- Author: Dan Macon
When it comes to livestock protection tools, there are no "silver bullets"....
I want to start this blog post by saying I'm convinced that livestock guardian dogs (LGDs), if properly bred and bonded, are the most effective livestock protection tool available to me as a small-scale commercial sheep producer. I have game camera photos of coyotes, bobcats, foxes, and even mountain lions within 50 yards of our lambing paddocks that prove to me that our dogs are working. I have lost replacement ewes to coyotes in each of the last two years where we were unable to have a dog with our sheep. But like every nonlethal tool in my tool box, LGDs are not a silver bullet. They aren't perfect, and I was reminded of this today.
I've written frequently about our bonding process - about the importance of bonding a young pup with OUR livestock and our management system. Over the 17 years that we've raised sheep and used dogs, I've become better at managing this process. I select pups from working parents - pups that are born where they can hear and smell sheep before their eyes are open. I put pups with dry ewes as soon as I can (preferably at 8-10 weeks of age). I put teenage dogs with rams to cure their desire to play and roughhouse. And I put young dogs (at 18-24 months) with an older dog at lambing as part of their final exam - an older dog will often enforce respect for the lambing process and ensure that a younger dog doesn't interfere (or worse, steal or kill a lamb).
But every dog is different. Just as every border collie pup out of working parents doesn't necessarily make a sheep dog, every LGD pup doesn't make a trustworthy guardian.
I bought Dillon several years ago at an auction - he was a promising pup from a sheep outfit in northern Nevada. We bonded him as we bond all of our LGDs - and he made expected progress - for the most part. Dillon has been slow to mature behaviorally. Most dogs, at two-and-a-half years of age, are mature (mentally and physically). Dillon still acts like a pup sometimes. He's overly exuberant at feeding time. He bounds up to sheep playfully. He's a goofball.
And today, we think, he's a lamb thief.
For a variety of reasons, we have a small group of very late lambing yearling ewes this year - which is not our normal practice. Last week, we sorted off the ewes we thought were pregnant and kept them at home after we sheared the flock last weekend. Dillon, who had been with our rams, was turned out with the older pairs (and with an older dog) - we kept the pregnant ewes at home, with an older dog. Unfortunately, we missed one of the pregnant yearlings, and she remained with the main flock.
This morning, when my partner checked the main flock, he found Dillon with a newborn lamb in his mouth. Dead. The ewe was a maiden; an experienced ewe might have chased Dillon off. Unfortunately, this first-time mother did not - nor did the older dog. Now we're faced with a dilemma - we have a dog that's great with older pairs, dry ewes, or rams, but who wants to keep new lambs “safe” from their mothers.
Ultimately, I think, this comes down to selecting the right dog for the job - or maybe it's the right job for the dog. We currently have two outstanding lambing dogs - dogs who are entirely trustworthy with lambing ewes. We have a third dog, Dillon, who is effective in less complicated situations. How do we manage this going forward?
Every dog is different - just as every operation is different. Dillon is great with our rams. He's great with dry ewes or older pairs. He's not, unfortunately, a suitable replacement for our older lambing dogs. He's not a perfect dog - he's no silver bullet. The same can be said of any livestock protection too, ultimately.
- Author: Dan Macon
Like many people in the rural areas of the Sierra foothills, my family raises chickens. Our dozen or so laying hens keep us supplied with eggs year-round. And each year, we raise 20-30 Cornish-cross meat chickens, which we butcher ourselves - roast chicken and barbecued chicken are two of our favorite meals!
About 10 days ago, we picked up our first 15 meat birds of the year from a feed store here in Auburn. While we typically expect to lose one or two chicks at this stage, this morning we lost the 13th chick out of the 15 we started with - so we decided to try to learn what's going on. I'd recently read about an avian influenza outbreak in the Midwest and felt that we needed to be responsible chicken owners!
