Bill and Betsy MacCauley never dreamed of owning a 1,000-head sheep farm.

“This is a hobby on steroids. It’s out of control,” Bill says with a laugh. But their hobby has turned into quite the business. MacCauley Suffolks in Atglen, Pa., is the largest Suffolk sheep breeding flock in North America.

“We register more than anybody else in the U.S.” at about 300 a year, Bill says, adding the farm started from a small 4-H project. “My parents had them, and it’s how Betsy and I met,” he says. “She [Betsy] came with a dowry of six or eight ewes. And that’s how it got started. It just snowballed, and our kids showed them.”

Go small or get bigger

The couple’s two sons, Chris and Kyle, raised and showed sheep with their parents.

In 2012, Chris, the older of the two boys, started attending college. It was at that time, Bill says, that he and his wife needed to decide: Get smaller or hire someone to manage the farm. They ran into an old friend of the family, Evan Snyder, who was between jobs. Evan was a nationally known sheep judge and had experience managing flocks.

“I said to him, 'Before you go anywhere, come here,'” Bill recalls. Soon after, Evan was hired as the farm’s manager.

The farm is mainly a seedstock operation for other farms, providing show sheep for 4-H, FFA and adult show competitors. But with Evan’s help, they have branched out to selling meat and even raising lambs for research purposes.

Lambs for babies

For the past five years, the farm has worked with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) on a long-term study to develop an artificial womb for severely premature babies. The idea being that if a mother can’t carry a baby to full term, an artificial womb could do it.

The farm sends the hospital pregnant female ewes, and researchers harvest the embryos and raise them to full term in an artificial womb. The typical gestation period for pregnant ewes is about five months, and lambs weigh between 12 and 15 pounds at birth.

Betsy says there is a big reason sheep are desirable for this type of research.

“They have to take so many lambs to full term before they can introduce it to the next species they are working with,” she says. “And the reason they use sheep … is because it’s the fetus that induces labor, like it is in humans.”

EWES FOR RESEARCH: For the past five years, the farm has worked with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia on a long-term study to develop an artificial womb for severely premature babies. The farm sends the hospital pregnant female ewes, and researchers harvest the embryos and raise them to full term in an artificial womb.

Bill says the study will last between 10 and 15 years. “They have to perfect the practice in sheep and pigs before moving on to experiments in monkeys. Then they will do trials in human beings,” he says.

The couple like the success of their partnership with CHOP. So much so they recently joined the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science to grow that part of the business. One of their barns was built specifically to house ewes for research.

“There’s a demand for it, but no one wants to do it. It’s hard work; it’s expensive,” Bill says. “Betsy and I and the children, we like working with CHOP and like the fact that we’re doing something for humanity.”

For meat

The growing popularity of lamb meat is also something the farm has embraced, although the couple say it is still a relatively small part of the business.

About 15 lambs per month, between 6 and 8 months old, go for meat, sold through farmers markets and direct to restaurants. Slaughtering is done at three local USDA-certified butchering facilities.

“And the reason that’s developed is, we have roughly 600 lambs a year,” Bill says. “About half of them are rams. We can only market them as an intact male. So, you've got the other 200 that we’ve got to move, and that’s been a nice way to do that.”

“We’ve sat at some restaurants and seen either lamb on the menu, or lamb not on the menu, and said, “Hey, let’s talk to the chef and see if we can get in here, and it’s worked,’” Evan says. “They want local, fresh stuff, and it’s really nicely that way.”

Suffolks, Bill says, are a preferred meat breed.

“The Suffolk is a meat breed, and it’s preferred because it grows so fast and the meat will be more tender,” he explains. “When you have one of our lamb chops, it’s not a pork chop, but it’s the closest thing.”

And for show

Seedstock sales is the farm’s biggest market. Bill says they supply lamb seedstock to farms from Maine to Florida, and as far as west as New Mexico.

“There’s places that need them, but there are very few places that raise them," he said.

Many of these animals go for showing, and the farm has garnered a reputation for its high-quality lambs. Championship banners adorn the main breeding and lambing barn, including national champion banners for slick shorn sheep.

KEEPING RAMS TOGETHER: Although most farms who raise sheep keep very few rams, MacCauley Suffolks keeps dozens of rams for breeding and meat. Betsy MacCauley says that keeping a large group together is actually better as the rams develop a pecking order. “You have less fighting with a big group than you do if you have just two individual animals, because then they’re always fighting because somebody wants to be alpha.”

Slick shorn sheep are sheep that have no wool. Bill explains that for years, children showing sheep would sheer and fit their animals at the fair. Not anymore. Many competitors, especially 4-H competitors, don’t have ag backgrounds, so showing an animal that doesn’t need that type of attention has become ideal.

“It’s easier for them, and it’s faster. So, we’ve done that style because we found the kids really want to do it that way,” he says.

Keeping the ‘hobby’ going

Bill has a simple answer for why he raises sheep. “I grew up with them,” he says.

So, what’s next? Keeping it going. For Bill, that means strengthening the breed itself by improving genetics.

“Suffolk used to be the most popular sheep breed in the U.S., but it has fallen off in favor of more popular hair sheep,” he says. “We are looking at exporting and importing to and from the U.K. to improve the genetic pool. The genetic pool in the U.S. for Suffolks is shrinking, and we want to help improve that.

“Everybody has a hobby. Some show horses, show dogs or cows. We just do sheep, and we enjoy it.”

NO HOBBY: Bill MacCauley describes his farm in a funny way: “This is a hobby on steroids. It’s out of control.” But the farm has become a big business, venturing into showing, meat and even research.