- Author: Daniel K Macon
Later this month, the USDA's National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS) will kick off its fourth national study of the U.S. sheep industry. This project is entirely voluntary on the part of producers, and will provide the industry with critical information about high priority animal health and management issues. I hope you'll consider participating!
According to NAHMS, the study has five primary objectives:
- Describe the occurrence of common, economically important sheep diseases, as well as management and biosecurity practices associated with those diseases;
- Describe antimicrobial (antibiotic) stewardship on sheep operations and estimate the prevalence of enteric microbes and antimicrobial resistance patterns;
- Describe producer practices regarding internal parasite control and dewormer resistance;
- Describe changes in animal health, nutrition, and management practices in the U.S. sheep industry since 1996; and
- Provide serum to include in the serologic bank for future research.
In Phase I (January-February 2024) of the study, the National Agricultural Statistics Service will contact selected producers to complete a general sheep management questionnaire. These producers will also have an opportunity to participate in additional research activities.
During Phase II (April-July 2024), a subset of these producers will be contacted by USDA's Veterinary Services to complete a more detailed questionnaire and provide biological samples, including
- Fecal Parasite Test: Fecal egg counts on a composit sample will provide information about parasite burden. Select operations will also be examined for dewormer effectiveness.
- Enteric Microbe Test: Detection and antimicrobial susceptibility testing of Salmonella, E. coli, and Campylobacter in your sheep.
- Lameness Pathogens Test: Swabs will be tested for lameness pathogens on the operation.
If your operation is selected for these tests, you'll receive individualized reports for each category (these tests would cost more than $3,000 if you had to have your own veterinarian conduct them). The results will also be used to help build our understanding about key sheep health issues. From an extension perspective, these results will help me focus future workshops and materials around the issues that matter most to commercial producers! And again, your privacy will be protected - participation is entirely voluntary, and no data will be reported in any way that could reveal the identity of a participant.
I hope you'll participate! For more information, check out the NAHMS sheep study webpage!
- Author: Dan Macon
Over the last ten years or so, I've had the opportunity to help teach farm and ranch business planning courses (first, as a collaborating producer; more recently, as an extension advisor). One of the exercises we've used to help producers relate their cash flow budgets to their production calendars is to create an operational timeline that includes key management activities - as well as the associated inflows and outflows of cash. While this timeline has been a useful teaching tool - it always seemed a bit flawed to me. The work of ranching, after all, is cyclical rather than linear. During our most recent Beginning Farming Academy, I tried a new approach - a circular calendar rather than a timeline. And it so happens that a recent article in Rangelands (the non-technical journal published by the Society for Range Management) puts a name to this approach. Karim-Aly Kassam, of the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment and the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program at Cornell University, calls these "ecological calendars" - calendars that provide a systematic way to measure and give meaning to time based on our observations of the habitats in which we live.
As I read this paper, I realized that my approach to raising sheep largely revolves around this idea of an ecological calendar. Our sheep year starts and ends with the forage cycle here in the Sierra foothills. My starting point is to match our period of greatest nutritional demand (late gestation and early lactation - lambing season, in other words) with the time period when Mother Nature provides the greatest quantity of highly nutritious forage (the "spring flush"). This decision point gives us the ability to adjust our stocking rate to seasonal changes in the carrying capacity of our rangeland and irrigated pastures. We wean the lambs as the annual rangeland forages dry out. We manage our irrigated pasture to be sure we have quality forage prior to and during breeding season. Our ewes have their lowest nutritional demand during the late fall months. In many ways, our approach reflects an emphasis on the productivity of the ewes rather than the weaning weights of individual lambs - we're optimizing our ewes' ability to turn forage into fiber and lambs.
Our decision about when to lamb sets up other key dates in our production system, as well. We shear the ewes when the youngest lambs are 4-6 weeks old - in early May. The ewes shear better then, and we avoid some of the stickers that can contaminate our wool. We dry the ewes off (wean the lambs and end the ewes' lactation) on dry forage in mid-Summer - which allows us to rent the ewes out for fuel-load reduction on unirrigated rangeland. We flush the ewes (prepare them for breeding) in September, when our irrigated pasture begins to recover from the heat-induced summer slump in productivity. We turn the rams in with the ewes in late September, and the entire cycle starts again!
But as I've thought about our approach through the lens of an ecological calendar, I've realized that the key dates in our system have nothing to do with the chronological date - and everything to do with the annual cycles of weather and forage production. Rather than the names of the months, the headers on my ecological calendar are events - Germination Day, the Onset of Rapid Growth, the Summer Slump, the Autumn Rebound. Unlike the rigidity of the Gregorian calendar that most of us use, this ecological approach to our production schedule is incredibly flexible! Weaning day happens when the grass dries out, for example - which could be late May or late June, depending on the year. Longer-term flexibility is also possible - if we begin to see that our moisture and temperature regimes in the late winter and early spring change the timing of the spring flush, we can adjust our lambing date (by adjusting the date on which we turn the rams in with the ewes).