I first called the Sick Bird Hotline at the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) (866/922-2473) and left a message (they called back within an hour). Then I contacted the California Animal Health and Food Safety (CAHFS) Lab at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. From there, I was referred to CDFA's Animal Health Branch Redding District office, where I talked to Dr. Michael Poulos. He told me that backyard chicken producers could get up to two birds examined at the CAHFS lab for just $25 - and that we could overnight the specimen to the lab (as a sheep producer, I have driven animals to the lab in Davis for necropsy - it was nice to know I could put the dead chick on ice and overnight it to Davis - especially with gasoline at over $5 per gallon!)
The lab should have my sample by tomorrow morning. Overnight shipping was around $47 - less than the gas I would have burned driving to Davis and back. And I hope to have some answers by the end of the week. I don't suspect avian influenza, but I do hope to learn what's going on! Stay tuned!
In the meantime, here are some great resources for backyard poultry producers:
UCD Veterinary Medicine Backyard Poultry Website
California Animal Heath & Food Safety Lab System
A final note on the CAHFS lab - we send sheep to the lab whenever we experience an unusual death (for example, if more than two sheep die, or if we experience an unusual level of abortion or newborn lamb losses). We don't always get definitive answers, but we do get useful information. Thanks to information we've received from the lab, we've adjusted our mineral supplementation program to be sure that we are providing adequate selenium - and we always have injectible selenium on hand at lambing. We've also started paying more attention to sources of copper (including irrigation and drinking water in our environment). Having a necropsy performed is an investment in improving our management!
- Author: Dan Macon
I invite you to travel back in time with me - clear back to late October 2021! We'd measured more than 10 inches of rain in Auburn, and we could see the first green shoots of grass emerging through the dry forage. While November was slightly disappointing from a precipitation perspective, we measured more than 12 inches of rain in December - capped off by a crazy, wet, and cold storm just before the first of the year. I'm sure most of us were celebrating what looked like a great feed year when we rang in 2022. But then the spigot shut off - here in Auburn, we've measured just 1.77 inches of rain since January 1 - the driest start to the calendar year in the 20+ years I've kept records. Combining this lack of moisture with warmer-than-normal temperatures and unusual (at least for winter) dry north wind, we are squarely back in drought conditions. In many ways, we seem to be experiencing a more severe drought than last year, at least on our foothill annual rangelands.
Ranchers know that drought is more than just a lack of precipitation. Low rainfall years, provided the storms come at the right time, can produce above-average forage. This year, however, the warm temperatures have brought oaks and other vegetation out of dormancy earlier than normal - this early onset of the growing season in our oak woodlands has increasedevapotranspiration (or soil-water demand). The north winds haven't helped. Before we received an inch of rain on March 14-15, I checked soil moisture in Auburn - and found it to be less than 20% (more like May than March). The rain gave us a short boost, but by the end of last week, soil moisture was back around 25%.
Ourrangeland vegetation reflects these poor growing conditions. Our annual grasses andforbs, by definition, must produce seed every year. In dry conditions, this means that they reproduce and turn brown early and at a shorter stature. Where our sheep are grazing just west of Auburn, I've seen soft chess and annualryegrass headed out this week - a good 30 days early. In a good year, the soft chess will be as much as 18 inches tall; this year, it's done growing at 6 inches. Many of our importantbroadleaf forage plants are maturing equally early - I'm seeing vetch dying back on our shallower soils, and thefilaree is already in the late bloom stage, as well.
These are all red flags from a forage quantity perspective - shorter feed this spring means less residual feed to return to next fall. But early maturity also compresses our forage quality window. Many of us expect a 45-60 day period when we have high quality forage on our annual rangelands - and we set our production calendars accordingly. As these grasses and forbs mature, they decline in quality - providing less protein and energy to our grazing animals. They also become less palatable - in other words, they don't taste as good and they don't provide as much nutrition. The graph below demonstrates that crude protein levels in annual grasses drop below cow maintenance levels between the late flowering and maintenance stages (which we're approaching). If we're trying to put weight on animals, protein levels are deficient by the time we reach the early flowering stage. For more information, check out this ANR Publication (Annual Rangeland Forage Quality).
