EAPK would like to extend a very warm Thank You to everyone who supported our first annual EAPK Symposium and Sale, especially our wonderful speakers, those who attended the symposium and everyone who consigned, bid on and purchased animals in the sale. Seventy-four attendees representing 11 states kicked off the educational Symposium on Friday July 9. Special thanks go out to our speakers: Dr. Andrew Weaver (NC State); Dr. Scott Greiner (Virginia Tech);…
People frequently ask us for suggestions on improving the parasite resistance of their flocks and how to identify resistant animals, and with good reason. Intestinal worms, or parasites, are one of the most limiting factors to profitable production for shepherds raising sheep on pasture. Lambs and late gestation and lactating ewes are the most susceptible. The main parasite of concern in much of the U.S. is Haemonchus contortus or barber pole worm. The…
Whenever we sell animals, be it at auction, privately as feeder lambs, breeding stock or even just pets and lawnmowers it is our responsibility to make sure that the animals we are selling will not enter the food chain with illegal drug residues in their tissue. Animals that are sold at auction need to be ready to slaughter as many enter the food chain within hours or days after being sold. Private sale…
Data collection is the cornerstone of obtaining Estimated Breeding Values (EBVs) through the National Sheep Improvement Program (NSIP). But the need for good records and accurate data is not limited to producers submitting data to NSIP. All flocks can benefit from good data collection since selection and culling decisions should be based on measured production criteria. Those considering joining NSIP at some point, will find collecting accurate data from the start will be…
To best express their genetic potential, sheep must be in optimal body condition. Both overly fat sheep and sheep that are too thin are not as productive as they can potentially be. Body condition scoring (BCS) enables you to identify the animals that fall outside of a preferred range. You can use this information to evaluate feeding strategies and to identify animals that are not doing well in your management system. This article…
For most of us, raising sheep is a business. All successful businesses continually and objectively evaluate their products for performance, accuracy, and predictability. Estimated Breeding Values (EBVs) as provided by the National Sheep Improvement Program (NSIP), allow shepherds to convert performance records for economically important traits into information about an animal's genetic merit while increasing accuracy and predictability for those traits. EBVs provide a science-based selection tool to improve or enhance preferred traits…
to make the most improvement in our flocks, we have to accurately assess the impacts our sires (and dams) are having on their offspring. We need to identify superior sires as lambs and then confirm their superiority by evaluating their offspring.
Gestation in sheep varies from 142 to 152 days with the average being 147 days. Just like people, individual pregnancies can vary, gestation periods of 138 to 159 days are not unheard of. Ewes carrying multiple lambs tend to have shorter gestations while male lambs (and heavy birth weight lambs) are usually carried for longer than female lambs. The form above calculates the lambing date based on a 147 day gestation period.
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