USD 19094 “Boone”

Reference Ram 

“Boone” was borrowed from the USDA Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Center in Booneville, Arkansas. Dr. Joan Burke heads up a research flock of Katahdins there, and was kind to loan him to us on the West coast; so we could benefit from what were at the time stellar EBVs; as well as gain more “connectedness” to the Midwest NSIP flock cluster. Boone bred ewes at Caleb Pirc’s farm in Idaho, then Karen Kenagy’s farm in Oregon, before making a stop here in WA. He headed East to an Iowa farm summer 2021.

Boone is a white ram with some light tan freckling. He has a very good hair coat and nice conformation. His temperament is calm and he is somewhat curious and friendly, yet gentle and easy to handle. He is typical of many high-scoring  maternal EBV rams in that he doesn’t have a tremendously masculine appearance. Below are his EBVs when he came here in Nov 2020, so you can see why we were excited to use him. Since then, and since Genomics, his EBVs have fallen significantly. See his current EBVs on NSIP’s searchable database here. I got some good ewelambs out of him, as well as a pretty spectacular replacement ram; so his genetics will still be sticking around here for some time to come. Photo taken November 2020.