Vermont farm welcomes more rare Dutch Spotted Sheep
By Alexis Crandall
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GLOVER, Vt. (WPTZ) — A Northeast Kingdom farm just welcomed its newest sets of rare Dutch spotted lambs born on the farm.
“I had the first and I have the largest batch of Dutch Spotted Sheep in North America,” said MKVT farm owner Mark Rodgers.
Rodgers first saw the Spotties in 2023 and decided they were too cute to pass up.
“In 2023, we got eight embryos from the United Kingdom and implanted them,” Rodgers said. “We ended up with five here on the property.”
From there, Rodgers befriended a breeder in the Netherlands.
“He actually visited the farm, and then we made arrangements with him last year to mate,” said Rodgers. “We would take the embryos and send them over here. This batch of embryos is the first Dutch Spotted Sheep straight from Holland.”
While the lambs are adorable, they’re also suited for Vermont, despite hailing from the Netherlands.
“I said, ‘Oh cute sheep,’ but then the more I learned about them, the more I became intrigued with them,” Rodgers told NBC5. “They’ve got an exceptional gain. Their disposition is extremely good, and they’ve got a lot of health attributes that fit the environment we have here in northern Vermont.”
The sheep are parasite-resistant, with no horns and no wool on their tails.
Rodgers said they are making sure the lambs come from different parents.
“They are not related to one another. They’ve got different fathers, different mothers,” said Rodgers. “We did that on purpose when we made the embryos because for me to create a property breeding flock, I have to have unrelated sheep.”
To Rodgers, these sheep could represent the future of farming in the Green Mountain state.
“I think the sheep industry, the small ruminant industry in Vermont, is growing,” said Rodgers. “I think for us to maintain some of our agricultural land that is being either underutilized or not utilized at all, I think sheep and goats are going to be an important part of that future.”
Rodgers told NBC5 they aren’t sure how many lambs they’re going to see this year, but they are expecting more births any day now.
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