Our Royal White Journey

Our Royal White journey began in 2015. Travis had been researching sheep, something he had been interested in for many years. Cattle prices were very high at the time, so we made the decision to sell the cows and invest in registered seedstock (and a storm shelter) to begin our sheep flock. We originally bought a ram and 3 ewes, but we liked the look of a group of young ewe lambs and went back to pick out 2 more later in the summer. In 2016, we purchased another ram and a group of ewes out of Missouri. In 2017, Travis made a trip to Texas for another group of lambs.

We are thankful that we started out with a small group to begin with because there is a very large learning curve when switching from cattle to sheep!

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly (or not?)

Royal Whites are just like any other registered livestock and this is OUR experience over our years of breeding them.

The Good and the Bad: Over the years, we have experimented with different bloodlines and styles of Royal Whites. The basic background of the Royal Whites is St. Croix and Dorper. However, there are other contributing breeds that were used in the very early years of developing the breed. What we have discovered is this: focusing on specific traits will cause the phenotype of your herd to lean either more toward the St. Croix or Dorper style. We know this because we have lived it. We participated in the NSIP for several years. Being a very data-driven program, I (Erica) greatly enjoyed the spreadsheets, data collection, and reports! Travis is not so much into the paperwork, and after a few years, he was able to see a noticeable shift in the phenotype of our herd. In following the productivity information, our sheep began to lean more toward the St. Croix phenotype. That wasn't really the style that appealed to us when we first started this journey. So, we reevaluated. Our farm has grown and changed over the years, and we were ready to move back to the more stocky style of phenotype. We were fortunate enough to be able to go back and add in some of our original bloodlines that were a wider, deeper, and meatier style. Along our journey, Travis has added regenerative style practices, rotational grazing, free-choice minerals, and a few other controversial ideas to minimize parasites and add grazing days during the droughty summers. This has helped with our decisions on retaining ewes and culling out the traits that are not working in our system. Because ultimately, we want to produce a sturdy ewe that can raise babies with the least amount of inputs that will bring a good (or great) price at the sale barn for our customers. If they can't do that for us in our herd, then they won't do that for our customers' herd.

The Ugly (or not!): Within a limited gene pool, there can be extremes and recessive traits that pop up. In 2018, we had our first crop of lambs that had that dreaded recessive gene pop up. SPOTS! Talk about a shocker! We were surprised, to say the least. A few years later, SCURS! What the heck was going on?? Well, off we went on a research rabbit trail. We learned that contrary to how we interpreted the breed standards, not all Royal Whites are born white! Some are even born looking like the cutest Holstein cows! Of course, they can't be registered, but what we did learn was that the lines that carry the recessive color also tend to have excellent growth rates, good milking ability, and a higher rate of twins. They also have a tendency to grow longer hooves that need more care. Hmmm. Let's go back and research some more. Come to find out, those recessive spots go back to a wool breed known for those traits. Next, the scurs! What? Where did that come from? Well, those same wooly genetics can play tricks on those rams, and sometimes the best growing ram lambs get scurs. Not a problem if they're tiny, don't progress, and pop off easily. BUT, sometimes those scurs keep growing. Well, we had a year where a ram we had produced a lot of those! Thank goodness the market lamb prices were good that year, 'cause those suckers weren't going into a breeding program! It is taking time, but we are slowly building a genotype map for our herd to track these traits. A project that is fun for my data-driven senses :)

Now, the challenge is how do we incorporate those genes that produce the traits we want with out getting the traits we don't want and producing the most uniform herd we can?

That is the driving force behind every seedstock producer!

Mature 6-year-old ewe showcasing our desired phenotypic traits in the pasture.