Millennium Farms

Our Flock History__________

Thank you for visiting our website, and would love to have you come visit the farm anytime! Millennium Farms is located in Oxford, Indiana (20 miles Northwest of Lafayette). Millennium Farms was established on January 1, 2000 when Chris & Dawn Schakel were married and merged their two flocks together.

Dawn’s family, Fox Club Lambs, raised and showed sheep since 1978. Originally the flock consisted of Registered Suffolk sheep until the 1980’s when Dawn started 4-H. At that time, they added Club Lambs as a second breed, for Dawn to show at the county fair. During her 4-H years, Dawn won Grand or Reserve Champion Market Lamb 8 years in 4-H, and throughout this time began purchasing and raising Club Lamb ewes to put her own flock together. This brood ewe flock, eventually became part of Millennium Farms in 2000.

Chris’s family, Schakel Suffolks, has produced show quality breeding stock since 1974, raising Registered Suffolk sheep. Chris has raised and shown sheep at county, state, and national levels exhibiting at State Fairs, National Junior Suffolk Shows, and the NAILE. Since 1994 Chris has fit & shown the Honnold Dorset flock owned by Bob & Malia Honnold, Carthage, Indiana. In 1998 he became Flock Consultant and continued to exhibit the Honnold Dorset Flock at many of the major shows & sales in the U.S.

In 2000, Honnold’s offered Chris & Dawn the opportunity to purchase the Honnold Dorset flock, which consisted of 50 Registered Dorset brood ewes & 2 Stud Rams. The original flock traces back to the Green Mountain bloodlines, and the Honnold’s selected 20-25 high performance ewes out of each of the three herd rams each year using their own genetic pool. They continually improved the herd by selecting rams from successful breeders such as Penn State, Saylor’s Twin Oaks, Sunrise Acres, & Dew Drop Farms. While acting as Flock Consultant, Chris made the decision to add a “changer ram” to the flock, and purchased ‘Shug’ DDF 924 the Grand Champion Ram at the 2000 Midwest Stud Ram Sale. The purchase of this Dew Drop ram took the Millennium Farms flock to a level we only dreamed of…we became breeders of the National Champion Ram at the 2002 National Dorset Show & Sale, just 2 years after Chris made the ultimate decision to purchase this stud ram. We were also given the tremendous opportunity to purchase the 2001 National Champion Ram, ‘Spot Free’ Wade Bros. 1316 from Bel-Mar Farms in 2002. We have been extremely successful at the shows & sales and have produced several Champions at County, State, & National shows & sales since adding the Dorset Flock to Millennium Farms.

The Club Lamb Flock has been extremely successful and continually developing since we established Millennium Farms in 2000. The original ewe base included top bloodlines from breeders such as Achor, Hancock, Wattonville, & Feuerbach. In the Spring of 2004, we were extremely privileged to been given the opportunity to purchase 12 proven Brood Ewes, and one ‘Hummer’ ewe lamb from Feuerbach Club Lambs in Iowa. The females we purchased are primarily Blackjack & Oakley daughters. We also bought what has been said to be one of his top ram lambs that year, ‘Stroker’ Feuerbach 4081, which is a son of ‘Hummer’. We are extremely excited to add some powerful genetics to our Club Lamb flock, and would like to thank Shannon & Jennifer Feuerbach for allowing us to purchase this incredible flock off the farm.

We currently maintain 100 head of ewes, consisting of Registered Dorset as well as Suffolk/Crossbred Club Lamb ewes. We always place an emphasis on 4 important traits when producing sheep for both breeds…1) style 2) frame 3) muscling 4) structural soundness. Our goal is to produce a complete sheep that will perform in the show ring, but more importantly produce in the lambing barn for our flock and breeders who purchase seedstock from us. DNA testing is available on all seedstock you purchase from Millennium Farms.