great lakes dairy sheep symposium - the Department of Animal ...

Breeds
As I stated above, we started with the black-face crosses, and right now we have none of
them. Daughters of them are milked at this time at the farm. A ewe that doesn’t produce at least
100 liters a year is not profitable on our farm, and that’s why our original black-faces are done.
With the arrival of the East Friesian crosses, we increased our production and improved our
genetics, but the deception comes when we started to milk purebred East Friesian, because they
are not well adapted to our dry and hot weather, and they start suffering from sunburn (ears, head
and back) and pneumonia because of the difference in the temperature within the day and
throughout the year. So we think at this time, that the solution is to have East Friesian crosses no
more than 7/8 East Friesian along with 1/8 or more of any hair sheep breed well adapted to the
dry weather. Right now we imported semen of a Lacaune ram from Canada to start a new line to,
hopefully, increase our milk quality and the health of the flock.
The Process
For milking, the ewes are brought in from the pasture and crowded into the holding area near
the parlor.
Our parlor is a twelve line with manual head gates. It has four milking units and two Waikato
testing jars to measure the milk once a week.
We have an insemination program of 30 ewes per month with a 65 % pregnancy rate with
fresh semen all the year. After lambing, we take the lambs at 3 days from the mother and start to
milk them once a day. The lambs are fed artificially with milk lamb replacer three times at day
for about 40 days or 15 kg. That’s when lambs are weaned and sold. Ewe lambs stay at the farm
as replacements.
The milk is kept in a bulk tank for two days, and after that is used to make cheeses. Cheeses
are made three times a week and stored in a cave for 5 to 8 months. This cave controls the
temperature (12 C to 16 C) and humidity (70 % to 80 %). After that they are ready for the
market.
The price of that kind of cheese is between $22 to $30 U.S. Dollars for a kilogram. That
makes a liter of milk, taking out the direct costs, worth $1.3 to $1.6 U.S. dollars.
Goals and Plans
Our goals for 2008 are to have 600 ewes in order to produce at least 150 liters of milk per
ewe per year with an average of 18 % of solids and keep selling the cheeses.
Our plans are to start making different type of cheeses.
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