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A Brief History of the Katahdin Breed
Katahdin are a breed a hair sheep developed in the United States.
They originated at the Piel Farm in north central Maine where Michael Piel
was an innovator and "amateur geneticist".
He began making inquiries about hair sheep after seeing pictures
in a National Geographic of West African hair sheep which he would later
import for crossbreeding. He mixed Cheviots, Suffolks (with the help of
LSU), and many others to try and produce the lamb he was looking for.
In the early 1970s, Piel felt he had come close to his goal of
a "meat sheep that did not require shearing." He called them Katahdin sheep
after Mt. Katahdin, the highest peak in Maine.
In October 1975, Piel imported a handful of Wiltshire Horn sheep
from Wales via Canada. The first crosses were born in 1976. The crossing
continued even after his death in December of 1976 with Barbara Piel.
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