Barbados Blackbelly Home

Frequently Asked Questins

Information about Blackbelly Sheep

Scientific articles and abooks about Barbados Blackbelly sheep

Top 10 Web Sites You'll Want to Read

Find Other People Interested in Blackbelly Sheep

Links to Helpful Resources for Shepherds

Where to Find Blackbelly Sheep Breeders

Barbados Blackbelly Sheep Association International (BBSAI) Maintains a current Breeders Directory of BBSAI members. Also go to their For Sale/Wanted bulletin board to check recent ads.

Care and Maintenance

Trimming Blackbelly Hooves Excellent description of trimming hooves with lots of detailed photographs.
Sheep Production Guide Article from Department of Animal Sciences, Oregon State University
Beginner's Guide to Raising Sheep Information about general care, tube and bottle feeding, orphans, castration.
Raising Bummer Lambs on a Bottle Article provides feeding schedule and emergency milk replacer formula
Tube Feeding Neonatal Small Ruminants This excellent article by Dr. Susan Kerr describes in detail the steps necessary to tube feed a newborn lamb. Great pictures show the correct way to insert the stomach tube to avoid accidentally getting it into the lamb's lungs.

General Sheep Information

American Sheep Industry Association (ASI) If you own sheep, this is the organization that represents you. Although geared primarily for wooled breeds, this site has good information on disease, marketing, production, regulatory and legislative information. Click the Sitemap link at the upper right for easiest navigation.
The Sheep Book, by Ron Parker Everything you need to know about raising sheep. Ron has generously put his entire book online as a PDF file.
Manitoba Sheep Association Although this site is designed primarily for Manitoba producers, it provides a wide range of information and links of use to all shepherds, producers, veterinarians, livestock specialists and others to access the vast amount of sheep related information available on the web.
Maryland Small Ruminant Page Has one of the most extensive collections of information links for sheep on the web.
Virginia Cooperative Extension Great articles about sheep health, management, marketing and economics, nutrition, and reproduction.
National Sheep Industry Improvement Center This site helps U.S. sheep and goat industries to strengthen and enhance the production and marketing of their animals and products.
An Update on Hair (Meat) Sheep in the U.S. by Susan Schoenian
Oklahoma State University Hair Shee[ Breeds Library Breeds and selection information;, commercial information; collections of publications; diseases, disorders and pests; nutrition and feeding; production/husbandry
Barbados Blackbellies—A National Treasure by Susan Schoenian
Line Breeding—an Ancient Breeding Tool Barbara Webb does an excellent job describing the principles of line breeding in layman's terms.
FSpeed—Fast Inbreeding Computation Software Windows program for rapidly computing the inbreeding of all individuals in a breeding population. Free version available.
Ethnic Calendar Use this calendar to help you pinpoint the best times to sell your sheep to ethnic populations who eat sheep as part of their religious holidays.

Magazines, Email Groups, Organizations

sheep! Magazine - The Voice of the Independent Flockmaster. Excellent magazine with online links to many past articles. Good reference tool. For an example a really good past article, see
Barbados Blackbelly Sheep: Back From the Brink of Extinction

 


Barbados Blackbelly Sheep Association International Association and registry for Barbados Blackbelly and American Blackbelly sheep.
ALBC Member Logo.
Wild & Woolly Listserv; Shepher'd Notebook Blog The University of Maryland Extension Small Ruminant Program has created four listservs to communicate with producers and disseminate information pertaining to sheep and goat production and marketing. Anyone may subscribe to one or more of the listservs.

Supplies and Services

CafePress.com Blackbelly Goodies Store—t-shirts, hats, mousepads, and more!!
D-S Livestock Company sells the Billy Buster platform headgate and chute. This amazing piece of equipment allows me to trim hooves, tag, medicate, and otherwise constrain my sheep single-handed. Pricy, but worth every cent!


Udderly EZ Sheep Milker Now you can easily obtain cholostrum from lactating ewes with tiny teats. Freeze it for emergency use in icecube trays. Click here to read people's testimonials.


Premier Even if you never order from them, get their catalog. It is one of the best learning tools for fencing I've ever read. Premier sells excellent sheep lambing products and is the only source for the 2X ear tags suitable for blackbelly ears. They are the people to talk to about your scrapie tags. Excellent customer service.
Drs. Foster and Smith They sell the cheapest nylon collars (18" long x 1" wide) that I've found so far (Item 9N-9003, $4.99 ea available in 12 colors).
Pipestone Veterinary Supply Of special interest is their archive of sheep articles. Pipestone is a good source for sheep vet products.
Sydell, Inc. Sells quality sheep handling systems.
Lamb Lovers Cookbook. One of only two lamb cookbooks vailable in the entire WORLD! This cookbook contains over 100 mouth-watering recipes and is fully indexed to make it easy to find recipes by name, ingredient, or ethnic flavor.

