Breeding up
Balanced Australian Whites
for the Midwest
Our Genetic Base
After years of absorbing information on hair sheep we made a list of our non negotiables and set off to buy our first set of sheep. We knew that a good genetic base would be the key for our success with low input hair sheep.
In July 2021 we purchased 25 ewe lambs from Sassafras Valley Ranch. Later that summer we purchased 7 ewes from JaKo Farm.
In the Fall of 2022 we made a trip down to Oklahoma to purchase 50 ewe lambs from Bent Tree Farms.
All of these Katahdin ewes had never been wormed and we raised to be hardy sheep. Exactly what we wanted!
Ram Power
After purchasing our first set of ewes we were faced with the choice of what direction we wanted to take our hair sheep flock. With God’s timing we were approached about purchasing an Australian White ram.
After doing our own research on the breed we decided that this would be a great opportunity to be at the start of this developing breed in the USA.
After our first lambing we were blown away at the Australian White characteristics shown within that first cross.
We are excited to continue our breed up program to become full Australian White Breeders.
Meet the Farmers
We are Kelsey & Ryan Keeling!
We moved to Ryan’s family farm in 2017 after meeting in college. We both had a love for animals and were excited to take over the management of the cow/ calf operation Ryan’s dad had. After a few years we decided to start our own enterprise of hair sheep. We quickly found a love for sheep and can’t wait to see where our flock will be in 5 years.
Faith & Family
Over the last 6 years we have had many ups and downs on the farm which has made us stronger in our Christian faith. Along with creating a balanced animal we strive for balance between our faith, family, and farm which is why we chose the name Balanced Ruminant Grazers.
Kelsey has started a podcast to share her love for sheep education. She also hopes to share the faith that we all need on the hard days. We hope you will check it out below.
