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                 Anchorage Farm, Saugerties NY,  Registered Romney Sheep 

 

Aug 16 starts thrid roundin paddocks 1 and 2

Our mission  is regenerative  agriculture in the Hudson-Catskills region  with purebred Romney sheep — the world’s most important dual-purpose breed.

Our vision  is  to cherish   the whole web of life  from micro to macro on this  250 year-old riverbank farm  as we raise  superb  Romneys  on grass for the 21st century.

“Mother earth never attempts to farm without live stock; she always raises mixed crops; great pains are taken to preserve  the soil and to prevent erosion; the mixed vegetable and animal wastes are converted into humus; there is no waste; the processes of growth and the processes of decay balance one another; ample provision is made to maintain large reserves of fertility; the greatest care is taken to store the rainfall …”  Sir Albert Howard An Agricultural Testament  p. 4

 The slide-show is a seasonal sequence through 12 months , though not all images are from the same year. You can advance or go back by clicking on hard-to-see arrows halfway down each side.

Our goals

  •  true dual-purpose sheep
  •  flock fertility above the  the breed average
  •  uniformity of fleeces within and between animals
  •  improving  the breed from within
  •  biodiversity and  balance with  indigenous flora and fauna
  •  soil health (high organic matter content, thriving underground biota, minimal  erosion as splash, sheets or gullies)
  •  human and animal health and safety

Some objectives set years ago:

  • wean 1.6 lambs for every ewe exposed
  • sell >500 lbs of fleece/year direct to handspinners or yarn mills
  • have >10%  of  lambs  each year that are  “recessively colored”
  • flock free of ovine progressive pneumonia and  caseous  lymphadenitis
  • high ethical standards
  • no major accidents causing inability to work

As of late March 2024,  self-assessment has us handily meeting or exceeding numbers 2, 3 and 4.  On #5, we  think  our ethical standards are high, but are not immune to bias. Open as always  to comments directed to sqs1(at)columbia.edu. A hard look at the first-listed objective (see sheep health pages) reveals that in the last ten years 2014-2023,  the desired 1.6 ratio has been bettered only three times.  This is a very conservative, unforgiving statistic,  but we will keep using it as a benchmark while also tracking other ones such as average litter size at term.  Each of these stats has has meaning for planning and for self-evaluation.  On #6. Cameron Pedigo, our manager  then, hurt his arm last spring  but carried on steadfastly with full days and fully recovered.

As the climate emergency worsens, in 2023-25 we are changing course.   We want to better the farm’s greenhouse gas balance sheet * and, more important, to enhance the ecosystem services** its 61 acres offer to the larger community.  These objectives overlap. We also are phasing out out buying fodder grown where neonicotinoids or glyphosate are routinely used or can’t be ruled out.  

These resolutions don’t mean we plan to be “full organic” in five years. We’ve set no timetable, for example, to markedly reduce use of  chemical dewormers, desirable as that would be for soil and animal health. We did start towards that in 2024.  Here’s why:

In October 2023 a sheep brought in May 2023 from another farm died here, thin and too weak to stand steadily. The vet attributed death to malnutrition from  resistant intestinal nematodes.  We took this loss as a sentinel event impelling action to combat the worsening national endemic of  drench-resistant parasites.  We plan, with the help of our vet, Dr Ferguson,  to get much more targeted in drenching. Stephen is now competent  in doing  fecal egg counts for Strongyles (family Strongylidae), comparing our at-home results with those from the lab at Cornell. On 2024 we started FAMACHA as well, though that is pretty specific for Haemonchus,  the most notorious of the very pathogenic Strongyles.

 To further these ambitions,  we  bought late in 2023 a white Romney ram born  in 2022 at the Kikitangeo South stud in Aoraki  NZ. Kiki South was formed recently by  the Giddings family at Meadowslea, a Romney stud established in 1929. The purpose of the new stud  was to further in  the South Island the work of two North Island studs that had put decades into breeding purebred Romneys with ever-greater innate resistance to gastrointestinal worms and to foot problems and to facial eczema. These are Kikitangeo, founded in 1922 and Waimai, at which the Romney stud began in 1956.  When “Kiki” dispersed in 1920-21 after Gordon Levet had operated it for close to seventy years,  Dr George Giddings bought 130 ewes and in 2024 established the Kikitangeo South prefix in the Romney New Zealand section of the New Zealand Sheep Breeders Association.  7084/22 will stay on his home ground in Aoraki for good.  We imported 300 straws of frozen semen in August 2024.  On October 8,  Dr Gately and the Tufts team did  laparoscopic AI here on on 31 ewes, both white and natural-colored.   On Nov 22, 28/31 ewes scanned pregnant by Nancy Minitur.   We will offer  frozen semen of KKS 7084/22  for sale in 2025 to  Romney breeders across the country.  Breeders of Romney composites may be included as supply lasts. 

This ram’s score on DPF, the fecal egg count index computed by Sheep Improvement Limited, was 931 at sale time, which placed him in the top fifth percentile of more than 33,000 rams born in 2022 recorded with SIL.

Our thanks to the Giddings family at the Meadowslea stud,  who are perpetuating and building the unique Kikitangeo line with the care and respect due it; to Gordon Levet, who established the line at his family’s  Kikitangeo stud in Wellsford; and to Robyn How of the Tararua Breeding Centre.

7084leftside                                                                                 

                                 Kikitangeo South 7084/22 at the Meadowslea Ram Sale, November 2023

 

A key element of our climate-smarter operation will be that our sheep get as much as possible of their feed from our own pastures. In a nutshell: improve pastures through adaptive paddock management with more trees, and feed grain only to ewes pre and post natally. 

We will continue to uphold all the great qualities of purebred  Romneys embodied in the American Romney Breeders’ Association breed standard and to nurture the heritage genetics of recessive color. 

            [*] Greenhouse gas balance sheet for a livestock farm is complex.  To summarize, we make a case that even if the CO2 equivalent of methane is reckoned using GWP20, the farm may now be “carbon neutral,” because of its woodlands.  To read more on our accounting methods and a discussion on methane, go to  Greenhouse Gas Balance Sheet under News and Views.

Comments or questions may be sent to sqs1[at]columbia.edu.

            [**] Ecosystem services are realized through

  • carbon drawdown through woodlands and grassland soil
  • encouraging biodiversity, with priority to native plants
  • safe space for pollinators
  • production of high-quality high-protein food
  • production of high-quality natural fiber–wool
  • preservation and improvement of healthy soil, “the gift of good land” (Wendell Berry)

The list is in no special order and not comprehensive.

For more depth and breadth, go to Ecosystem Services at Anchorage Farm

We have a new manager as of Jan 1, 2025  Click here to get acquainted with Rhonda Jaacks. She has hit the ground running,  working closely with her immediate predecessor, Cameron Pedigo. Welcome, Rhonda!

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