Here are some notes I had on a marketing presentation I heard at the KHSI Expo in Oregon. Dr. Charles Parker has a long background in livestock research, and he spoke on the future of the lamb industry in this country, and how we should be thinking about marketing our product.
So, first off, the future generally looks very bleak! The U.S. lamb industry is actually on an eighty-year severe decline!
Sunday we had a coyote attack on our ducks, after going all summer without losing any. Usually a coyote will just take one duck and make off with it. But this time, it was a major fray, in the middle of the day. We had fourteen ducks, and I think this little doggy managed to bite every single one of them! It was either a group of coyotes (though Kirk only saw one streak across the driveway when he went outside) or a young pup that got carried away with enthusiasm and unskilled efforts at dispatching birds!
Three ducks are outright missing (sewn-up duck is one of them, I am sad!). I found two freshly dead, and another died later from apparent internal injuries. So, we are down to eight from fourteen, in one incident! Ouch! Iām not certain we have a boy left in the group either, uh oh!
The two freshly killed ones I decided we could eat, they were still warm when we found them, and I had time, so I butchered them up! A hillbilly would never let a coyoteās leftovers go to waste, after all! š
Continue reading “Hillbilly Dinner: The Coyoteās Leftovers”
I mentioned that one of my new sheep seemed to be feeling under the weather the first few days after I got her home. But after giving her some liquid nutrient as a pick-me-up and immune system support, she seemed to recover, and I saw her grazing, chewing her cud, and generally looking fine by the end of the week. I check on all our animals daily, so am quick to observe any problems.
Last Friday evening, I noticed she was hanging her head again, and seemed thinner, with runny eyes and new diarrhea. Continue reading “Sheep āShipping Feverā ā No Good End”
Ok, I have notes from three more speakers I heard at the KHSI Expo in Corvallis. Dr. Jim Miller addressed parasite control; he is from the Veterinary Medical School at Louisiana State University. He is also one of the founders of the Southern Consortium for Small Ruminant Parasite Control.
I still have more notes to share from the KHSI Expo! Another speaker we heard from was Dr. Lynn Hermann-Hoesing, from the USDA-ARS-Animal Disease Research Unit at Washington State University. Her team is doing research on Ovine Progressive Pneumonia Virus, or OPPV. It is a costly disease that is likened to AIDS in humans- slowly progressive, it robs ewes of thriftiness, and eventually leads to premature death.
One in five sheep in the U.S. are infected, and one in three on the open range. There is correlation to flock size, larger flocks have a higher incidence of OPPV. It is estimated that OPPV costs the sheep industry about $2.7 million annually in lost productivity. The problem with OPPV is that it is often not overtly noticeable to the shepherd, but a flock will experience a smaller, less healthy lamb crop, and ewes that do not live a normal life span. So, the disease is of grave concern to the industry, and is often referred to as the āsilent thief.ā
At the Katahdin Hair Sheep International Expo in Oregon, they held an auction-style sale. This was a great opportunity to purchase some sheep that are from different bloodlines than the ones we have commonly in our area. It would have been ideal to purchase a ram there, but since I already have two rams that I can use for the next couple of years, it didnāt seem justified getting a third one for my small flock. So, I went with the intention of getting some ewes at least, to diversify the genetics I have.
This is Kirkās newest toy, aka farm work vehicle. It is already really coming in handy for buzzing down to the pasture with things inconveniently heavy to carry. The suspension is just so much better, compared to the tractor, which has none. And, itās fun too. So what do you think Kirk is doing here?
My last bit of learning from Woody Laneās class on grass actually happened at the lunch table. I had the good fortune of sitting by him, so got another whole hour of his knowledge! The topic of discussion was of great interest to me: reed canary grass (RCG), because we have a lot of it. The above picture is what our RCG looked like when we first started to tackle it, during the winter, it would lay in dead layers of brown like this. Beyond it, you can see a field of more ānormalā green pasture grass that had been well-maintained by the prior property owner, cut for cow silage multiple times per season.
Continue reading “Last KHSI Notes on Grass: RCG in the Northwest”
Here is the fourth section of my notes on grass. Needless to say, I took a LOT of notes during Woody Laneās lectureā¦
Continue reading “What I Learned About Grass at the KHSI Expo: Part IV”
Hereās the third part of my notes from Woody Laneās lecture on grass. This is intuitive once you say it and graph it; but grass, when it first starts growing, has the highest nutritional content itās going to get. Itās TDN (total digestible nutrients) at this stage is likely in the low 70ās, percentage-wise. As it grows, it increases in volume, of course, but it also starts to decrease in TDN. When itās headed out to seed, its TDN is down around 45%. So, there is an inverse relationship there, between increasing volume and decreasing nutritional value.
Continue reading “What I Learned About Grass at the KHSI Expo: Part III”