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With Rising Shearing Expenses, Hair Sheep Numbers Are Growing
By Colleen Schreiber
HERMLEIGH, Texas - Shearing costs have been on a steady incline for the last several years. Two bucks a head is not uncommon these days. Tally up the shearing cost plus labor and subtract that from the income on a wool clip, and simple arithmetic will show that many sheep producers today are barely breaking even on their wool operation.
That's the single biggest reason why an increasing number of hair sheep are now making their home in West Texas. Longtime traditional finewool sheepmen are giving up on their wool because they say the cost/benefit ratio simply doesn't compute in their favor.
It's not known for sure how many hair sheep are in the U.S. And though the numbers in West Texas aren't really even recognizable yet, they definitely are growing. The Oklahoma State University website lists 20 different breeds of hair sheep, but only a handful of those are found in the U.S. The most common are the Barbado, Katahdin, St. Croix and the Dorper, though the Dorper is not a true hair sheep. It's more of a half-hair, half-meat sheep.
Bill Hoag is perhaps the biggest promoter of hair sheep in West Texas. He has been working with them since 1995. He first got interested in the St. Croix while living in Utah.
The St. Croix is a true hair sheep. They were imported into the U.S. by Dr. W.C. Foote of Utah State University in 1975. This breed is early maturing and extremely fertile. Lambing rate varies from 150 to 200 percent, with two lambings a year relatively common.
The one shortcoming of the St. Croix, Hoag says, is that it's not a meat breed.
"They wouldn't meet Ranchers' Lamb's specs," he comments.
The Dorper, on the other hand, makes up for what the St. Croix lacks in terms of meat. The Dorper, a South African mutton breed developed in the 1930s from the Dorset Horn and Blackheaded Persian, is more or less a half-hair, half-meat sheep.
Hoag began crossing Dorper bucks on his St. Croix ewes. He liked that cross, and for the last few years he's continued to select and improve on that particular cross, breeding the wool off and the meat on. This crossbred animal, now officially known as the Royal White, was recently accepted as a new breed of hair sheep.
"I don't have to do anything to these sheep," he insists. "I don't vaccinate, I don't shear, I don't castrate, I don't dock, and I can breed them back in 14 to 18 days after they lamb and I get a high lambing percentage. Plus, they're good mothers."
He recently sent some breeding stock to Ontario, Canada. He sold the ram lambs for $1000 and the ewe lambs for $500 each. The majority of his animals, however, are being sold through Producers Livestock Auction in San Angelo.
Sterling City Rambouillet breeder Clinton Hodges is now breeding these animals as well.
"With the wool situation where it is and the shearing situation - we're paying $2-2.50 a head - I felt it was time to look for alternatives," Hodges remarks. "I think there is a place for these hair sheep.
"I'm looking for a composite female that we do not have to shear," he adds. "I also want an animal with some additional parasite resistance."
Art Roane runs a couple of thousand hair sheep on a ranch in Crockett County. He started building the herd about four years ago. He bought some aged Rambouillet ewes and crossed them with a Dorpcroix buck. He kept the F-1 ewe lambs and crossed them back on another Dorpcroix buck.
"These are the lowest input animals I've ever been around," Roane insists. "We have no shearing expense. We keep salt and mineral out, but offer very little if any other supplementation. In four years I have not drenched any sheep," he adds.
Another positive he's found is that his hair sheep can be bred to lamb as yearlings, whereas the wool breeds are generally bred to lamb as two year-olds. Occasionally the ewes will raise two lamb crops in a year. This year has been one of those years, Roane says.
He's also crossed the Dorpcroix with some of his Barbados, and in that way has greatly improved the size and quality of these lambs.
"This is all a meat proposition to me," Roane remarks. "Because they don't have the wool, they're expending all their energy on producing that lamb. And because we have few inputs in terms of labor, drenching, supplementation and shearing, which I see as a liability, the lamb alone makes up for the loss in the wool," he insists.
"We do get discounted sometimes on our lambs, because we haven't developed a market for the pelt yet," he adds.
Hair sheep, Roane says, may not be for everyone.
"We've been so low-key about raising these sheep because I'm surrounded by guys who for generations have put blood, sweat and tears into developing their wool, and in no way do I want to infringe on their value, but these hair sheep work for us."
Duane and Sue Vinson have been in the Rambouillet business for many years, but they, too, are trying some hair sheep.
"We think there's a great future in them because they are so non labor-intensive," Sue Vinson says. "Plus, the last few years the wool off our finewool ewes has not even paid for the shearing. The wool is bringing less than it was 50 years ago and expenses are 10 times higher."