Pen&Ink drawings from photos. Ann-Cathrine Loo lives in the U.K., but all she needs is your photograph and an email address to create exquisite drawings and paintings of your sheep, family, and any other artwork you may need. She made this line drawing for me to use on my farm's sign.

Animal Transport

UShip.com is a free pet transport bid site. Animal owners can list any animal they need shipped--dogs, sheep, goats, whatever--and in turn they receive bids from feedback-rated pet transporters.

Sheep as Food

Sheep's Creek Farm Lamb Recipes (formerly 18 James.com, Ron Florence's huge collection of lamb recipes)
Spirit of Humane Tools for humane slaughter of sheep and goats including knives and an affordable restraint system

Government

International Animal Export Regulations Want to ship sheep somewhere outside of the U.S.? Here is a list o countries and their import requirements for sheep.
U.S. Animal Import Information Want to import live sheep? You can only do it from Canada. Here are the regulations.
U.S. State Animal Import Regulations Want to sell a sheep to someone in a different state? Here are links to each State's import regulations.
USDA APHIS United States Veterinary Services. You'll need to know how to contact your State vet when you apply for a scrapie premises I.D.

Veterinary/Medical

American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners Use their membership list to find a veterinarian near you who specializes in sheep and goats.
GeneCheck Scrapie susceptibility testing. Read these excellent articles for more information about the genetics of scrapie:

Drugs Commonly Used in Livestock Production Handy table showing clinical indications, dosages, and withdrawal times of the antibiotics you are most likely to use on your sheep.
How to Compost a Dead Sheep Don't laugh...your sheep won't live forever. Learn from this fully illustrated slide show how to return your sheep to the soil.
Fias Co Farm's How to Do Home Fecal Testing Web site This is one of the best sites for beginners to use. Clear instructions, good photos.
Diagnosis of Internal Parasitism Slide show demonstrates how to prepare the sample, how to load it on a egg-counting slide, how to recognize eggs (versus air bubbles), and how to calculate eggs per gram.
Livestock Fecal Examination for Parasite Eggs by Joe Tritschler and Brad LeaMaster Describes how to do a fecal exam using a home-made flotation solution
Farmstead Health Supply Fecal Egg Count Kits
Deworming with Garlic Jean Noon's experimental results from testing the effectiveness of garlic juice as a deworming agent.
Deworming with Diatomaceous Earth (DE) Perma-Guard is a manufacturer of DE, and their site provides good information about the use of DE as a deworming agent.
How to Do a Basic Field Necropsy Marvelous full-color illustrations and step-by-step procedures for doing a necropsy on a cow. It wouldn't be hard to generalize a lot of the information to a sheep. It shows normal and abnormal conditions for many of the organs. Be sure to download the many mini-movies that demonstrate techniques and tips.
Selenium Toxicity/Deficiency Selenium toxicity is a serious threat to livestock in the mid-western United States. Yet most of the Eastern and Northwestern areas of the country have low selenium in the soil and in the plants, creating a selenium deficiency problem. This Web site describes the distribution of selenium throughout the U.S.; symptoms of incorrect levels ; treatment; and prevention.
Copper Requirements for Sheep Copper is a necessary dietary requirement for sheep, but too much creates a fatal copper toxicity. How much is enough?

Pasture and Plants

Canadian Poisonous Plants Information
Cornell University Poisonous Plants Database

Building Plans for Barns, Shelters, Feeders, Etc.

University of Kentucky—Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering
Iowa State University—Midwest Plan Service
North Dakota State University
Canada Plan Service

Breed Conservation/Preservation

USDA National Animal Germplasm System will collect semen from your ram and cryopreserve it to ensure that your bloodlines are never lose. Their program is free — you donate your ram's semen to the program.
SVF Foundation Rhode Island organization preserves embryos/semen of rare and endangered livestock breeds
Livestock Conservancy LogoThe Livestock Conservancy (formerly the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy) Pioneer organization in the U.S. working to conserve historic breeds and genetic diversity in livestock, including Barbados Blackbelly sheep.

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