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["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 6:00 PM, Lynda <lurine AT softcom.net> wrote:
> There are several breeds of sheep that are either milking or multi-use.  The
> ones that youngest is buying in the spring, St. Croix, are multi-purpose.
>
> In Sicily and parts of Italy, lots of the cheese is from sheep.  The best
> mozzarella is sheep milk!

No, actually, it's from buffalo milk. I'm not sure how buffao ended up
in Italy (not bison but, I'm guessing, water buffalo). There was once
a dairy in Louisiana doing buffalo milk and mozzarella. Not sure if
they're still there.
>
> The U.S. imports, are ya sitting down?, OVER 72,000,000 pounds of sheep
> cheese a year!  Yup, 72 MILLION!  And that number is growing.  We only
> produce a half million pounds.  So, anyone with the space and the right mind
> set, could make some money!

Except that it's intense work and takes many hands to make a dairy
sheep operation work. Sheep don't do well in industrial production, so
that limits the possibilities.
>
> Now, last I checked (it's been a couple of years), cow milk was selling for
> about $13/cwt.  Goat milk for about $27/cwt and sheep milk for $55.50/cwt.

I know for a fact that the goat milk numbers are about $10 below the
cost of production and were several years ago (probably much worse
now). I can't even imagine what price would cover production of a
400/lb year ewe. Most people making sheep (or even goat) cheese are
doing it for love. The only way to even break even is to do it all
yourself from lamb to cheese. This is very hard work and not
lucrative.
>
> The best milk producers are the Awassi and Sarda but we don't have them
> here.

And likely won't ever because of scrapie. The USDA killed an entire
dairy herd because they thought it might be contaminated. Our
government isn't working with farmers on this one, but then none of
them are big Agra.
>