American Blackbelly Sheep

You’ve never met a sheep like this.

Lambs

Blackbelly’s are able to breed year-round allowing for more diverse breeding management programs. They need little to no assistance in lambing and take excellent care of their lambs.

For Sale

After lambing each year, we determine which lambs we will retain and which are up for sale. Check back occasionally to see if any are available, or stay posted via our newsletter!

Our Flock

If there’s one thing you know about us, it’s that we absolutely love our flock of sheep and goats and can talk about them all day long. But until we can strike up our next convo, check them out here.

What Are American Blackbelly Sheep?

This breed of sheep is amazing, fun, lovable, playful, curious, and overflowing with a sweet personality.

Here are some characteristics of the American Blackbelly Sheep breed that make them so amazing.

American Blackbelly sheep were developed by crossbreeding programs that primarily involved the Mouflon and Barbados Blackbelly.

The Mouflon sheep have characteristics similar to the wild BigHorn sheep which assist in giving the American Blackbelly rams big, spectacular horns. Along with the spectacular horns, American Blackbelly rams also have a very regal or majestic appearance which leads to their popularity for trophy hunting. Ewes may have small horns or may be polled (hornless).

American Blackbelly sheep are hair sheep, therefore they do not require shearing and docking of tails.

They grow a winter wool or undercoat during the cold Fall/Winter season and then shed their winter coats in the Spring/Summer leaving them with beautiful coarse coats of hair.

American Blackbelly ewes are great mothers.

They are able to breed year-round allowing for more diverse breeding management programs. They need little to no assistance in lambing and take excellent care of their lambs.

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American Blackbelly Sheep produces lean, fine-grained, mild, and flavorful meat.

Because they are hair sheep (do not have wool), they have lower amounts of lanolin and therefore have a more flavorful (less gamey or muttony) meat than many other breeds of sheep.

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American Blackbelly Sheep are medium-sized sheep

Typically, average sized rams weigh between 100 and 160 lbs, and ewes weigh between 70 and 120 lbs.

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Blackbelly's are a great starter breed for new sheep farmers

American Blackbelly Sheep are also very social, low-maintenance, and adapt to a variety of environments making them easy to care for and are good for farmers who are new to raising sheep.

They are also good foragers and tend to eat a wide variety of weeds, legumes and grasses (very similar to goats).

Why we at Penner Mini Farms decided to raise American Blackbelly Sheep

We have discovered that given the opportunity to interact with humans, American Blackbelly sheep are some of the sweetest and most loving livestock animals we have ever experienced. We love these sheep and our farm is a much better place with them here.

The biggest thing we were looking for when we discovered these sheep and one of the main reasons we chose them is because they are a low maintenance breed, easy to care for, and the fact that they are extremely social (with each other and with humans).

These sheep are beautiful, majestic, sweet, lovable, playful and so much fun to be around.

They truly do make the job of a shepherd an easy, delightful and joyful job.