What I Wish I Knew Before Starting A Valais Blacknose Sheep Farm

I had a very specific picture in my head of what owning a sheep farm would look like. Fluffy animals wandering a green pasture. Morning coffee on the porch while lambs frolicked. A kind of slow, grounded life that balanced out the chaos of running businesses.

Some of that is real. But nobody told me about the hay drama, the parasite spreadsheets, or the late-night Instagram rabbit hole where you're zooming into stranger's barns at 11pm trying to figure out if your straw depth is normal. That part they leave out.

We started Wool & Wonder Farm just a few months ago, and I've already learned more than I expected. Here are the honest lessons.

Bedding is a whole philosophy, and I still haven't figured it out.

I thought straw was simple. You put some down, the animals stand on it, you clean it up, you do it again. What I didn't know is that there are two distinct schools of thought — the deep straw method, where you keep layering on top and do a bigger clean-out less frequently, versus the shallow straw method, where you clean more often but it's faster and there's less bacterial risk in the bedding.

I go back and forth. Deep straw feels more comfortable for the animals, especially in winter. Shallow straw is faster, and I worry less about what might be growing underneath all those layers. I have not landed on a definitive answer. I have, however, developed an embarrassingly specific habit of zooming into other farms on Instagram at night, trying to determine by visual inspection how much straw they're working with. I am not proud of this. I also cannot stop.

Sheep are picky eaters, and the boys are worse.

I was not prepared for how opinionated sheep would be about hay. Some mornings the feeder is completely empty and they're looking at me like I'm late. Other mornings — same hay, same feeder, same exact situation — and it's barely touched.

What I've pieced together is that when hay is older or less green, the boys in particular will sort through it, pull out what they want, and waste the rest. The girls are much more agreeable. Our ewes will eat what's in front of them without comment. Our rams stage quiet protests.

I've also been on an ongoing mission to find second-cut hay, which is softer, more palatable, and apparently does not exist in Connecticut. If you have a source, I am serious when I say please contact me. In the meantime, I've found that sprinkling compressed Timothy hay on top of regular hay is like adding a little seasoning — suddenly it's interesting again and they eat the whole thing.

Parasite management is not optional, and it's more nuanced than I expected.

This was the first real crash course I got in sheep health. Shortly after our first animals arrived, I had a couple of sheep showing slightly elevated parasite loads. We caught it through fecal egg counts — which is exactly what it sounds like, and yes, you get used to it — and worked with our vet to treat only the affected animals with a combination protocol.

The thing I didn't know before: you do not treat the whole flock. When you treat animals that don't need it, you accelerate drug resistance in the parasites, and that becomes a much bigger, longer-term problem. You treat based on the numbers, you recheck, you monitor.

Now I check manure every single morning as part of the routine. Formed pellets mean everyone is doing well. It sounds ridiculous until the day you find something off, catch it early, and realize you probably avoided a real problem. You develop an appreciation for good poop very quickly on a farm.

Valais genetics are fascinating and complicated.

We breed registered Valais Blacknose sheep, which are the breed you've probably seen a hundred times on Instagram — the ones with the fluffy white wool and the distinctive black face and legs. They are as wonderful in person as they look on a screen.

What I didn't fully understand when we started is how small the US gene pool is for this breed. Every breeding decision requires running the potential pair through a genetic overlap tool, and you're not looking for a perfect green light — because in this breed, that's essentially impossible without importing genetics from Europe. What you're managing is concentration. You're asking: are these bloodlines stacking too many times, or is this a normal, acceptable level of overlap?

It has made me a genuinely careful and intentional breeder. Every lamb we produce is a deliberate decision, not an accident. And honestly, learning the genetics has made me more invested in this whole thing than I anticipated.

The animals are emotionally easy. The work is not.

This is the truest thing I can tell you about farm life: the animals themselves are a gift. Sheep don't guilt trip you. They don't have separation anxiety. They don't need you to process their feelings with them. They are present, and quiet, and they chew their cud and they let you exist near them, and there is something deeply restorative about that.

But the physical labor is constant and relentless. It's twice a day, every day, in the rain and in the cold and when you have a full calendar and a tight deadline. You show up because they need you to, and then you go do everything else.

I also had no idea how much work the pasture itself would be. Grass rotation, keeping animals off short grass during certain seasons, managing soil — it's its own ongoing project.

But here's the thing: I don't regret any of it. Not the straw debates or the hay sourcing or the parasite charts. Not the early mornings or the mud. Every time I walk into that barn and hear them rustling around, I feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

If you're following along — whether you're hoping to bring one of our lambs home someday or you just love these animals — welcome. This farm is just getting started.

Wool & Wonder Farm is a registered Valais Blacknose sheep breeding program in Connecticut. For more behind the scenes, be sure to follow us on
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