03/24/2026
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Culham & Stevens
Webberville, Michigan
Established in 1984 and managed by Alan Culham, the Culham & Stevens Suffolk flock increased its average post-weaning (120-day) weights by nearly 25 pounds per lamb in 39 years. How did he do it? By leveraging the National Sheep Improvement Program (NSIP) in flock management. Culham turned to NSIP as a tool to make Suffolks genetically better. By relying on NSIP data, the flock has produced noticeably more uniform lamb crops, eliminated baby lamb pneumonia, and by intentionally selecting for performance, the traits that enhance a lamb’s ability to grow thrive, while weeding out genetically poor doing sheep.
Culham relies on the USSA’s Digital Suffolk program to make record keeping easier. “Importing my lamb crop from NSIP into Digital Suffolk means I only have to enter records in once,” he says.
“The ease of registering and transferring sheep in real time in Digital Suffolk is a great feature!” Culham says. “Plus, the mating inbreeding coefficient calculator allows me to control the level of inbreeding in our flock.”
NSIP allows him to evaluate the flock’s true genetic performance, both from where the flock began and is today. “By using NSIP, it helps us plan what direction we want to proceed and how to get there,” he says.
Culham applauds Suffolk breeders who stayed the course, persevered through the challenges of the “Spider Lamb Syndrome” and Scrapie challenges of the 1970s-80s and made necessary changes and improvements, rather than jumping ship when the going got tough. “The best Suffolks in the history of the breed exist today thanks to the fastest growing, heaviest muscled, highest cutability Suffolk genetics.”
And that’s why after raising Suffolks for 65 years, Culham’s excited for the future of today’s “more user friendly” Suffolks.
To learn more about how you can utilize Suffolks in your program, visit suffolks.org.
