Katahdin Sheep

A little background for those of you not familiar with Katahdin sheep. Katahdins are hair sheep. That is, they don't grow wool that has to be sheared. They grow a two-layer coat, an inner layer of fine wool that sheds out naturally in the summer and an outer hair coat that remains slick during the heat of the summer. As you can see in the Honey and Adele post, Honey is shedding her last bit of winter wool. Katahdins were developed as a breed by a Maine sheep farmer, Michel Piel. Story goes that in 1957 he read a National Geographic artical about West African hair sheep. He was a sheep farmer but had to shear his sheep. He combined a number of breeds and by the late 1970s he had a hair sheep breed that met his goals of excellant meat production without having to shear. He named it for Mt. Katahdin, the highest peak in Maine.