They borrowed two Dorpcroix bucks four years ago from Clinton Hodges. They crossed those bucks on 50 of their best finewool ewes. They were extremely pleased with the cross. Today they have about 300 Dorpcroix ewes.
"We've gotten four sets of lambs off those ewes and we haven't drenched them or shorn them once," Sue says. "We really like the three-quarter Dorpcroix, one-quarter Rambouillet lambs. We might go to five-eighths, but we'll keep the Rambouillet mix in there," she says.
A couple of years ago they fed all their lambs at the ranch. They lost 30 or 40 of the finewool lambs from overeating, but the Dorper cross lambs never backed up.
Another advantage she's noticed about the hair sheep is that in the heat of the day they will be out grazing and moving around while finewools will be under the trees.
Extension sheep and goat specialist Dr. Frank Craddock has tested a fair number of these Dorper cross lambs through the Pasture to Packer program, and he's been pleasantly surprised in their feed performance.
"They do great on feed," Craddock says. "They're generally lighter when they go on feed, but they go right to eating, unlike the finewool lambs. Most of them don't know how to eat.
"We kill them at a lighter weight, generally 100 to 105 pounds, so we get a 52 pound carcass or so. They dress fine. Because they're smaller, you think they're getting fat on you, but they don't have as much fat on them as you would think. They're pretty lean."
Craddock isn't any happier than the lifelong finewool breeders about the decline in the wool industry, but reality is that it's not likely to improve.
"I've got to be open-minded about these sheep," Craddock says. "I see the problems in the sheep industry. There are fewer and fewer shearers out there, and shearing costs are going to keep going up. Many are already paying $2 per head to shear, and lamb wool is probably only worth 30 to 50 cents a pound and a lamb will only shear four or five pounds.
"It's hard to break even on the wool side of the operation," he insists. "It can't hurt to give these animals a try."
Jason Bannowsky, buyer for Chargeurs Wool, can't deny reality, either.
"The lamb is where the money is in the sheep operation," Bannowsky says. "I hear a lot of ranchers saying that they wish these sheep didn't have any wool. I hate to hear that kind of talk; it's unfortunate that the wool is not that big of a cash crop to them anymore.
"It's hard to say if it will get better," he continues. "Right now, most producers would be making a little money off their wool. Just say they get $1 a pound for their wool and the government is paying $1.20 and they shear eight pounds and it costs $2 to shear, and say another $2 in labor. They still should net about $6 per head.
"That might pay their pasturage for a year or it might pay their medication expenses. Where it's a losing operation is when wool is bringing 30 to 60 cents a pound like it was a few years ago. That's where it gets really tough."
Bannowsky says the biggest problem with hair sheep, from a wool buyer's perspective, is when the growers don't keep their finewools separated from their hair sheep.
"We're seeing more bags of wool that might have two or three fleeces of these Dorper/Rambouillet crosses thrown in. Growers need to separate that kempy wool out," Bannowsky says. "It's not as big a problem as kempy mohair, but it could become more of a problem if hair sheep numbers continue to grow."
New Mexico rancher Steve Lewis has tried a few hair sheep as well.
"Sheep shearers are harder and harder to come by," Lewis says. "We're paying $2.50 a head to shear.
"There are some good things about the hair sheep," he continues. "They're real hardy; lamb survivability is good at birth, but their pelts aren't worth anything if you go through the traditional markets."
It's the pelt that has Ranchers' Lamb of Texas plant manager Ken Emrick concerned.
"The only disadvantage from the lamb plant's perspective is the skin. It's worth virtually nothing to us," Emrick insists.
A good No. 1 lamb pelt is currently bringing $10 to $12 while a hair sheep skin, which generally goes in with the No. 3s or 4s, might only net $2 to $2.50. That means that someone who brings in a load of Rambouillet lambs right now might get 90 cents a pound while Dorper crosses, for example, might only net back 82 cents a pound.
"Lambs are bringing 90 cents right now," Emrick says. "Why would you want to switch to something that won't return you as much money? Now, if you can save that much in shearing costs, then fantastic, but I don't think you can recoup that full $10 that you lose in the pelt credit.
He has no problem with their carcasses.
"The hair sheep slaughter like any other animal," Emrick says. "They eat like any other animal - though the promoters say they eat better - but the palatability is no different, in my opinion. Cutability is the same. They have a fair-sized (rib) eye.
"They're typically a little smaller animal. We can't get them to the size of these Colorado lambs, but that's not bad. We have a market for that animal. The ethnic population will pay good money for these lambs. They want them weighing 60 to 70 pounds live, which equates to a 30 to 32 pound carcass.
"There might be some advantages to the grower, but for me, a guy sitting in a processing plant, I don't see them, and we're a long, long ways from getting any credit for that skin," Emrick reiterates. "Packers aren't going to be the ones to take the hickey on these hides. We can't afford to.
