Foundation Rams and ewes

I mentioned previously that I used Kerry Hill ram semen collected in the UK to artificially inseminate cheviot ewes in the US.

So how in the world does that work?

Well it wasn't easy.

First I had to find someone with Kerry Hill rams that might be interested in helping. I first contacted the secretary of the Kerry Hill Flock Book Society in the UK, who in turn put me in touch with Mr John Terry, of Oak Tree Farm, in Warwickshire UK.

Mr Terry was very amenable and in turn brought his two rams (Oak Tree Charles and Oak Tree Teddy) to a Defra facility for collection .

The semen then went through a few dozen tests, sat in a liquid nitrogen freezer and eventually (5 months later) made its way to the US. I had thought I had it all figured out and that FEDEX would deliver it to the US. It did, but not where I expected. In fact it took me 2 days to track it to a frustrated cargo locker in Newark NJ. (fyi: the customer service rep doesn't usually know what REALLY happens in shipping)

I had to work with the USDA to redo my permits, but the shipping container eventually made it to Virginia. I had the semen tested on arrival and a sample of the little guys passed muster.

The girls were a tad bit easier to come by. I purchased some beautiful yearling ewes from John Eaton of Triple J Acres in Pennsylvania. Since I was using these girls as the foundation for a new breed, I wanted to obtain the best animals I could find, and these girls were them. John often brings home national titles for his Cheviots (NAILE etc). I wanted beautiful 2 year old's that had already had a successful pregnancy, as these are easier to AI. yeah, right. Such ewes could not be had at any price. The only other requirements were prion precursor protein (Prp) allele status. That's complicated and I will address at a later date, but it has to do with disease susceptibility.