We're still hopeful that the significant snow pack we built up in December will mean we'll have adequate irrigation water here in the foothills - other regions in the state aren't so fortunate. Given the exceptionally dry conditions, however, I expect we'll need to make at least 2 irrigation rotations over our irrigated pastures to rebuild soil moisture and start growing forage. For us, this means we won't start regrowing irrigated pasture forage following our first graze periods until the end of May.
In light of these impacts, what are some of the strategies we should consider going forward? The basic premise of most drought management strategies is to increase our forage supply (by buying hay or other feed, irrigated early, or leasing new pasture) or reducing our forage demand (by selling livestock or weaning early). Check out our Drought Decision Making Tool for Ranchers for information on how to analyze the economics of these options! This page also includes a new bulletin on early weaning.
As far along as our annual rangeland vegetation is today, another rain won't do us much good - other than perhaps grow some summer annual weeds that may have some grazing value. Rain wouldgive our irrigated pastures a boost, however - at least here in the foothills. We'll see what April brings!
- Author: Dan Macon
I feel like I've said this every year for the last decade, but what a strange weather year we're having! Here in Auburn, we experienced the most intense rainfall in October that I can remember (with more than 8 inches falling in a 48 hour period). November was drier than "normal," but December turned wet and cold. We measured more than 12 inches of precipitation in December at home (including a bit of snow). Just up the hill from us though, record amounts of snow fell - the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab on Donner Summit set an all-time record for December with 193.7 inches of snow!
Unfortunately, the Snow Lab set another record yesterday - the longest consecutive period without measurable precipitation during meteorological winter (32 days) since the lab was established in 1971. Today, February 10, marks the 33rd day without rainfall here in Auburn. And our high temperature today is supposed to be over 70F. Despite the promising start we saw in October, we're once again dusting off the drought plan for our small sheep operation.
Every drought, obviously is different - as is every year within a multi-year drought. During the winter of 2013-2014, for example, we went 52 days (from early December through the end of January) without rainfall in Auburn - but we measured more than 14 inches in February and March. In December 2014, we measured over 11 inches - followed by 0.01 inches in January 2014. In the first year of the current drought (2020), we had just 0.03 inches in February, but measured more than 12 inches from March through May. Last year, in contrast, we received just 0.18 inches after April 1.
But rangeland drought is more than simply a lack of precipitation, and rangeland forage production depends on many factors in addition to rainfall. Critically, drought is the interaction of lack of precipitation and soil-moisture deficit driven by high temperatures and increased evapotranspiration. On California's annual rangelands, seasonality of precipitation and climate-soil interactions result different drought impacts depending on the season. While fall drought can obviously lead to winter and spring drought, I found it helpful to think about our own drought plan based on the different impacts we see depending on the time of year.
- Fall Drought: driven by a lack of fall precipitation, fall drought causes a delay in germination on annual rangelands. This can lead to a lack of fall and winter forage (both in terms of quality and quantity), as well as a lack of stock water. Our 2013-2014 drought is a good example.
- Winter Drought: To some extent, California's annual rangelands experience some degree of winter drought most years - the days get too short, and the air and soil temperatures get too cold, to grow much forage. When combined with a lack of precipitation (like in January 2015), this can lead to a lack of both forage and stock water in winter and early spring.
- Spring Drought: This type of drought is driven by a lack of precipitation and warm temperatures in late winter and early spring, leading to increased evapotranspiration and decreased soil moisture. We see perennial plants (including oaks and brush) come out of dormancy early. We may also see our rangeland forage head out early, which results in a decrease in forage quality. Lack of precipitation and dry soils can also result in decreased runoff, impacting stock water availability. Finally, a dry spring (combined with seasonal overstocking of our ranch) can lead to a lack of dry forage next fall. For me, the dry spring of 2021 is a perfect example.
