Trace Minerals for Sheep

Does anyone have any experience with custom mixed trace minerals for sheep? I've been doing some reading lately that suggests that mineral deficiencies are related to foot health, fly strike and other issues. I'm also wondering if minerals are related to conception rate.

Does anybody use kelp? If so, where do you find it?

Anatolian-Pyr Pups for Sale

I just found out about some Anatolian-Pyr puppies that will be available in mid-May. They are in Nevada County. Email me at flyingmule@wavecable.com if you want more information.

Small Family Farms

I am working on submitting a grant to the USDA Farmer's Market Marketing Program to help support business planning classes that have been held fro the last two years.

In doing some background research, I came across these startling facts:

1. Only 2.5% of farms in Placer and Nevada Counties are operated by someone less than 35 years of age.

2. For California, the percentage is 3%. Since I am from Texas, I looked that up - 3.7%

3. For Placer and Nevada Counties, California, and Texas - roughly 30% of farms re operated by someone over 65 years of age.

Let's see - 30% will be leaving over the next 10-15 year. The replacements are around 3%.

Yikes! I have been working on far economic viability since at least 1994. I have put a lot of time and effort into a lot of different areas - but my efforts have made no difference at all.

We won't see the full ramifications of all of this for another 10 years or so - but it is coming. If we lose the family farm - and by that I mean someone out there trying to make things work as a stand-alone business or pretty substantial part-time income - then does that leave us with either big corporate farms or eating more of our food from other countries?

Worse, I am not sure if there's answer. When you start to look at the effort and resources needed - it gets overwhelming pretty quick. Think about it - less people grow up on a farm or ranch. To get started, they need to get experience. We can do that with an intern program to some extent. An incubator training farm can help as well. 

Once they have some experience, then maybe there is a direction - I will farm or I will raise livestock. Then they have to determine where the market demand exists. Then they need to run some economic analysis to see where the most profit potential exists. From there, can they make things cash flow - ie up front expenses and then a time lag until money comes in from sales. People have to produce, market, and treat things like a business - it's a huge task.

To compound things - there are no systems in place to get some of these things in place. Agriculture in 4H and FFA generally means I raise something for 60, 120 days, sell at the auction, and receive a price that is far above market price.

If that helps fund a college education or something else - that is fine. But there is no real world connection to ag. There is no connection to how you could take like raising animals and turn that into some sort of career option. 

I went to Texas A & M University and got two degrees. I was no more prepared to run a business after all of that than a man in the moon. That situation has not changed. If you graduate in a ag major - you go work in sales for animal id place, pharmaceutical company, etc - anything but start your own business.

I guess this more of a vent than anything else. i may never have much to show in the way of accomplishment - but it does not mean I am giving up. I just do not not know what is an effective approach to at least help alleviate the situation a little bit.

It would be great to see people post on this thing. I finally got signed up as an author. I know the blog is more on grass stuff, but I feel this is a relevant topic.

What do each of you think are some ideas or approaches to get young people involved in ag?

Mob Grazing

We're planning on trying some ultra-high density grazing this summer on irrigated pasture - moving the sheep every 12 hours (or less). Does anyone have any experience with this? What kind of stubble height should we be looking for? I'm expecting that we'll keep consumption high (and keep our average daily gains correspondingly high), but I'm curious about whether we should anticipate any problems.

Does anyone have any information on small-scale sheep dairies (less than 10 ewes) and how to begin? Where can I find information regarding local regulations, etc? Thanks for any help!


Courtney McDonald

Footbaths

We've been dealing with foot rot and foot scald in our sheep for some time now. I recently talked with a vet from UCD about it. Among the information he sent me was a recommendation to allow sheep to soak in a footbath for 20-30 minutes.

Our current footbath set up accommodates 2-3 sheep at a time. At that rate, it would take most of two days to run everyone through a footbath. Do any of you have any ideas about how to speed this up?

Dan

Guard Dog Questions

We currently have 3 guard dogs. The oldest is by far our most trustworthy - we use him with the lambing ewes with good success. The two younger dogs each pose different problems.

One dog is just a big goof ball. He plays with the sheep, roughly at times. We had him neutered last year, thinking that this might calm him down. It has to some extent, but we still can't trust him with lambing ewes. He'll chew on the ewe's ears while she's lambing, and he'll play rough with the lambs.

The youngest dog will ultimately be a very good dog, I think. He's just now 2. His biggest problem is that he is overly protective of the lambs - he protects them even from their mothers. He has injured several ewes doing this.

Since we're not with the sheep 24 hours a day, it's difficult to catch and correct these behaviors. Does anyone have a suggestion for dealing with this?

The last issue we're having with the dogs is their desire to patrol more widely than the paddocks they're in. We use electric nets to contain the sheep. The dogs have learned to jump the fence so that that they can extend their patrolling. We've started using short (5') lengths of chain that they must drag. This seems to curtail the jumping - either through the extra weight or because they've been shocked while dragging the chain over the electric fence. If we do this for a week or two, they'll stay in for awhile, but we seem to need to repeat it.

Any suggestions or ideas others have would be most helpful!

Dan Macon