Watertown — American Blackbelly sheep are trickling into Minnesota. The breed has been popular in Texas for a couple of decades, where they are bred for the large curled horns on the rams and hunted on game farms. Their appearance in Minnesota is not related to hunting.
Two of Minnesota’s newest breeders are Matt and Erin Blair. They live on 20 acres outside of Watertown.
“I knew steers would be a little too big for me right now, because we don’t have the land to do the hay,” Matt said. “I looked at dairy goats for a while. Then I decided I wanted to eventually get (4-year-old) Colin into 4-H, so we started looking at sheep.”
The Blairs are honest as to why they chose the American Blackbelly. It wasn’t for their low maintenance or meat production or prolificacy, all of which they are noted for.
“We liked the looks,” Erin said. Matt seconded that statement: “I like the American Blackbelly because of the rams with the big tight-curled horns.”
In researching the sheep, Matt posted his interest in buying on the website of the Barbados Blackbelly Sheep Association International. He was contacted by a farmer in Ohio who was selling his small flock that had been a 4-H project for his children.
“I looked at the flock he wanted to sell, and I said, I need to get those,” Matt said. It was Cinnamon, the ram, that he especially wanted.
They brought home the flock of one ram and four bred ewes in January. The next week, Matt was laid off from his job as a draftsman, so he had more time than anticipated to put into the sheep. One ewe lambed early, in February, and they lost their first lamb. The other ewes came in as expected in March, and they added two ewes and a ram to the flock.
Interesting history
Blackbelly sheep have an interesting and uncertain history. The Barbados Blackbelly is the original polled version of the breed. It is thought to have been developed on the West Indian island of Barbados, a combination of an African hair sheep introduced with the English slave trade and of a European wooled sheep, possibly from England. In the hot, humid climate, the hair genes won out over the wool genes, but in response to colder weather they do grow some winter wool that is shed in summer.
Coloration gave the breed its name. The body runs the gamut from fawn through brown to a dark reddish-brown, but the black underbelly is a constant. Barbados Blackbelly were introduced to the United States in 1904. Their number remains small.
When the Barbados Blackbelly were crossed with the Rambouillet, and then later the Mouflon from the island of Corsica, the rams developed large, curled horns that some found attractive as trophies. Texas game farms particularly began to breed the Blackbelly for trophy racks. The BBSAI has always registered both the polled Barbados Blackbelly and the newer horned variety, but to avoid the growing confusion about the Barbados Blackbelly, the Corsican sheep and the Blackbelly-Mouflon cross, in 2004 they established the name of American Blackbelly and listed it as a separate breed.
The number of American Blackbelly sheep in Texas is estimated in the hundreds of thousands. The numbers outside of Texas are much smaller. The BBSAI lists 37 breeders in 23 states, not counting Texas. Only two breeders in Minnesota are members of BBSAI.
Majestic looks
The second breeder in Minnesota is Joel and Carmen Goldsmith of Lengby. They have been raising American Blackbelly sheep for a couple years as a hobby. They first saw them while visiting Carmen’s uncle in Texas.
“We couldn’t believe how majestic they looked,” Carmen said. “My husband and I are both avid hunters and it seemed like raising American Blackbelly would be a fun thing to add to our farm, that gave it a little more of a wild feel.”
Their horns will be the “top priority” of the Goldsmith’s breeding program, Carmen said, but the breed also has other good qualities she likes.
“They have a hair coat that remains after shedding their wool in spring,” she said. “They don’t have to be sheared. This means less work and an animal that does not get full of mats and manure.”
She also provided information on recent independent research that touts the meat of the Blackbelly as being extra-lean and tender.
And it has a “wonderful flavor,” Carmen said, though she has not tasted their own sheep. “Most have been pets, but we are finally large enough that we will be butchering our first this fall.”
The Blairs went to the Minnesota State Fair this fall to see if they could locate other Minnesota American Blackbelly owners, but there were no Blackbelly sheep at the fair.
They don’t lack for helpful information, however. They said that BBSAI has a chat room for members.
“You go in and type your question, and you get everyone’s responses,” they said.
The owner of the ram which they purchased had been offered good money from a big game trophy farm, the Blairs said, but he wanted to keep his bloodline going. So do the Blairs, so they plan to keep their young ram. Raising trophy rams is not what they have in mind right now. Eventually they will probably sell the sheep for meat, but first they are getting acquainted with sheep raising.
“My grandparents own the farm right up the road,” Matt said. “I did a lot of stuff growing up, helping farmers, but nothing like this, taking care of the animals.”
Matt will be taking master gardening classes, and would love to farm someday. But for now they are enjoying learning and look forward to the day Colin is old enough to be in 4-H.
“We got them early so we can get used to them ourselves, so we can teach him about them,” they said.
Some information for this article was drawn from the Barbados Blackbelly Sheep Association website at www.blackbellysheep.org, and from the Oklahoma State University website on breeds at www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/sheep. Contact information for the Blairs and the Goldsmiths is in the Breeders Directory at the BBSAI website.
