Sheep

Wool for sale

Where can I sell the wool from my sheep?

The sheep shearers in your area will likely know where to sell wool. Many actually buy wool at shearing time for resale purposes. As such, you might want to check with your shearer for more local leads.

Bruce Lane
Area Livestock Specialist

Scrapie tags for sheep

Where can I get free ear tags for my sheep? The county fair requires them and I was told in order to sell ewes they must have special ear tags.

I believe you are asking about the scrapie tags. You will need to call the Federal Veterinarian's Office in Jefferson City at: 573-636-3116. They can supply you with the information required as well as the tags.

Bruce Lane
Area Livestock Specialist

Sheep producers who sell breeding stock

Can you help me locate sheep producers in Missouri that sell breeding ewes and rams?

There are two sheep groups in Missouri as well as a colored wool organization. All of these organizations should have a listing of their members that would have breeding ewes and rams. They can be reached at

Missouri Sheep Producers, Inc.
1371 Dozier Station Road
Columbia, MO 65202
573-823-9836
dougkg@earthlink.net
Missouri Sheep Merchandising Council
Route 2, Box 38
Rockville, MO 64780
660-598-4165
dainsgirl@interlinc.net
Missouri Natural Colored Wool Growers Association
11500 Highway 5
Booneville, MO 65233
naturalcoloredwool@moncwga.com

Debi Kelly
Missouri Alternatives Center

Sheep friendly

I wish to relocate from Montana to Missouri to be closer to family. I have a flock of 50 Hampshire ewes. It is important that I have access to a sheep-knowledgeable veterinarian, a shearer and a livestock auction. Could you point me to sections of Missouri where there might be a critical mass of sheep producers to support my needs? I can work through issues of the farm facilities and feed sources, but I think it is important to be relatively close to other producers.

Although sheep may be found throughout Missouri, it is important to realize that there are not nearly as many sheep here as in your state. We are presently around 70,000 ewes statewide.

In general, I would suggest you look closely at the northeast corner of the state. There are a number of reasons for this suggestion:

Sheep shearers are not presently a problem. In fact, a real case can be made for this part of the state and southern Iowa having more sheep shearers per square mile than anywhere else in the country.
We have veterinarians who have raised registered herds. They have excellent backgrounds when it comes to sheep health and management.
There are about 10,000 ewes at last count in Schuyler County, Missouri. This county ranks first statewide in sheep numbers.
Markets in the northeast part of the state are also in pretty good shape. In addition to the typical sale barns located about every 25 miles, there is access to Monfort, which has a lamb buyer who also operates a feedlot and buys feeder lambs out of Bloomfield, Iowa (just across the state line). Iowa Lamb Corporation has a lamb buyer also located in Bloomfield, Iowa. There are other individual feeder lamb buyers in close proximity as well located in Coatsville, Mo., and in Bloomfield and Fairfield, Iowa. Several sale barns in southern Iowa also have fairly good runs of lambs and fairly decent sales and markets.

Some other advantages of northeast Missouri would be:

An active Northeast Missouri Sheep Producers Association
Kirksville is home to the Missouri Livestock Symposium which features top notch educational programs and speakers on sheep and meat goats annually
Cost per animal unit in the northeast corner of the state is very attractive.

There is also a pretty decent infrastructure around central Missouri as well, but the market is a little more limiting.

Bruce Lane
Area Livestock Specialist

Updated 5/21/08