Natural Grass-Fed Lamb
Our Corriedale sheep produce delicious and natural lamb. Lamb from the grocery store is a unknown quantity, except for the country it came from - which might be 8,000 miles away! If you choose Marble Peaks lamb, you will know exactly where it was raised, how it was cared for, what it was fed, and where it was processed.
Our California climate allows us to raise grass-fed lamb. Our pasture begins greening up in February, at the same time our lambs are incoporating grass into their diet. Their forage is a diverse mix of grasses, legumes, and forbs, adapted over the last fifty years to our local microclimate. We find it endows the meat with an excellent flavor. Our lambs are reach market weights between August and September, while the lambs are still fully fed on pasture. During winter months, our ewes are supplemented with alfalfa hay grown on a neighboring ranch. We never give our sheep any artificial growth enhancers, hormones, or prophylactic antibiotics.
The health benefits of grass-fed meat are now well-established. Grass-fed lamb is leaner, so it is lower in both cholesterol and calories than grain-fed lamb. Grass-fed meat is higher in healthy fats, omega-3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid, and antioxidant Vitamin E. You can visit the Eat Wild website for information including citations from scientific literature on the benefits of eating grass-fed meats. Marble Peaks Ranch adheres to all the standards of the American Grassfed Association (we just cannot afford their fees for certification!).
Our sheep are outside and free to roam every day that weather permits. Generally, that is about 350 days a year, with only the heaviest snowfalls requiring us to keep the sheep inside the barn when the lambs are very young and vulnerable. The paddocks have oak and pine trees which provide cool shade in summer. Our paddocks are twenty to forty acres in size so our sheep have plenty of terrain to wander.