Why You Should Consider Shetland Sheep And Kinder Goats

There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to livestock. Here are a few of the attributes I looked for when choosing the sheep and goat breeds for my farm.

Reader Contribution by Keba M Hitzeman
Updated on July 8, 2022
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by AdobeStock/Jonathan Densford

There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to livestock. Here are a few of the attributes I looked for when choosing the right sheep and goat breeds for my farm.

My first experience with sheep was raising Corriedales for 4-H. I enjoyed 4-H immensely, even though I had the only sheep projects in my club and one of the few (I may have been the only one) with Corriedales at the county fair. Being in junior high and high school, I’m pretty sure I didn’t internalize as much sheep-rearing information as I probably should have, but when I decided to get a few sheep for the farm, I discovered that just about everything I remembered regarding Corriedales was woefully outdated. Yes, they were still a natural white/cream-colored sheep and reasonably friendly. But beyond that, I learned after I brought four of them home that they were no longer the right sheep for what I wanted to do. That had a lot to do with my nostalgia, and nothing to do with the breeder of those sheep.

To my dismay, the breed had been “improved” in the intervening years, was now taller and heavier, had absolutely no personality at all, and did not do well on pasture. Again, the breeder was not to blame for this, and I was so stuck on getting Corriedales (based on my remembrance of them) that I wasn’t seeing the current sheep clearly. Once the sheep were on my farm, I realized that this was not going to work, and set about looking for another breed that would be of a manageable size, do well on pasture/hay without needing much (or ideally, no) grain, and had interesting personalities.

Shetland Sheep

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