LAURIE BALL-GISCH
Spring 2012 would see our 551st lamb born at The Lavender Fleece and it would be our 13th lambing season. It was also our first season of lambing the newest additions to our farm—our Leicester Longwools. We always eagerly await the year’s first lambs. Still, each lambing season always teaches me something new. In other words: “It’s always something….”
T. E. MARSHALL, BRUCE LANE, AND GRANT PHILLIPS
University of Missouri Extension and Truman State University recently collaborated on a lamb demonstration project to determine the effects of double-shearing and time of feeding on growth of lambs. Nighttime-fed lambs show significant gains over daytime-fed.
In this study 32 feeder lambs were assigned by sex and weight to either daytime (A.M.) or nighttime (P.M.) feeding groups.
JOHN KIRCHHOFF
Nearly every livestock producer at one time or another has experienced drought. When it comes to natural calamities, a drought is more forgiving since it doesn’t happen overnight like a flood or tornado. This gives you the ability to plan ahead and hopefully head off problems before they happen. Fall rains may break a drought in the weatherman’s eyes, but those rains won’t put hay in your barn for winter feeding.
PEGGY COFFEEN
From meat to wool to milk, sheep are versatile little creatures with personalities and dispositions that draw people to own them for a backyard hobby or for profit. UW-Extension Sheep Specialist Dr. Dave Thomas discussed the basic concepts of sheep with attendees at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival held earlier this month.
The American Lamb Board coordinated a meeting on Sept. 6 in Denver with a committee representing lamb packers, processors, feeders, producers and affiliated industry organizations including the American Sheep Industry Association and the National Lamb Feeders Association to discuss the current market challenges in the lamb industry. The committee was formed as a result of a request from the California Wool Growers Association to facilitate an open, solutions-based discussion about the issues throughout the entire chain of production that must be addressed to prevent them from occurring again.
Researchers from the Research Group on Ruminants led by Elena Albanell, lecturer in Animal and Food Science at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, have successfully achieved to prevent sheep and goats from chewing on the young leaves of olive trees and grapevines when grazing. By using the natural mechanism of conditioned taste aversion, researchers redirected the food preferences of ruminants, making them more willing to eliminate undesirable plants from these types of pastures, and thereby reducing the use of pesticides and farming equipment.
COLLEEN BRUNNER
With the echoes of the Labor Day celebration at the rodeo grounds fading, another part of the complex, the Ram Show and Sale building will become a bit noisier with the bleat of sheep and goats.
The 67th Annual Show and Sale will begin at 9 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 20 and looks to be a busy couple of days.
PEGGY COFFEEN
Coming off of a dry summer, many Wisconsin pastures are short on forage. With the rising price tag on hay, sheep producers may be thinking ahead for how they can better manage their grasses in the future. At last weekend’s Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival in Jefferson, Kirsten Jurcek and Mike Gehl from Town & Country Resource Conservation & Development, Inc. shared the basics of managed intensive grazing (MIG).
CLELL V. BAGLEY
Diseases which reduce the reproduction rate are common in Utah flocks. The major problem seen in the ewes is abortion. With rams, the major disease affecting reproduction is ram epididymitis. It appears that usually 1.5 to 2.0% of the ewes in a flock abort. It is difficult to reduce the abortion rate below this level with the tools presently available. However, if the rate increases much above this, the producer should be aware that his flock is suffering an increased incidence and initiate efforts to find the cause.
DAVID L. GREENE
Since renderers no longer pick up and dispose of sheep, producers have few options in the disposal of sheep and sheep products. Because of the concerns over groundwater pollution, burying sheep is not practical or recommended in most cases. Incineration is the best alternative, but is very costly, therefore not very practical for small and mid-size sheep producers.
sheepngoats 