Registered Finnsheep
Our Finns
After looking at several different breeds of sheep we chose Finnsheep because the traits of the breed appealed to us. The medium size is easy for me to handle alone when need be and they have a good disposition, which has been wonderful since the kids do all the chores with us. I never have to worry about bad attitudes and they are a nice looking sheep to have around.
We started our flock with purebred Finnsheep ewes we bought from an Albertan breeder and our ram came to us from a BC breeder. We have had Finns for a couple years now and while it has been a learning curve we do enjoy them and have decided to continue to raise purebreds. However we added a Canadian Arcott to our flock a few years back to try our hand at crossbreeding and so far we are pretty happy with the results . The wonderful thing with sheep is that there are so many options its never boring or dull and we are excited to learn and grow with the industry in Alberta.
Our original flock sire Kanada250F, or Twinkles as we know him, brought new bloodlines to Alberta in 2018 and he was a wonderful ram. Not a bottle baby but so gentle the kids could go in a give him a pet even in the middle of breeding season.
Unfortunately Twinkles had to be retired from breeding due to unforeseen circumstances and he lived out the remainder of his days here on the farm with us.
We have held back one of his last rams, who we fondly names Pesco who has kept his sires great disposition. We are also excited to announce that the new Finnsheep ram we have brought in, whom we have named Joxer, has COMPLETE American bloodlines! This is big news as most Finnsheep in the western provinces can be traced to a single farm bloodline and our new ram has no such ties at all! So with Pesco's offspring and the new ram, this years purebred lambs will bring new blood to the area! Joxer will also hopefully bring some colour to the flock if we are lucky so fingers crossed as I would love some coloured ewes.
For more information on our bloodlines feel free to contact us or our bloodlines can be found on the CLRC page.
Cross Breeding Plans
In 2019 we bought a purebred Canadian Arcott Ram Lamb, of course we named him and now he goes by Bam Bam. Seeing as we are a small scale farm we want to try new things so we decided to go this route to produce a heavier weight carcass. A breeding trait of Finnsheep is that the F1s are suppose to take on the traits of the sires. As Canadian Arcotts are considered by most to be a terminal sire we are looking forward to seeing what that means for the lambs.
Bam Bam has given us several years of lambs now and he has proven to add a good growth rate and a nice long loin tot he lambs which we couldn't be happier about! We also held back a few of his off spring for breeding and they have grown out amazingly well! They were bred to a Charollais Ram last fall and will be lambing in 2023. Stay tuned for those results.