😊 The Sheep Project 😊
well somebody needs to eat the grass

The fuzzy bunnies do their best to eat all the grass around here, but they can't keep up with the way grass grows in Hawaii. Especially the grass that was imported especially because it grows fast! Argh! Guinea grass is really good if you have cows or other grass eating critters, but in a residential lawn it's horrific. And, with the trade winds and grass seeds on tall grass, there's no keeping it contained with fences. So in hopes of getting anything even vaguely lawn like in the back yard, the New Great Hope is The Sheep Project! Woot! Also, if we're gonna have these grass eating Roombas bumping around in the back yard, it'd be just lovely to get wool from them, too! Which is why sheep instead of cows, donkeys or goats.

update April 16th, 2020

Sheep - "Plan B"
on our way to plan "C", no doubt

Well, we're now on "Sheep Plan B" since it's impossible to import the cute little bitty sheep that we had hoped for. Sigh! We can still get the small Clun Forest Ram, Cypress, since he already lives on the island. We had hoped to bring in small Miniature Cheviot friends for him, but what with this virus going around, the shipping is all wonky so no sheep shipping this year. We're hoping some small Clun Forest ewes will be born here on the island, although the breeder doesn't select for small size at all. We will find out in a few weeks if they will appear and we hope for two ewes even if they are going to be bigger than the cute little ones we had hoped for.

Well, once we have more information on the sheep we will actually get, I'll update the page with actual information instead of merely mentioning that this page is now no longer possible.

These aren't our sheep, they belong to Erzsebet at Double Heart Parks Farm in in California. If you want to see more fun pictures of Miniature Cheviot Sheep, you can visit their farm: Really Cute Sheep at Double Heart Parks. She has very kindly allowed us to post her picture of the little sheep on her farm with their turkey friend. His name is 'Blue' and you can tell how small the sheep are when they are with him. Unless you get a reference, such as Blue stalking about in the background, the Miniature Cheviots look just like full sized sheep, but in real life, they're less than two feet tall at the shoulder.

I'm hoping to get smaller sheep, sorta residential sized instead of pasture sized sheep. But there aren't any of those on the island and importing sheep is expensive but it looks like we may end up importing sheep anyway. I've seen pictures online of Ouessants, Shetlands and Miniature Cheviots, but none of those are on island. Of those three, the Ouessants are the smallest at around 40 pounds, (which would be a hoot!) BUT! They're only in Europe (they mow around the Eiffel Tower among other things) and at the moment, sheep aren't allowed to be imported to the United States from Europe. There's some industrious folks in Massachusetts who are trying to breed Shetland sheep (another small breed of wooly sheep) into Ouessants by using imported semen from Ouessants (which they brought in before the complete ban on European sheep and sheep parts), although they're still working on that so it doesn't look like there will be any Ouessants for me.

I'd looked online for Shetland sheep, since those are pretty small wooly sheep, although not as small as the Ouessants. Nice wool and a small sheep, but shipping in even small sheep is a pretty expensive project. Shetland rams also sport a pretty hefty set of horns. Looks very 'ramish' and all, but I dunno if I want a sheep armed with that kind of head gear in a residential setting. Not that the neighbors are really particular about their cars, but I'm sure they'd not like a ram butting into them with big horns.

And then I ran across 'Miniature Cheviots', which, we're now trying to import. It's gonna be expensive, but they look like they'd be really, really nice backyard sheep. They would be smaller than the local variety of sheep (which could still be an option) Clun Forest. The Miniature Cheviots are much more 'lawnmower' sized. They have nice wool they say. I've not met any yet so I can't really tell exactly what it would feel and spin like. They are also supposed to be really resistant to foot rot, which is also a good thing.

Ouessant ewes (girl sheep) run about 35-40 pounds, Shetland ewes are about 75-100 pounds and Miniature Cheviot ewes average about 80 - 110 pounds, so the Shetlands and Mini-Cheviots are significantly larger than Oessants. The 'medium sized' sheep breed of Clun Forest ewes are around 150 pounds and the rams are larger. If a 150 pound sheep is 'medium', I don't think I want to see a 'large' sheep!

