Most of the characteristics of Katahdin’s can be found at Katahdin Hair Sheep Internat’l.

We are pointing out here what characteristics we found valuable to us.

We retired to our new farm in 2008 after living in residential communities near Boston, MA, for nearly 40 years. My sister has lived in NE for a while and had been raising Katahdin’s since 2001 on her farm in Ceresco, NE. Listening to her enthusiasm convinced us to try.

The first characteristics we noticed were no shearing and no docking. Those two are important to us. These sheep do grow heavy thick coats to easily deal with our bitter cold Nebraska winters but then shed the coats in the Spring. We have birds everywhere here. I suspect they use the shedding for their nests.

We needed to make sure we could continue to care for the sheep in our retirement and Katahdin′s are proving to be very easy care.

While Katahdin’s are known for their ability to thrive year round outdoors in the field or pasture, we do tend to bring them into our barn at night. Herding them is not hard. Katahdin’s are very gentle with both adults and children. In fact, they are so gentle that they make for excellent youth 4–H projects.

The care and feeding of the sheep that is purchased can be non-taxable. Also, Katahdin’s are a registered breed that may be important for building a flock.