The Ewe Flock
The reintroduction of sheep to Twin Maple Farm occurred in January of 1999 with the addition of nine Polypay ewes. The ewes were in the middle of lambing so some had lambs at their side and others lambed soon after they came to the farm.
After a few years of raising these sheep we decided that we wanted to move in the direction of raising registered Dorset sheep so in 2002 we purchased four Dorset ewe lambs and a ram lamb from David Meeuwse.
Currently we lamb around 30 ewes with about 20 being purebred registered Dorset ewes and the remainder being Dorset mixed with varying percentages of Polypay from our original nine Polypay ewes.
In 2007 our mature Dorset ewes weaned over 1.8 lambs per ewe. Most of them weaned over 100 pounds of lamb at 60 days and a few weaned over 150 pounds. We have never had Foot Rot on our farm and follow strict quarantine procedures when we bring in an occasional ram. Our ewe flock has been closed since 2002.
In 2007 we also enrolled our flock in the National Sheep Improvement Program. NSIP allows us to better utilize data when making selection decisions. This enables us to ensure that we only use the best animals, for the traits we desire, in our breeding program.