Every rancher dreads getting that phone call - "Your cows [sheep, goats, etc.] are out." And anyone who relies on fences to keep livestock contained has probably received that call at some point. Fences fail, gates are left open, somebody forgets to hook up the electric fence energizer. Whenever I get that call, I drop everything else and take care of getting our sheep back where they belong. Getting our livestock guardian dogs (LGDs) back in the sheep paddock can sometimes be more problematic!

Over the years, I've come to realize the importance of a well-bonded LGD. Even if our sheep escape, a well-bonded dog will stay with them - and will often come back with the flock when we herd them back to the paddock. But sometimes, a dog will get out of our fences to chase off a predator. Sometimes a dog will simply decide to explore the neighborhood. Sometimes a dog will slip a collar or scoot through a gate when we're moving the sheep.

LGDs can get into trouble when this happens. One of our earlier dogs, Reno, loved chicken dinners - woe to the free-range chickens that might be nearby. He also disliked outdoor cats immensely (and often to their detriment). And so on the occasions that he got out of the sheep paddock, I was often in a hurry to catch him and keep him out of trouble. I'd call to him and follow him around, trying to catch him by the collar. The more I called (often increasingly frantically), the more he'd run away from me. I joked that if he'd had five toes on a front paw, he would have flipped me off!

I discovered, however, almost by accident, that he would generally come back if I ignored him. One afternoon, he escaped and took off across the ranch. I went about fixing fence and checking sheep, and within five minutes, he was back and wanted to be back with his sheep. I've subsequently experienced the same thing with other dogs.

This morning, I got that call - "Your sheep are out." When I arrived, I found most of the sheep grazing in a neighbor's pasture - and spotted Dillon the LGD gallivanting across the far side of the pasture, perhaps a quarter-mile away. I focused on getting the sheep back into their paddock, and before I finished Dillon returned and allowed himself to be herded along with the sheep. A few minutes later, I found several straggler sheep outside another section of fence. As my border collie brought them back, I opened the electronet for them - allowing Dillon to escape again. Once again, I ignored him - and within minutes he walked up to me so I could catch his collar.

This kind of behavior, I think, is related to the bonding process that we use. I want my LGDs to know how to ride in the truck, to accept being walked on a leash or tied out on a chain while we're working sheep. But I most want them to want to be with their sheep in all circumstances. Teaching a livestock guardian dog to come when I call (or other obedience training, for that matter) seems to require a bond with me rather than with the livestock. A dog that sits, stays, and comes when I call, might prefer to be with me rather than with my sheep. Working LGDs are not pets, and so we have to meet them on their terms when we need them to guard livestock. Figuring this out has made catching the occasional wayward dog much less stressful!

In 2018, as the Camp Fire was still burning in Butte County, a number of University of California colleagues, led by Area Dairy Advisor Betsy Karle, sampled irrigated pasture forage, hay, and corn silage from locations throughout Northern California (including several pastures here in Placer and Nevada Counties). Some of these regions had been impacted by ash fall and wildfire smoke; others had not. Our intent was to learn if ash created any potential toxicity or other health problems for livestock. We were especially interested in looking at heavy metal concentrations.

As we once again find ourselves in smoky conditions, I thought it might be helpful to provide an overview of our findings. For the most part, we did not find any concentrations of metals, minerals, or other compounds that should cause concern for livestock producers. Similarly, Tracy Schohr, who is the Livestock and Natural Resources Advisor for Butte, Plumas, and Sierra Counties, looked at water quality during the immediate aftermath of the Camp Fire. Her results were also unremarkable. Read more here.

The take-home message from our forages study (which I think also applies to water quality) is this:

"While more detailed and controlled studies could provide additional information, these results indicate that forages affected by wildfire ash deposition are likely safe for livestock to consume.

"If you have forages that may be affected by ash deposition, evaluate the concentrations of minerals before formulating a ration [or grazing pastures]. If you're exceptionally concerned about toxicity from contamination and cannot dilute with unaffected feed, isolate and test feed for heavy metals and organic compounds."

If you'd like to test your forage or water quality, or have questions about testing results, please feel free to contact me at dmacon@ucanr.edu or (530) 889-7385. I can also provide you with a complete copy of our forage study results.

Note: A version of this article originally appeared in the July 2020 edition of my New Foothill Rancher newsletter.

 

 

When my family started raising sheep commercially, we assumed that selling meat directly to consumers would be more profitable (especially at our small scale) than selling live animals. As we went through the logistics of getting animals to our processor, deciding what cuts we thought we could sell, determining our product pricing structure, picking up meat, getting it stored, and then getting it sold, we realized that meat marketing was far more complicated that hauling a load of lambs to the auction. We also got a crash course in the difference between gross profit and net profit.