"Consequently, growers are not going to get paid the same for these Dorper lambs. If you think you are, you're wrong. Maybe five years from now it will be better, but that's hard to say for sure."
It's all about supply and demand, and right now there simply aren't enough of these hair sheep to fill a niche market even if there were a demand for them.
The hair sheep enthusiasts know this, and the newly formed Texas Hair Sheep Producers Coalition hopes to change that. One of their goals is to develop a market for these hair sheep skins. They recently submitted a grant proposal to USDA for funding to do the necessary research on the skins.
Dr. Dennis Shelly, a researcher with the Leather Research Institute at Texas Tech University, has conducted some preliminary research on the hair sheep skins, and he believes there is real potential.
"The hair sheep produces a skin that has a grain layer with very uniform, fine features, unlike the wooled sheep," Shelly says.
These hides, he says, could be used in several different applications. One possibility is upholstery.
"Most sheep skins are unsuitable for seating, especially the wooled skins, because they don't have that fine-textured grain layer. They have a lot of depressions and follicle openings, and it doesn't look good.
"They're also not thick enough, Shelly explains, "but the Dorpcroix hides appear to be naturally pliable and elastic. Normally you don't want elastin to persist in the hides through tanning, because if the leather is too stretchy it can be deformed for certain applications, especially upholstery, but these Dorpcroix hides recover from being stretched in the leather stage."
Another advantage of the Dorpcroix hides, Shelly says, is that they are substantially thicker than a wooled sheepskin. In fact, the hair sheep skins are thick enough to be split, yielding a top grain leather and a suede from the bottom split.
Another potential market for this leather, Shelly says, is in fine leather clothing.
Most hair sheep hides are currently being marketed with the lower quality hides - goat skins, for example - but Shelly insists that is a waste.
"The hair sheep hides should not be sold as a commodity item. They are unique, and they should not be folded in with the goat skins. They should be processed separately for their own characteristics."
Shelly insists their potential has simply not been recognized.
"The manufacturers, the designers, they don't know about this leather. It isn't widely recognized in the leather community because it is so new. We need to get them the data on these hides. That's what the grant proposal is about."
Building demand for these hides will be difficult, he admits, particularly since current volume is minimal.
"We have to start building demand by first getting the hide off the floor," Shelly says. "These hides can't be seen as an ugly lump of flesh. They need to be put into a supply chain where it can be processed in a manner appropriate to its value.
"I think we start by having producers pay the actual cost of processing, and then they retain ownership of those hides," Shelly says.
The initial stages of processing could be done in San Angelo or San Antonio, he says, but converting the hides to leather would have to be done at a commercial tannery. There's one in San Antonio and another in Johnstown, New York.
Shelly believes the unprocessed hides should be netting the producer $9 to $10.
"Once it's converted into finished leather, it could sell for upwards of $8 a square foot."
It will be quite some time, if ever, before any such prices are likely to be paid, however. Again, the big hitch at the moment is supply and demand, because there is little of either.
"Back when there were 50 million sheep in this country, we didn't do much of the wool on," says pelt processor Mike Wheeler. "Back then, we ran about 1000 skins a day through the puller. We had 13 different grades or categories of pickled skins. We'd put about 1200 dozen on a truck.
"That's the kind of quantity you needed to ship to a major manufacturer," Wheeler says. "To have a viable merchandizing scheme, you have to have thousands of these animals, and right now there are not enough hair sheep to make that a reality."
The real value today, Wheeler says, is in the pelts with the wool on. A pelt with the wool on sells for $3.50 to $6.50 a square foot finished. Napa leather, on the other hand, which is what most of the hair sheep skins are marketed as today, is only worth about $1.50 to $1.60 a square foot.
"Part of the reason that the napa market is so cheap is because a lot of species can do the same thing. Cow hides, for example, often go into the napa trade, as do goat skins."
Still, you have to start somewhere, and Jimmy Cole with Custom Skins of San Angelo is willing to work with the new coalition.
"They've asked me to sort the hair sheep skins out to see what kind of numbers we can get. Right now we're only getting 20 to 30 of these skins a week," Cole says. "We get some from the Midwest and the East Coast, but they don't use the mechanical skin pullers, so many of these hides are coming in with knife scores and lots of fat left on the pelt itself. We can't get a good cure on the skin when there is fat left on, and in turn you ruin the grain so they're really not worth much."
Shelly says he's confident that there is substantial potential for hair sheep hides.
"This is not idle, wishful thinking, and that's why we've submitted an application for a USDA grant to do more testing.
"These hides should have their own market, and we will get there when their characteristics are well known and when we have created a legitimate demand," he concludes.
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