Josh Miller, of Schoharie, New York, wasn’t one of those town kids who dreamed about raising farm animals only to leave it all behind with cast-off ball mitts and skateboards. Supportive parents, 4-H advisors, neighbors and renowned Suffolk breeders were quick to recognize his unique focus and drive. Each helped fan the fire in his belly from the time he was a rowdy 6-year-old showing his first borrowed ewe.
Thirty-one years after Miller’s introduction to the Suffolk breed, he and his “rock star” ewe won the Supreme Champion Ewe Over All Breeds at the 2021 Big E – one of America’s premier livestock expositions and the world’s only multi-state fair. His ewe bested all the ewes in all the breeds, not just her own.
“Our rams and ewes have won several national titles, but this was my first all-breeds win,” Miller says.
Consider the bigger picture
While Miller’s robust competitive spirit spurs him to take on all comers in the show ring, his breeder’s vision is clear and simple: to raise Suffolk seedstock sheep with such useability and functionality that they are an asset to anyone’s barn — the 8-year-old kid just starting out, to the millionaire with thousands of sheep in his care. Most Mil-Sid Farm sheep go to buyers in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, New York and Pennsylvania, but some have traveled as far as Washington state and the growth markets of New Jersey and New England.
Currently, there is a national seismic split among the Suffolk folk, with breeders hugging the extremes of what the sheep’s type standard should look like, and how closely it aligns with or deviates from the time-honored “true” purebred Suffolk. This is an early-maturing, black-faced breed developed in England more than 200 years ago, with an excellent meat-type carcass and an elegant, energetic carriage.
Those who see the classic Suffolk as physically too big for youngsters to handle have crossed in less statuesque genetics, leaving the downsized lambs with features such as wool on the head and legs – normally considered type faults.
“These lambs are essentially crossbred but are still papered as Suffolks,” Miller says. “I believe they should be shown instead as market lambs; it has created confusion in the marketplace.” Further, it has splintered the breed association into two factions: The United Suffolk Sheep Association and The North American Suffolk Sheep Society.
Interestingly, Miller is the only breeder in the U.S. currently holding membership in both groups. He is on a mission to find and define a middle ground where the breed can once again unite and move forward. “Extremes don’t work,” he asserts.
The rewards of mutual support
Miller deftly rattles off the names of those who acknowledged his early passion and believed in him. From the woman who loaned him his first lamb (Sherry Roy) to his parents, who moved their family from town to a farm so Miller and his two siblings could expand their barnyard menagerie; to Jim Piefer, an Illinois Suffolk breeder who sold the teenager his first stud ram so he could begin a breeding program and take the first steps to regional and national competition; to Piefer’s shepherd, Kurt Burkie, who taught Miller more about the miracle of genetics; to Kyle Thayer, a Massachusetts Southdown and Hampshire breeder who explained the importance of presentation as well as the artistry of fitting and showing.
“They ‘got’ me,” Miller says. “And they let me take some lumps; you learn from that, too.” Keeping all these mentors and supporters in mind, Miller is now paying it forward with eager youngsters in the industry, including his own two young sons. Cole (6) and Gabriel (3).
Mil-Sid Farm is an attractive 10-acre hilly property that he and his wife Kaitlyn built from the ground up in 2015. They fenced hay fields into rotational pastures, each with a run-in shed, put up a barn with horse stalls and another three-sided insulated barn for lambing ewes. This supports a flock ranging between 25 and 45 head. Miller is clear there are no trade secrets to raising healthy, thriving livestock. He employs basic animal husbandry principles that Miller says his grandparents would call “common sense.”
First, even with the best genetics, success starts in the feed bucket. Miller feeds a simple dry 18% protein pellet complete with a mineral pack and quality hay. He also hand-carries fresh water in 5-gallon buckets to the groups twice a day or three times a day in winter.
He practices daily health care for the flock’s feet, remembering that this is the sheep’s foundation. The pasture design allows Miller to keep his flock outdoors as much as possible, aerating the grass with their little hooves and fertilizing it with their manure. He moves groups every two weeks, mows down what the sheep have left behind, then runs his wife’s horses behind the sheep in the rotation.
“It’s a thing, I read about it,” he says, “The horses take in the parasite eggs that affect sheep and are unharmed by them. Same thing for the sheep ingesting the eggs that affect horses. I barely ever have to worm the sheep. In fact, I haven’t wormed the breeding ewes in 7 to 8 years.”
One last tenet Miller emphasizes is to avoid overcrowding – a stressor to animals’ health and to the bottom line. “If you try to do too much with not enough land, you must supplement.”
Twinsies — it’s hard to miss
Even the untrained eye can see that Miller’s ewes look like carbon copies of one another. There’s some clever science behind that, called “compound breeding.” Here’s how it works: Carefully select a “base” ram and breed him to a set of ewes. Next, breed all his daughters back to him – call these “double-bred” daughters. Then, find a sire or grand sire of the base ram and breed him to these double-bred daughters, producing a “base” set of ewes.
“Now you’ve got a direction,” Miller says. “These ewes have all the same positive qualities, and if there’s a fault, they all have it.” To address this, choose an outcross ram with traits that will fix the problem. One more step to incredible consistency: breed the resultant daughters from that breeding back to the base ram.
Miller manages to fit his sheep enterprise into a life already bustling with a young family and a career at Jack Miller’s Tractor, the family’s New Holland dealership in Schoharie. As vice president, he does all the bookkeeping and shares salesman duty with his dad, Jack. Miller brags that his brother, Kyle, the lead service tech, is the “best square baler mechanic to ever walk the earth.” Together they and their staff have built a new dealership and increased gross sales fourfold since 2007.
An ag business degree from Delaware Valley University plus an internship at the New Holland corporate headquarters prepared Miller for his current role, but he did his time on the wash rack cleaning up manure spreaders, making equipment and parts deliveries and other “character building” tasks at the dealership on his way up.
Miller says his New Holland Boomer™ 40 compact tractor is super useful for tackling all essential duties at Mil-Sid Farm. “It’s big enough to take care of all 4,000 feet of driveway, run the manure spreader and clean out the sheds, but compact enough to get into the small spaces, like between the beams in the lambing barn.”
On the radar
A pivotal year in Miller’s journey came in 2010 when he started winning big – and often – with a ewe he called “The Blue Collar Bombshell.” From state fairs to the Big E, and then the Nationals, she turned people’s heads and commanded a pretty penny when sold. Two years later Miller’s base ram, “Tripbute,” collected a fistful of national titles, including Overall Champion Suffolk Ram.
“That put us on the map,” Miller says, “and turned our enterprise, which costs $30,000 in overhead per year, into a profitable one.” He sold half interest in the ram for $10,000 and started winning consistently with each new crop of Trip-Bute’s offspring. In fact, Mil-Sid Farm won High Selling Ewe in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2023 with his daughters at the Ohio Showcase Sales.
Miller attends fewer shows than he once did, but still maintains the desire to “ring the bell” or win, with his prized flock wherever he participates. And he continues to dream big. In his 10-year plan, he’d like to buy a 100-acre farm so he can expand the flock and give their boys room to raise animals of their own, learn to hunt and enjoy the childhood Miller has always appreciated. He’d also like to see the dealership continue to increase sales.
But today, he’s content. “We had such a variety of animals when I was a kid, and the sheep just stuck; I like looking at them. As each new set of lambs come along, I like to watch them grow.”
Mil-Sid Farm’s website showcases their nationally recognized breeding flock of Suffolk sheep.