According to the dhcpd man page, dhcpd is capable of doing bootp.

so is there a way in the kernal at the config to tell the kernel 
to use bootp instead of DHCP?

I have for my netboot kernel:
config netbsd root on ?    type nfs
                      ^
                    bootp?

I've never dug into the syntax of config so if this is wrong...?
jam