- Summer Drought: While a lack of precipitation is normal in Mediterranean climates like ours, summer drought from a forage perspective is driven by lack of winter snow pack and resulting cuts in irrigation water, or decreases in mountain forage production. With our record low snow pack in 2015, many ranchers didn't receive normal irrigation deliveries. The lack of snow and rapid snow melt last year (2021) meant many high-country grazers in the Sierra had their grazing seasons slashed.
So what does this drought taxonomy mean for our sheep outfit? What kinds of strategies are available to us given the particular conditions in February 2022?
I shared the descriptions above with my colleague Josh Davy (who's the livestock and range advisor for Glenn, Colusa, and Tehama Counties, and who runs his own cattle). He said, "My starting point is to set my stocking rate so that I can survive December and January - those are the toughest months, feed-wise." We've done the same thing - the 2012-2016 drought taught us to be conservative with our stocking rate. Last September, when we turned in the rams, we kept the number of ewes and replacement ewe lambs we felt like we could graze through the winter.
But what about now? We'll start lambing within the next week - which means we've put a year's worth of expense into these ewes to get them to the point where they'll give us something to sell this summer. We're continually looking at the amount of forage ahead of us as we approach our lambing season; we're also looking back to see if the pastures we've already grazed are regrowing. This week's planning meeting was depressing: the forage we've grazed since late December isn't regrowing at all, which means we'll need to rely on what we have left (if it stays dry). And what we have left will only feed the ewes through the third or fourth week of March - we'll be short about 3 weeks (we will move to another ranch in mid-April).
Ultimately, we have two options - we can increase our forage supply (by purchasing hay or grazing difficult-to-access pastures), or we can decrease our forage demand (by selling sheep). As with any plan, there are tradeoffs to both of these approaches - we can increase costs and/or labor, or we can decrease our income. For now, we've settled on the following strategies:
- We'll graze hard-to-fence pastures and move sheep more frequently if necessary up through the first week of lambing. Every extra day we buy now will give us one more day of forage in late March. As the ewes drop more lambs, however, they'll become more difficult to move (which requires more time and effort on our part). Since we typically don't reach peak lamb drop until early March, this gives us a window of about 3 weeks to access these difficult pastures.
- Based on past experience 85-95 percent of our ewes will have lambed by March 31. We may have a few stragglers, but we should be close to finished. If we haven't had an inch of rain by then, and if there's no rain in the 14-day forecast, we'll sort off the ewes that haven't lambed and sell them. Late lambs won't wean as heavy, which means they won't generate as much income. Selling the ewes will reduce our forage demand.
- Based on these strategies, if we get to late March or early April and find we don't have adequate forage for the pairs (ewes and lambs), we'll feed hay until we ship the sheep home for shearing in the third week of April. From that point, we think we'll have enough forage to make it till weaning in late June.
- Finally, if it stays dry through the rest of the growing season, we'll look at further de-stocking to conserve our fall forage. We might sell more ewes, or we might wean the lambs early. We might do both.
These are not easy decisions - ever! But I find that they are easier when we've talked through them and weighed all of our options. And I also find that setting some key dates for implementation helps take the emotion out of the decision - and holds me accountable. Uncertainty, for me, is more unpleasant than making a difficult decision.
- Author: Dan Macon
Predator Protection in Rangeland Livestock Operations
One of the first projects I worked on when I started this job was a publication called Livestock Protection Tools for California Ranchers. Working with a number of other advisors and extension specialists, we took a detailed look at the variety of “tools” that ranchers could use to protect their livestock from predators – everything from livestock guardian dogs to electric fencing, and every predator from neighbor dogs to gray wolves. But as I've studied livestock-predator conflict more thoroughly, and as I've thought about how I protect my own sheep from predators, I've come to think that maybe “tool” is the wrong word. Protecting livestock from predators on rangeland takes a systems approach – one that reflects the overlapping ecology of grazing livestock and rangeland predators. A system that reflects an understanding of human, livestock, and predator behavior – and how these behaviors interact.
