Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full. Wrong. Enter the hair sheep, which came to Maine in the form of three young sheep, triplets, imported from St. Croix, Virgin Islands, to a farm in Abbot Village in 1957. From these three sheep, the owner of the farm, Michael Piel, an amateur geneticist who liked raising livestock and who died in 1976, developed a cross-breeding program that eventually formed a flock of ewes he called Katahdin Hair Sheep. His goal was to produce a meat-producing sheep that did not require shearing. The hair sheep breed does not produce wool; it grows a thick winter coat that it sheds in the warmer months.

There were many reasons behind that idea, including the fact that sheep that shed instead of having to be sheared require less management. Also, the late 1950s and early 1960s was when wool as a clothing fabric was beginning to go out of favor with consumers who were more interested in garments made of wash-and-wear and synthetic fabrics. Even knitters in the 1960s abandoned wool for acrylic yarns. Thus set in those long years when trying to find a skein of wool yarn or a yard of wool fabric was like mining for gold in a slate quarry.

Tom Hodgman of Winterport is among those in Maine who raise Katahdin Hair Sheep, focusing on the production of meat rather than wool. When the year began, he had a flock of 18 sheep, which included 10 ewes; another 18 lambs were born this spring, 10 of which were ewes.

Hodgman has been a sheep farmer for the last four years. In “real life,” Hodgman is a state wildlife biologist who monitors rare birds in Maine.

“I decided to raise Katahdin sheep,” Hodgman said, “because they are low-maintenance, parasite-resistant and for their ability to grow meat [fed] on grass. We have some ewes that produce lambs that weigh 100 pounds at 4 months and that’s all done on the mother’s milk.” He also wanted to let his daughter experience the 4-H Club, an organization Hodgman participated in when he was growing up on a cattle farm in New Hampshire.

Because Hodgman and his wife, Natalie, have backgrounds in research, he said their farm participated several years ago in the Northeast Katahdin Hair Sheep Project, a study of parasite resistance in the breed, conducted jointly by the University of Maine and Bowdoin College.

Another reason hair sheep are attractive to farmers is a shift in the sheep industry to animals that require minimum management.

In addition, government wool subsidies have been phased out, shearers are not always easy to find, and lamb is increasingly in demand in ethnic markets.

“There are a lot of Katahdin Hair Sheep in Maine,” Hodgman said. “I’ve even seen them advertised for sale in Uncle Henry’s.” He said hair sheep are very popular among farmers in the Midwest and Mexico.

Hair sheep produce and nurture lambs easily, often twins, giving a higher return on investment than a sheep that produces wool. “The money in sheep is in the number of lambs produced,” Hodgman said. He sells his meat lambs locally to friends, neighbors and co-workers.

Also, raising hair sheep is attractive because skilled sheep shearers are not easy to find. Wallace Sinclair of Brownville is the only certified sheep shearer in Maine listed at the American Sheep Industry Association Web site.

Other farms in Maine that raise Katahdin Hair Sheep are located in Penobscot, Appleton, Washington, Union, Farmington Falls, Brunswick and South Paris.

“The hair sheep is the only breed for which registrations are increasing, an indication, I believe, of the growing popularity of the breed,” Hodgman said.

Today, according to information at the Katahdin Hair Sheep International Web site, hair sheep make up 10 percent of the world’s sheep population of about 100 million animals.

“There are dozens of hair sheep breeds in Africa,” Hodgman said.

In 2007, the United States had a population of 6.2 million sheep, down from 8 million in 1997, but up slightly from 6.1 million in 2006.

Sheep are raised in all 50 of the United States with the highest sheep producing states located west of the Mississippi, according to the American Sheep Industry Association Web site.

In 2007, sheep in the New England states, including Maine, numbered 44,000. The total number of sheep farms in New England is 2,050, with 69,090 in the United States.

In the past, according to the American Sheep Industry Association, U.S. textile mills used nearly all of the wool produced in this country. But over the last five years, mills have either closed or moved their facilities to other countries. For that reason, U.S. sheep farmers must find export markets for the wool their sheep produce.

Despite the popularity of the Katahdin Hair Sheep in Maine, the majority of sheep farms in the United States still produce animals for wool, as well as for meat and milk. This is good news for those of us who like to knit and sew with wool.

Given the resurgence in recent years of interest in knitting with natural fibers, it’s difficult to envision a world without wool. At least three bags full.