The Current and Future Herd Composition of Turning Leaf Ranch

 When we began marketing our pasture-raised animals to the public, we believed that our grass-fed lamb would be our flagship product.  The whole-animal lamb sales we had done in the past were met with rave reviews, and our own culinary experience with the lamb led us to believe that it truly is a remarkable offering.  We raise a breed of sheep (American Blackbelly) that is known to have one of the premier flavor profiles of all sheep breeds, especially when grass-fed and pasture-raised.  The first round of animals that we had processed for market were four lambs, and one goat, as we had assumed the demand for the two types of animals would be asymmetric toward lamb.

As we soon found out, however, the market for goat meat is remarkably underdeveloped, with few producers, who struggle to meet the demand of a very large and underserved market.  Among these producers, many follow "conventional" practices, feeding concentrates to accelerate growth to a large size as quickly as possible.  This reduces the available pool of high-quality goat meat even further, from an already small number of producers.  Our goat meat customers range over the entire rainbow of humanity: age, gender, ethnicity, geographic location, and beyond.  We have received requests to ship product as far south as San Diego, and as far east as Detroit.  We have had to turn down more customers than I'd like to admit due to supply constraints, and we have been blown away at the response to the quality of our offerings.

To better focus on demand for goat meat, TLR will be streamlining the herd, greatly reducing the number of sheep/lamb, to focus more on goats.  Although the herd currently stands at a 50%-50% mix, we have already begun selling off lambs.  We will continue until we reach a ratio of about 80% goats, and 20% sheep/lamb.  We typically sell at a live animal auction, although we do sell occasionally to private individuals.  Given the difficult environment we are currently operating in, this decision is difficult, but it truly is the most sensible option.



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