Leicester Longwool Sheep!

So, I've been drooling over these sheep for a while now. Yes, drooling. I know I'm odd, but it's in a good way. They are the classic Beatrix Potter English countryside fluffy white sheep. And, as per my usual luck, extremely hard to find (i.e. EXPENSIVE). Only a handful of people in the US even raise them, and they're classified as 'critically rare' by the American Livestock Breed Conservancy. I had looked for this breed online only to find a very small number of breeders, none closeby and only one in my state. The out of state breeders wanted $600+ for a single lamb, and that wasn't including shipping, veterinary certificates and state mandated lab work. Around $1000 for ONE sheep was a little to steep a price for me. I gave up.


Remember I said there was a breeder in Utah? Yeah, I tried to contact her before I even bought these soay sheep, but she never got back to me. Until today! The one breeder here has been trying to sell her flock off and on for nearly a year. The last time I saw the ad it had been up for almost a month, and dropped off the board before I could get the number. Today I saw the same ad up with 2 days left before expiring. I texted her, and they're still available.I'll be contacting her to see if she's willing to sell them individually next year, maybe in the spring! Since it doesn't look like she's in a huge hurry to sell them, I'm hoping she'll be receptive to the idea. Yup. I'm a little excited. :D

My goals for the farm would then have to be changed if we do get these sheep. Instead of goats, we'd be doing sheep, which would be ok by me. I do really love sheep and they're much easier to contain than goats. Our fences would be ok for sheep; they wouldn't keep a wanderlusting goat in for more than 10 seconds, max. I was talking to my mom (aka the fiber diva) about possibly marketing the sheep products (rovings, batts, yarn, fleeces, etc.), as she's in an area much more receptive to humanely produced, sustainable farm-to-consumer type products. Salt Lake City has a small, family run fiber mill that handles smaller farm orders. We could get batts, roving, yarn - basically whatever would sell. Instead of trying to market raw fleeces, which probably wouldn't go very well, we could make it a value added product for knitters, fiber enthusiasts, spinners, etc. I think they'd do well out her way, especially with the number of year round farmers markets, yarn shops and other venues to market the products. Utah, unfortunately, just doesn't excel in those areas. We have very limited farmers markets, not a lot of yarn shops and somehow an almost non-existent fiber arts community. For a state that profited greatly from the sheep industry, you wouldn't know it by the lack of fiber anything in this place. Ugh. Sometimes I really miss California. If I could earn enough $$$ off the sheep products to pay for the feed it'd be worth it. Keep ya posted!