I'll use our sheep operation to illustrate what I'm trying to say here. We graze just shy of 100 wool-breed ewes on annual rangeland, irrigated pasture, and irrigated crop land, all within 7 miles of Auburn. The predators we've observed in our environment include mountain lions, black bears, coyotes, foxes, bobcats, domestic dogs, and golden and bald eagles. We also have birds that other producers might include on this list – crows and magpies. We lamb from late February through the end of March (when the grass on our annual rangelands is starting to grow rapidly). We move to irrigated pasture in April. In late June, we wean the lambs and sell most of them; the lambs we keep stay on irrigated pasture, while the ewes move back to annual rangeland. In late August, the ewes come back to irrigated pasture and/or cropland, where they stay through flushing and breeding. In early December, the entire flock moves back to annual rangeland.
Predator pressure varies by location and time of year. We tend to see more wild predators on annual rangeland, although we have seen coyotes in our irrigated pastures. We see more domestic dogs closer to town. We see eagles rarely, but we do see them. We have trail camera photos of a mountain lion within 30 yards of the paddock where we were lambing several years ago. We have too many photos of coyotes to count.
Mostly, we rely on our livestock guardian dogs and our electro-net fencing to keep predators away from our sheep. We know they work – because we've lost sheep where we didn't have both tools (in hard-wire fences without a dog), but I couldn't tell you which “tool” was more important. We've also used FoxLights™ - a randomly flashing light that supposedly deters coyotes and foxes. When we have sheep at home, we'll put them in a secure pen at night (e.g., night-penning) if we need to.
But our system encompasses more than dogs and fencing. We move the sheep every 3-7 days for most of the year. Mostly these are moves to an adjacent pasture, but I suspect the fact that the sheep are never in the exact same spot for very long helps confound the predators to some degree. We add dogs – and more human presence – during lambing, when we're especially vulnerable. We have focused on ewe genetics on maternal qualities – which for us includes vigorous lambs and protective ewes who can keep track of their young.
All of this might seem to be a matter of perspective – or vocabulary! One rancher's “toolbox” might be another rancher's “system.” But as we start talking about impacts from predators, and the costs associated with these impacts, I've come to think we need to take a broader view.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife received funding in last year's budget to help offset the cost of nonlethal predator deterrents for ranchers. By taking a systems perspective on this question, I think we can help the agency understand that most producers are already doing things to mitigate predator problems. Rather than asking, “what tools are you using?” we should be asking, “How have you changed your management to avoid conflict with predators?” Are there parts of your range you don't use during certain times of year? Are you riding through the heifer field more often? Are you adding extra livestock guardian dogs to your operation so you have enough dog power during lambing or kidding? Are you giving up leases because the predator pressure is just too intense? Some of these are “tools,” obviously, but some are systematic changes to our operations. Regardless, they all have costs. And in my mind, they should all be considered when it comes to any kind of predator deterrent cost-sharing program.
Finally, all of these systematic considerations regarding predators have to fit within the larger context of our ranching systems. Not only do we need to think about avoiding or resolving conflicts with predators, we have to think about our marketing windows. We have to fit our genetics both to our environment and to the marketplace. We need to consider the cost of – and return to – labor (our own labor as well as that of our employees, if we have any). We need to think about short term cash flow and long term investment. We often need to satisfy the needs of our landlords, our families, our bankers, and others connected to our businesses. We have to be good neighbors. This larger context influences the choices we have available to us when it comes to predator protection. For me, the idea of a system (as opposed to a tool box) better reflects the complexity of coexisting with wildlife.