We also only have about a quarter acre of what will eventually be pasture so the smaller the sheep the better. There's several folks with acres of pasture who would let me put the sheep there if they need more space, but the whole idea is to get somebody in the back eating that grass. Guinea grass is famous for being able to grow an inch or even two a day.

As not only new shepherds, but micro-farm shepherds, smaller sheep are much better than full sized or even medium sized ones. We are looking to import a ram from Erzsebet at Double Heart Parks farm in California and a pair of ewe lambs from Dean at Shepherd's Bounty in Washington state. This will allow us to be able to hopefully have some lambs when the imported sheep are old enough. It will also give folks in Hawaii another choice for available breeds of sheep.

They weren't really selected because they're totally cute sheep, although that didn't hurt! Due to our small pasture size (one quarter acre) we need as small of sheep as possible. Sheep are herd animals, so they like to have some friends around. Which means we need more than one sheep. Two at a minimum, three is even better. Full sized sheep would need more pasture space than miniature sheep, so that's the major reason to bring in smaller sheep. From what I've been reading online, Miniature Cheviots are not really a 'miniature' breed that have been crossbred to be smaller. They're supposed to be a throwback to the original smaller breed of Cheviot Hill sheep before the current breed of Cheviot was crossbred to become bigger for a more modern sized meat sheep. Subce they are naturally small, they are hardier than ones selected to be 'miniature'. At least, that's what I seem to be reading online, I'm sure when the little sheep arrive, we will be finding out much more about them on a 'hands on' sort of basis.

Miniature Cheviot Sheep

These are some possible sheep who could be brought into Hawaii. The upper picture is the sire of the lambs. His name is 'Demon' which I hope isn't descriptive! Isn't he handsome? He does look like a lovely ram, even with an uneasy name. Hopefully it's like naming a really slim person 'Fats'?

The two ewe lambs will be both his daughters, I think. Hmm, which would make them half sisters and maybe not so good to bring in closely related ewes since there will be such a limited number of them to start out with. Anyone else around here want to bring in little sheep? As half siblings, though, that will keep the offspring closer to 'type', which is a good thing. I'm sure we will be bringing in more little sheep at some point when we need more genetics.

The ewe on the cover of the sheep magazine is the mum of the little sheep in the picture on the right. I think the mum sheep's name is "Layla". Doesn't she have a sweet face? I'm sure there will be pedigrees and such so perhaps the name will become more exotic when there's paperwork involved. I know with the bunnies, they sometimes have their 'paper' name on their pedigree and also have their everyday name that we actually use. Of course, sometimes we just call all of them 'Zoid', I'm not quite sure why. "Hey, Zoids, how ya doin'?" just seems friendly? Well, the bunnies don't care what we call them as long as they get ti leaves occasionally.

Anyway, back to sheep - at the moment, the two little ewe lambs are too young to move to Hawaii so we will keep on fencing and see how the little ones grow. It wouldn't be until early summer that we'd get little sheep in the pasture. That would also give us time to get some of the grasses whacked down and resprouted into more tender grass for little sheep mouths.

For the first year, the sheep will mostly be eating sheep feed from the feed store. As we whack down the various tall grasses, they will eat the tender new shoots coming up. That's the plan, anyway. Eventually, we will have everything cut short and the little sheeps can keep it that way. Of course, they don't eat everything so we will have to periodically go in and take down what they don't like to eat, but with us and them both working on the grasses we hope to recover the use of the back yard.

We also want woolly sheep to make yarn! The bunnies approve of that idea, they like yarn.

---

---

---

Other Possible Sheep
Clun Forest sheep already in Hawaii

The two pictures posted above aren't our sheep, but they are the same breed as the ones we could be getting if we aren't able to import smaller sheep. They're a heritage breed called "Clun Forest" and they're supposed to do well in Hawaii's humid climate. The have pretty good wool, easy to spin and makes a 'sproingy' yarn. It's soft, not anywhere near soft as bunnies, but most things aren't. It is nice wool, though. Plus, there is a flock of them nearby with an experienced shepherd, Leila, who will be my mentor for All Things Sheep. The Clun Forest are bigger sheep than I'd like, though, so we're still hoping for the smaller Miniature Cheviot sheep.

If you like, you can send us an email and ask about bunnies, yarn, Hawaii things, what we should have on our webpage or just about anything else.

Mail to: Hillside Farm Hawaii