I suppose some will say that we're simply ranching with nature - that we're just adjusting our production to the cycles around us. But giving meaning to time based on my own observations of the world around me seems deeper than simply picking a lambing date to coincide with spring growth. Keeping track of how the world around me changes in response to things like the timing and amount of rainfall, the temperature of the air and the soil, the humidity and wind here in the foothills - all of this helps me adjust my interactions with the natural world. All of this helps make adapting our sheep enterprise to ever-changing conditions easier!
- Author: Dan Macon
I've been fortunate to have the opportunity to get a fair bit of formal education - from my undergraduate days at UC Davis studying agricultural economics to the online coursework I took while obtaining my master's degree at Colorado State University. The certificates that hang on the wall in my office attest to this formal education; my membership in professional societies (like the Society for Range Management and Western Association of Agricultural Economics) gives me access to continued learning. My formal (and continuing) education has driven my intellectual curiosity.
Thankfully, I've also had the opportunity to learn from experience - my own and that of others. Much of what I've learned through my own experiences has been from mistakes that I've made! In many cases, I've learned what NOT to do next time. I've also had the good fortune to learn from others - from mentors (ranchers and colleagues). This informal learning is interesting - while there are times when it confirms what I've learned from books or in classrooms, it often makes me question my formal instruction. And it certainly drives my intellectual curiosity, as well.
Early on during our shelter-at-home experience this spring, my friend Ryan Mahoney, a sheep producer from Rio Vista, approached me with the idea of starting a podcast about sheep production. While Ryan operates at a very large scale (and we have a much smaller operation), we felt like we could both learn from one another. We also felt like taping a podcast would give us something to do every Wednesday afternoon! And so Sheep Stuff Ewe Should Know was born! We've now produced 12 episodes in our first season, covering topics like risk management, the effects of COVID-19 on the sheep industry, and livestock guardian dogs.
"The best sheepherder gets the most out of the land by getting the most into the sheep."
As we continue producing Sheep Stuff Ewe Should Know, Ryan and I hope to interview other producers to learn from their experiences. We'll also be talking with experts in animal health, livestock nutrition, marketing, and business management - learning from their experiences, and having fun along the way!
You can check out our podcast HERE! And let us know what topics you'd like to learn more about!
/span>- Author: Dan Macon
We have a variety of livestock and pasture-focused workshops scheduled this spring! Check out the links for more information.
Irrigated Pasture Basics - Saturday, May 4 (8a - 11:30a) - FREE
Penn Valley, CA
Co-sponsored by the Nevada Irrigation District and the Nevada County Resource Conservatory District, this FREE workshop will focus on soil management, irrigation systems, and pasture management. Participants must pre-register – contact Kaycee Strong at (530) 273-6185 ext. 244 or strongk@nidwater.com.
Shepherd Skills Workshop: Wool Handling and Shearing Management - Saturday, May 11 (8a - 3p) - $5/person
Auburn, CA
Learn how to set up and manage a small-to-medium-sized shearing facility for small flocks. Participants will learn about sheep handling, shearing preparation, wool handling, and wool marketing. (Note: this is not a shearing school). Register at: http://ucanr.edu/woolhandling&shearingmanagement.
Ranching and Range Management in a Drying Climate - Wednesday, May 15 (9a - 3:30p) - $25/person (includes lunch)
UC Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center, Browns Valley, CA
This day-long workshop will include presentations on managing soils and forage, decision tools and strategies for managing livestock during drought, and climate data and visualization tools to support on-ranch planning. Register at: http://sfrec.ucanr.edu/?calitem=445275&g=62869
Sheep and Goat Grazing School - Friday/Saturday, May 17-18 - $200/person (includes meals)
Shone Farm, Santa Rosa Junior College, Santa Rosa, CA
This 2-day, hands-on grazing school provides participants with practical, field-based experience in applying the principles of managed grazing on rangelands. Participants will learn to estimate carrying capacity and graze periods, as well as develop grazing plans and monitoring systems. For more information, go to: http://cesonoma.ucanr.edu/?calitem=446449
The Business of Targeted Grazing - Thursday, May 23 (8:30a - 5p) - $40/person (includes lunch and snacks)
Auburn, CA
This one-day workshop will focus on the business practices and logistics planning essential to managing an effective and profitable targeted grazing business. UCCE Livestock and Natural Resources Advisor Dan Macon has managed medium-and large-scale targeted grazing projects in the Sierra Foothills and Sacramento Valley. Other speakers will include current contractors and grazing experts. Register at https://ucanr.edu/sites/Livestock/?calitem=450512&g=93567.
Stay up to date on other workshops and events at https://ucanr.edu/sites/Livestock/
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