Sheeptending And The Wisconsin Sheep And Wool Festival

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• Wisconsin Is A Leader In Sheep Research, Raising

  The Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival is coming up the weekend of September 6-8, 2013 at the Jefferson County Fair Park in Jefferson, WI. It’s a large and vibrant event, which is not surprising, given Wisconsin’s robust sheep raising culture.

  Dave Thomas is a Professor in the Department of Animal Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the UW Extension Sheep Specialist. He says that while the sheep industry in Wisconsin is not particularly large in numbers of sheep, Wisconsin has about 2,800 farms raising the animals. That puts us among the top five or six states in the U.S. Thomas estimates that 80,000 – 85,000 sheep are being raised here.

  Not only are we raising sheep, there is also world-class research going on. In fact, UW-Madison has the only dairy sheep research program in North America. The milking flock used for research is located at the Spooner Agricultural Research Station in Northwestern Wisconsin. There are 300 milking ewes housed there. They are milked twice a day in a milking parlor like you would see on a dairy farm, “only much smaller in size,” says Thomas. That flock at Spooner has been the focus of the sheep research program for past 15 years.

  In addition to the Spooner flock, there is also a flock of meat and wool sheep at the Arlington Agricultural Research Station just north of Madison. Those sheep are used for both research and instruction. Thomas says that the Arlington flock is “used heavily in our teaching program. We teach a sheep production course on campus,” as well as other UW classes involving sheep. Students travel to Arlington to get hands-on experience, and the sheep also come to campus for use in classes.

  One important area of research going on at Arlington is the effort to find effective techniques to eliminate an important progressive disease in sheep, Ovine Progressive Pneumonia. It’s estimated that 25 – 35% of flocks are infected with this insidious progressive wasting disease. One promising development is a DNA test to detect susceptibility, so that breeders can help to breed it out of the animals.

  For people interested in raising sheep, the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival offers great educational opportunities. Sheep farmer Ray Antoniewicz of A-Z Farm in Oregon, WI, recommends Sheep 101: A Workshop for Beginning Shepherds. It’s a full-day course on Friday, September 6^th, and includes information on choosing the correct breed for your farm, how to feed your flock, sheep handling, ways to market your products, and more. For the more experienced shepherds, there are also several offerings. And for everyone, there are shearing demonstrations and clinics.

  In addition to those opportunities to learn about raising sheep at the Festival, the UW Extension has several publications on the topic.