“I do what is best for the grass and that is good for the sheep too.” says Tom Perkins, who grazes his sheep 365 days a year on his farm in Fombell Pa. ‘Big Tom,’ as he is known, runs his 150 registered Katahdin ewes on 70 acres of owned land and eight acres of leased ground. On Big Tom’s Con-O-Creek Farm, he has created a unique system utilizing both fields and barn for optimal production.
Big Tom grew up on his family’s farm milking cows until the mid ‘80’s when the farm was transitioned to a beef cattle operation. After high school he left the farm to pursue a music career as a singer and a musician. After several decades traveling the country playing piano and singing with different bands and a few well-known artists, he returned home in 1996 to run the family farm and continued raising cattle and selling horse hay.
It wasn’t long before he realized that his winter feeding costs were eating up profits and he had to find a better way. He had tried rotational grazing years before but without much success. In 2012 he stumbled onto a few Joel Salatin videos and decided to give rotational grazing another try. This time around with much more knowledge and better tools, things started to click and soon he was moving cows twice a day and grazing close to 250 days a year.
In 2015 cattle prices were in a slump and Tom knew he had to make a change. He had read a few articles about Katahdin sheep and their great mothering abilities and decided to give them a try. The first group of 11 arrived at the farm in February of 2017 and began to lamb in April of that year. He said “I was shocked at how soon those lambs jumped up and started nursing and how attentive the mothers were.” Tom also noticed that he could graze these sheep just like the cattle but the sheep could stay on pastures much later in the year simply because they didn’t tear up wet pastures like the cows did. He was interested in the National Sheep Improvement Program (NSIP) from the start and enrolled his flock in 2020. He soon started to buy in NSIP rams with the estimated breeding values (EBVs) he felt needed improving. In 2022 he sold the remaining cows and focused solely on raising quality Katahdins.
At this point, Tom lambs three times per year in his 50 ft x 120 ft bank barn that was left over from the milking days. Each group is around 50 ewes, as that is what he can house comfortably in the barn. He lambs in early fall, mid-winter and late spring. He pairs a ram’s strength with a ewe’s weakness to raise the quality of all offspring each year. He always wants to get a better lamb than the ewe it came out of. Yearling ewes will follow the same schedule for breeding as their mother. Ewes gets two chances to breed. If she doesn’t lamb on the first exposure to a ram, Tom will bump her to the next breeding group. Then, she’s a cull ewe, if she isn’t pregnant.
For the early fall lambing group, he uses CIDRs to synchronize the ewes and start estrus. Most fall lambs are sired by a terminal ram, because they are grown for the light lamb market. Tom sells them for the high demand season of spring. All lamb groups are weaned at 70-110 days. Tom keeps all rams intact to ensure one contemporary group and better meat growth.
In the past, Tom raised all his lambs on grass alone. In the last few years, he has started to creep feed and he likes the added growth of the lambs. He feels that, “The February group benefits the most from creep feeding because they are inside the barn longer and don’t see pasture until they are much older than the late spring group.”
Tom’s main market is NSIP breeding stock and he sells most of his ewes in this way. He chooses his top 10-15% rams for seed stock. His ideal animal has a wide deep body to hold a lot of grass. Many ram lambs are sold to auction for the light lamb market at 65-70 lbs. Every year 20 or so lambs get fed out on grass on his farm. These custom-cut freezer lambs are harvested in late fall at 110-115 lbs and sold locally.
Tom’s perimeter fence is 7-strand high tensile wire to keep the sheep securely in. He has strategically set up each field as a long rectangle. Each day he moves the sheep down the rectangle to the next fresh grass paddock. He hooks the poly wire to the high tensile wire then walks to the other side while putting in a step in post every 12 steps, then hooks the poly wire on the other side with two carabiners and walks back again. In this way, the temporary fence has two strands that are electrified to keep the sheep in. Undoubtedly, the really annoying detail is getting to the other side and forgetting the carabiners in the Gator or realizing it fell through that old hole in his pocket.
In the early days, Tom mistakenly regrazed his pastures too soon and was having some problems with parasites. Now he gives the pastures 70-90 days’ rest to ensure better regrowth of grass and that sheep will not get infected by ingesting larvae while eating grass that is too short. As well, this gives the grass more time to grow before another round with the sheep.
Throughout the year, sheep are always grazing on Tom’s farm, but there are times when groups of sheep are housed in the barn for breeding and lambing as all sheep are bred and lamb in the barn. “We typically have four breeding groups in the barn so that we can breed a ram’s strength to a ewe’s weakness.” “This is also great time for us to allow for pasture growth and some stockpiling forage.” Sheep are flushed before breeding and supplemented in the last month of gestation before lambing with 1 lb/ewe/day whole corn.
As a musician, Big Tom knows that, “The goal of every musician is really to have everyone sing along.” So, for many years, Tom has loved to play piano for crowds large and small. These days he can be found playing well-loved church hymns, where everyone in the pew sings with their whole heart. Since Big Tom feels at home in front of a microphone, he has found another way to share his lifelong passion. After many long conversations, he and Camren Maierle decided to share their thoughts with others through “The Grazing Sheep Podcast.” Their lively conversations are now the #2 sheep podcast in the country. They have over 100 episodes recorded about all aspects of sheep, grass, NSIP and their own farming adventures.
Big Tom has kept his family’s farm going with ingenuity and a focus on productivity. Since the beginning of his days with sheep, he has been committed to using sheep with NSIP data to improve his flock. Now as an NSIP producer, he raises the productivity of his flock through each lamb that is born. He has learned that what works well for grass
also works incredibly well for sheep. For other sheep producers’ benefit, Tom now openly shares his knowledge and passion for everything sheep-related through the microphone … as the world listens.
By: Beckie Hotz, EAPK Communications Committee
