Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Preserve aims to save traditional 'hair' sheep

Kenn Rodriguez News-Bulletin Staff Writer; krodriguez@news-bulletin.com

Belen When you talk about sheep, most people think about the short, white animals with wool covering their bodies. Don Chavez y Gilbert would like that to change.

The wind blows wickedly at times through the trees at the Terra Patre Wildlife Preserve, but Chavez y Gilbert hardly notices as he talks about the hair sheep he is breeding.

Chavez y Gilbert believes the days of the wool sheep, or "woolies" as he calls them, are numbered as far as the livestock industry goes. And he's doing what he can to adapt — by breeding a hair sheep that is closer in look, habit and structure to the sheep the Spanish colonizers originally brought to New Mexico than the woolies you see being raised now.

"A woolie is just an unnaturally selective bred sheep that had a recessive gene where their wool didn't fall out," he explains as he walks part of Terra Patre's 20 acres and shows off the sheep he is breeding — which are of a Mouflon variety.

"If man were to disappear, most of the woolies who were in hot weather would die because their wool would never stop growing. They would all die off, and the ones who still were able to shed their wool in the summer, in the heat, would be the survivors."

Those survivors are the sheep Chavez y Gilbert hopes to popularize. He also mentions the Barbados Blackbelly and Corsican, the sheep Oñate brought to New Mexico; his hopes lie with crossing the Mouflan — which still roam wild in the mountains of Europe — with the Wiltshire breed to create to best mix for hair sheep.

"What I'm trying to do is to combine the best qualities," he explains. "Woolies, Marinos and Whiteface — all the sheep you hear about — they're not parasite-resistant because they've been pampered. They require higher protein because of that.

"These hair sheep will survive on weeds with low nutrition. While the woolies will need alfalfa, which is high on protein, these guys can survive on stems and weeds," he said. "They're browsers. They'll eat anything. They'll eat the bark off a tree, while the woolies will just starve to death."

Chavez y Gilbert and his wife, Quillon, are operating Terra Patre on the same land Chavez y Gilbert's family have been raising livestock on since 1598 as part of the Belen land grant, the longtime school social worker said.

He said the preserve and heritage farm, which he hopes to donate into a trust at some point to "preserve the local ranching culture and traditions," is also trying to help preserve the future of the sheep industry, which is seeing a decline in demand for wool but an increased demand for meat and trophy sheep.

"The vast majority of people — farmers, ranchers, Hispanics, other Europeans, Indians — they want to do what's seen as traditional, which is the woolies," he explains. "But we don't have the same DNA as our memory does. If you go to a livestock auction, here in Valencia County — I would venture to say anywhere in New Mexico — and put one of these hair sheep out there against a woolie, the woolie is still gonna fetch a bigger price because they're bigger. But they require more pampering, more feeding, more doctoring. And people just don't recognize the value (of hair sheep).

"What I'm trying to tell you is that the sheep industry is going to shrink and disappear if we don't have a reasonable replacement for it," he said.

That reasonable replacement is the hair sheep, which has several advantages over it's woolly brethren.

"We'll have a sheep that doesn't have to be shorn," he said. "A sheep that doesn't taste as muttony. That's big in size like the Wiltshire and hardy like the wild sheep. Good pest control, eats just fine on low nutrition grass as opposed to alfalfa, is resistant to pests, like worms. They don't have the birthing problems — woolies require assistance in birthing. They twin often. Everything about them is superior."

Chavez y Gilbert said the one competitor to his breed is the Khatadins. But that breed is poled, with no horns. His horned sheep will be able to compete as meat sheep that double as trophy sheep. They'll also have a high survival rate and can be raised with low overhead — much like the original sheep brought to New Mexico by the Spanish.

His efforts to breed hardier hair sheep also coincide with the preserve's mission to educate, Chavez y Gilbert said.

"Everyone wants to be a cattle rancher, but actually New Mexico was a sheep state first," he said. "So we're trying to keep that tradition. I want to be able to teach students in Valencia County. One of the reasons I wrote a book over the summer, in addition to having a book for students and teachers to study, we have school classes come out here and do their tours."

Quillon Chavez y Gilbert said the Terra Patre Wildlife Preserve hoped to have a Web site up to promote both the sheep and the preserve itself by late December but the site, www.terrapatre.com, is still not online. For more information on hair sheep, contact Don Chavez y Gilbert at rehtaf1@lycos.com.

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