Granted, we don’t have the herd or operation that these folks do, but with 7 sheep, we will need to shear them or something called Rooing. Shetland sheep can be naturally plucked! Now this is something I had never heard of, until I was cruising YouTube for Shetland sheep videos and stumbled on this! Part of me thinks that it would be kind of fun to see if our sheep… roo!

I really am in love with my little Shetland sheep… they are just so cool. Not huge, nice colors, sweet temperaments and hardy. The perfect beginning flock for the new shepherd. I was surprised to also learn that the breed is relatively new to America, really within the last 25 years. That makes for a nice sheep that is desirable for so many reasons. Like this interview says, they are great as pets, as grazing lawn mowers, for fiber and fleece and also as meat and lamb breeders. I will admit, I’m not really interested in the meat aspect of raising these critters. They just have too much personality and pet quality to them for me to really see them as dinner plate specials. Besides, we Americans are not really into lamb and mutton as much as other countries. I think that the value as a fiber animal, producing up to 12 years of high quality desirable fleeces and desirable lambs for flocks and breeding, is far more valuable than eating the lambs. But, hey, that’s just my opinion. I’m not worried about being able to harvest our meat chickens and pork, and may even consider a steer as well, but that’s another story!

Check out Shetland sheep if you are considering a delightful, small sized, easy to raise fiber pet! You can have a flock of two, or three and they are great lawnmowers! I’ve found the Shetlands to be gentle on your lawn, and are not as aggressive grazers as goats and other larger animals. (Like ponies!) Since we’ve had sheep in our large middle yard, we only mowed once and that was before a party to make it all nice and even. If I could only train them to eat it all nice and consistently, we’d have a major hit! Still, they do a nice job and they keep the weedy stuff at bay as well. Easy to feed as well! They do require winter haying, but my flock of seven only eat about half a bale a day. If you want, you can suppliment their winter feed with a bit of sweet feed to keep them warmer in the evening. Since I have three lambs and three yearlings, I do give them some evening sweet feed, just to make sure they have a little warm food in their tummies and cud to chew through the night. A 50 pound bag of feed costs $10 and lasts me about a week and half, sometimes two weeks.

In the fall, summer and spring, they can thrive entirely on pasture and grass. Easy keepers for sure! Check out Shetlands! We love them!