Milking Sheep in the Appalachian Hills of Tennessee/North Carolina/Virginia/West Virginia areas?

I’m wanting to know if there are any dairy sheep breeds/easy care in those areas. Goats seem too much for a newbie with nil experience in this beautiful life of permaculture homesteading. My neighbor will have dairy goats kidding soon, so, I’ll hopefully have two sources for milk, other than cattle dairy as I’m lactose intolerant to that.
For now, I’m gathering information on Dairy sheep.

MaryAnne, I'm a goat person, so I can't answer your question about availability of dairy sheep in the Appalachians. It's something I've thought about in the past, however, and have researched a bit myself. My conclusion is that milking sheep would be more work intensive than dairy goats. They don't seem to be as easy to milk and don't have the quantity, although their milk is higher in protein and so excellent for making cheese. Plus there's the additional chore of shearing, which would be a true plus for a handspinner.

I don't know what you decided or how much luck you had, but I'd be interested in hearing how your search went and what you ended up with.

Sheep are much harder than goats to milk. Goats are harder than cows. If sheep get scared, they will run themselves to death. Goats will fight back somewhat more against predators. Cows will defend themselves better. Sheep don't tend to challenge fences so much but require better fences to keep out dogs/coyotes. Goats are curious and will climb or push through anything they can. So good fences are required. A well-behaved cow leaves fences alone. A badly behaved cow becomes hamburger. ~~If I had many years of milking to do over, I would have chosen cows in the first place. I don't see any reason to ever milk sheep, except maybe if you have a very specialty market where you can sell their milk for much more.

Hi MaryAnne,
I too must confess that I do not have any experience with sheep in that area. I can also agree when you talk about not wanting goats. That is one animal I have no desire to deal with.

To answer the reason behind your question, I just wanted to share a thing I noticed in myself. When I would drink a couple large glasses of regular-off-the-shelf-grocery-store milk, I would get bloated and feel blah, and sometimes get diarrhea later. Classic dairy intolerance. When I drank a couple large glasses of raw (unpasteurized) organic milk, I had no issues whatsoever.

There are two general thoughts on why this might be. One, I can't really discuss here because it gets into something that should be only talked about in the Cider Press, but lets just say one theory is that the cow is raised differently with a different diet. The other theory, is that our bodies don't have enough of the right enzymes to break down the milk. Raw milk has the enzymes needed for a calf (or a person) to break it down, but when the milk is pasteurized, these enzymes are destroyed. So with pasteurized milk, you end up drinking something that is hard to digest without enzymes... without the enzymes. For myself, drinking the raw milk that still has those enzymes, allows me to enjoy milk without any symptoms.

I guess all that is to say that if you react the same way as I do, that maybe cow milk is an option. I haven't done much keeping of any dairy animal, and am just going off what people say. But... from what people say, cows can be easier to milk and easier to keep than sheep or goats.

There are breeds of sheep that are dairy sheep.

I remembered these threads that I thought you or other folks might find interesting:

https://permies.com/t/117345/Dairy-Sheep-kicking-ideas

https://permies.com/t/23584/milking-sheep