Our Flock of Awassi Sheep
Our interest in raising Awassi Sheep came from our need to raise a hardy, vigorous, low maintenance, tri-purpose breed of sheep suited to our hot and arid conditions in New Mexico.
Prior to this, we raised La Mancha dairy goats for 13 years, but we hit a snag when we converted the farm into sylvohorticulture and began growing trees in proximity to our rotational fields. Goats love to eat trees and every chance they got to break through a fence and munch away, made our sylvo-project a disaster. So we had to choose - goats or trees - we chose the trees… and sheep! Sheep will still eat trees but not like goats. And they are so much easier to keep fenced in. Awassi peaked our interest and we searched for years for breeding stock to begin our own flock. In 2021, Divine Providence Dairy in Texas, decided to liquidate their herd and we jumped at the chance to get as many ewes and rams as we could to start our own flock.
Our breeding program began out of three different Awassi lines from Karrras Farms and the Hercules line from Elhassan. In 2025, we leased Amer, another purebred Awassi ram from the Elhassan line bred by Ishak-Samawi Farms and owned by Amy Pickard. Every year our flock gets better as we worked towards developing superior genetics defined by what Awassi sheep can produce - heavy meat carcasses, fat tails, high volume dairy traits, and lustrous and strong wool. Not to mention, vigorous, parasite resistant, and thrifty animals, who do great even in the most challenging environments. We plan to keep developing our herd from the three ram lines we now hold and work with other Awassi breeders to continue improving our flock’s tri-purpose traits.
Breeding Rams
These are our current breeding rams. They are yearlings in this picture (2026) and will fill out quite a bit in the coming years. They are the best of our breeding program to date - offering superior size, meat and fat-tail traits, from our best milkers, and with the finest wool quality we’ve seen yet. While we don’t offer breedings or semen, we will have breeding quality lambs available out of these lines.
Milk, Meat and Wool
We love our Awassi sheep. They are extremely docile and easy to handle. As a diversified farm our sheep are important to the health and well being of our land. They help us clean our crop fields of residue every winter and while they are doing this they return fertility to the soil through their manure.
We value the milk, meat, and wool they provide for us. We butcher our sheep on the farm for our own use, we milk seasonally and make lots of cheese, and we process their wool for fiber.
Awassi sheep are perfect for backyard dairy and meat flocks, and even for folks interested in artisan fiber work!
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We milk our sheep and make brebis, feta, yoghurt, labneh, and kefir. With its high fat and protein content and naturally A2 milk proteins, it makes the most tasty, rich, and easily digestible dairy out there. Each of our seasoned ewes produce over ½ gallon (4+lbs) per milking, while the newly freshened ewes produce between 1 qrt - ½ gallon per milking. They have a long lactation cycle throughout the summer and into the fall.
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We butcher all our sheep on the farm and process the carcass, fat-tail, and hides on site. We prefer to butcher hoggets (1-2 year old) since we think the meat is best at this age. We render the fat-tail into fat which makes the most delicious, low-temp oil for cooking. We hope to offer on-the-farm butchering in the future for people who want to purchase butcher animals and process them on the farm.
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We shear our Awassi sheep twice a year aiming for long staple lengths of 4-6 inches. We send all of it to our favorite wool mill, Willow Creek Fiber Mill, and they process it into roving, batting, and yarn. We also hand spin quite a bit of it. It is a beautiful wool, rustic, soft, and yet strong. Graded as a rug wool, we use it for weaving saddle blankets, rugs, and more.
What Are Awassi Sheep?
While there is not much information available about Awassi Sheep here in the USA, here is some information we have found useful. The weblinks to the complete documents are linked by clicking on the text.
Fat-tailed sheep on a stone bowl from the Uruk III period of Ur (c. 3000 BC). (Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Awassi Sheep for Sale
Every summer we offer lambs for sale and sometimes proven rams and ewes.
We announce the sale on our Facebook page HawkMoth Farm. Follow us on Facebook or check back on this website for details on Awassi sheep we have for sale.
