Our sheep enterprise began in 1957 when Elvin Witt purchased ten Hampshire ewes. The objective from the beginning was to produce structurally sound high yielding show lambs. The farm, located in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania, was named Champion Acres and quickly grew to 150 registered Hampshire ewes. With the help of the renowned breeder at the time, Ed Hess of Green Meadows Farm, rams from Hogg and Hubbard and Green Meadows were used to propel our genetics forward. Champion Acres first time showing was in 1963 at the Keystone International where we proudly came away with a first place trio of market lambs. As the flock matured throughout the 1970s and 1980s our sheep were successfully shown as a combination of frame and wether type sheep, but as more demand for our club lambs grew, the focus moved away from the registered sheep and we thoughtfully infused numerous show lamb sires from Mel Marx utilizing the Commotion/Crazy Horse and Mayer Hamp combination. This provided us with a unique genetic ewe base that has worked magnificently well on rams from Harrell, Stitzlein, Kerr, and Ellerbrock. More recently we have focused our program on genetic lines from breeders such as Allen/Newcomb, Neff, and Rule extensively with our AI and ET program utilizing several key foundation donors . Over half a century later and with the third generation involved in breeding and showing, the focus remains the same: structurally sound, high yielding, quality show stock. |
