than two years. We rarely have hogget for sale, but usually have mutton from the ewes that have failed to raise a lamb and have grown fat overwinter loafing. There's never alot of mutton.
We are not organic. I use commercial fertilizer to keep nutrient levels in my pastures high and to correct soil nutrient deficiencies. But I do not use herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics, wormers, hormones, in fact we don't medicate our sheep at all. Organic and grassfed are not the same, you can raise organic lamb on organic corn if you want to. "All natural" just means you didn't add anything to the meat when you processed it, like nitrates or food coloring.
