ATHENS, Mich. – Sheep farmer Kirby Hostetler decided to raise sheep over 20 years ago and now, at age 70, he has nothing to regret about the decision.

Kirby has been a farmer his whole life, but up until the 1990s he raised hogs and cattle, not sheep, on his 150 acre farmstead in Athens, which lies about 17 miles south of Battle Creek. Kirby switched from hogs to sheep after it became apparent he could no longer raise hogs and have a viable operation without getting much bigger. Scaling up his hog operation would have required bringing in a corporation. Instead of doing that, he looked into raising sheep; the more he learned about it the more promising it seemed. In looking back at the decision, Kirby said it was the right thing to do.

“Sheep have been a profitable enterprise for us. Lamb prices have been steady and strong,” Kirby said. “The ethnic population has definitely been a factor in the steady demand for lamb, since the ethnic groups prefer lamb over beef.”

He also began selling Silver Stream Shelters, a kind of hoop barn, to supplement his income. He uses them himself and said although the barns allow plenty of air to circulate, they also provide enough shelter for his herd. In 2006, Kirby’s wife, Alice, had started raising a small herd of goats, but ended up abandoning the enterprise. According to Alice, goats are more like pets than sheep are and enjoy being petted. Sometimes they do inconvenient things like stand on top of people’s cars.

“The goats were more or less my wife’s enterprise, and she’s had some health issues and they’re a little harder to manage,” Kirby stated. “Even though the price for goat is even better than sheep. But my heart is with the sheep.”

In an earlier interview, in 2006, Kirby said he was getting about $125 for each lamb he raised. In an interview last week, he said he was getting $200. “It baffles me why young people who want to get into farming don’t think more about sheep,” he said. “It just baffles me. There aren’t a lot of inputs for this kind of operation. I think maybe over the years sheep have had a bad reputation.”

The biggest crisis of the farm operation occurred many years ago, when one or more coyotes killed 12 of their sheep in one incident. Nothing like that has happened since then and the main challenge raising sheep over the years has been parasites. Kirby has an aggressive regimen of de-worming the sheep.

Kirby stated that last year he had 200 percent lamb production. Normally ewes give birth to two lambs at a time, but since some usually die production is often more like 185 percent. In 2006, Kirby had 400 ewes and was looking to increase the size of his herd to 600. Since that time, health issues and age have caught up with the lifelong farmer and he’s cut down the size of his herd to 175 ewes. Alice said she’s been trying to get Kirby away from the farm. The couple has recently moved to a rental home on their property, since it’s smaller and easier to keep up, Alice said. It’s also a little bit farther from the center of their farm operation.

At one point, Kirby was holding out hope that at least one of his sons would take up farming and one day take over the farm operation, but that hasn’t happened. Both of them have good jobs, he stated, and have gone down their own paths in life. Kirby said he’s OK with that and, most of all, he has no big regrets of his own.