Value-added marketing is a buzzword in local food system conversations – after all, who wouldn't want to add value to the crops or livestock they produce. Since the disruptions to our food system from COVID-19 have become obvious, producers and consumers alike have a renewed interest in selling (and buying) locally-produced meat. But as a producer, how do we know if we're actually adding value if we're selling meat rather than live animals? From an economic analysis perspective, we have to look at the meat business separately from the livestock production business. In other words, the meat business has to “buy” the live animal from the livestock business. How do we go about this kind of analysis?

In our own business, I started by using the market price for finished lambs (as published in weekly market reports from the closest livestock auctions) as the “purchase” price of lambs for the meat business. If a 100-pound lamb was worth $1.80 per pound at Escalon, my meat business would need to pay my livestock business $180 to buy that lamb, less what I would have paid in commission, yardage, and transportation. Let's value that 100-pound lamb at $160.

In economic analysis terms, the purchase of the lamb was a variable (or direct) expense for the meat business. Other direct expenses included harvest and cut-and-wrap fees (which are typically charged by the head or by the pound). Overhead costs – those expenses that are incurred regardless of the number of animals being processed, included transportation to and from the processor, storage, marketing expenses, and labor.

On the revenue side, I needed to know how much retail product I'd get from that 100-pound lamb. This is different than hot carcass (or hanging) weight – this is how much product actually goes into a package. We found that we typically got a 30-33 percent retail yield – in other words, the 100-pound lamb gave us 30-33 pounds of meat we could sell to our customers. We also needed to know the relative yield by cut – after all, folks will pay more for a rack of lamb than they will for stew meat. From this, we could calculate an average retail price per pound – for us, this came out to about $11 per pound of retail product. At 33 pounds of salable product, that lamb was now worth $363.

Let's look a bit closer at that $160 lamb:

Gross Revenue	Amount
Meat Sales (33 lbs at $12/lb)	$363
Total Gross Revenue	$363
Direct Expenses
Lamb purchase	$160
Slaughter/Cut-and-Wrap (per head)	$145
Total Direct Expenses	$305
Gross Margin	$58
Overhead Expenses
Transportation (live animal – 130 miles @ $0.57/mile)	$74
Transportation (product – 130 miles @ $0.57/mile)	$74
Storage (monthly locker fee)	$125
Marketing (farmers market fee)	$50
Labor (10 hours @ $15/hour)	$150
Total Overhead Expenses	$473
Net Profit (Loss)	($415)

Yikes – “adding” value to a single lamb would create a loss of $415! Maybe we should look at scaling up (so we can spread our overhead expenses over more units). I can take 20 finished lambs in my trailer – let's look at the numbers for 20!

Gross Revenue	Amount
Meat Sales (33 lbs at $12/lb) – 20 lambs	$7,260
Total Gross Revenue	$7,260
Direct Expenses
Lamb purchase	$3,200
Slaughter/Cut-and-Wrap (per head)	$2,900
Total Direct Expenses	$6,100
Gross Margin	$1,160
Overhead Expenses
Transportation (live animal – 130 miles @ $0.57/mile)	$74
Transportation (product – 130 miles @ $0.57/mile)	$74
Storage (monthly locker fee)	$125
Marketing (farmers market fee – 5 weeks to sell 20 head)	$200
Labor (10 hours @ $15/hour)	$150
Total Overhead	$623
Net Profit (Loss)	$537 ($26.85/head)

This time, we made a profit! All of that extra work added a whopping $26.85 per head to the value of our lambs! And this doesn't account for the time value of money – when I sell at the auction, I have a check within a week. When I sell meat, the cash flows in as I'm able to sell product – it may take a month or more.

Obviously, these numbers are sensitive to the current market price, the distance to your processor, and processing fees. In a depressed live market (like we're currently facing), marketing meat may add more value. And it's a complicated question - I found selling meat to my community to be rewarding in non-monetary ways. But non-monetary income didn't pay the bills, unfortunately. The key takeaway here is that it's important to do the analysis.

If you'd like to walk through a more thorough analysis of your own business, contact me at (530) 889-7385 or dmacon@ucanr.edu.

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.

Of all the topics we've discussed, though, I think I learned the most from this week's episode. On Wednesday, we interviewed Ryan's grandfather, Richard Emigh, who will turn 91 this summer. Mr. Emigh recounted his lifelong experience in the sheep business - after an hour long conversation, I felt we'd just scratched the surface! He talked about what makes good sheep range, about the value of multi-species grazing (he ran cows and sheep together), and about the need to be creative in today's sheep industry. Personally, my favorite part of the conversation was our discussion about the importance of experience and local knowledge - Mr. Emigh talked about how a good sheepherder knows what his (or her) sheep need to eat at that moment, telling us:

"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!