Workshop Name: “Tips, Tips, Tips: Practical Notes for Sheep & Goat Producers”

This will be one of the most useful and down-to-earth production workshops you’ve ever attended. We will cover dozens of sheep and goat topics and give practical tips about them. Lambing, kidding, flushing, breeding, late-gestation nutrition, feeding in the jug, bottle-feeding, weaning, minerals, vitamins, reading those feed-tags, new feed regulations. Details on copper, selenium, lambing percentages, and how and when to take forage and feed samples. Nutritional problems like bloat, ketosis, grass tetany, acidosis, and various deficiencies. Some critical points about selecting forages, avoiding pasture problems, and placing fences for intensive grazing. Tips about wool and shearing, including making your shearing day easier. And because today’s agricultural world is also a technological world, we’ll cover useful tips about Google searches and other Internet features like maps, Dropbox, and useful websites and apps you really want to know about. This session will be cram-packed with usable information. Bring your questions and your experiences – we will share tips. And also bring lots of paper to take notes.

Annual Workshop of the Hawaii Sheep & Goat Association.

I will give three presentations during the 2-Day Workshop:

(1)  Management Intensive Grazing.

(2)  Nutrient Deficiencies in Forage-based Diets.

(3)  Technology Tools for Small Farmers.

At the Black Sheep Gathering, Eugene, Oregon:

I will conduct a practical workshop on how to feed sheep and goats. We’ll cover the basic principles of energy and protein nutrition and how to apply these principles to day-to-day choices of rations and feeds. We’ll focus on the different periods of your animals’ production cycle: growth, flushing, gestation, lactation, and weaning. Some topics will include matching animal needs with pastures, growing replacement animals, how, what, and when to supplement grain, vitamins and minerals. We’ll especially concentrate on how nutrition affects fiber growth and quality. We’ll also cover some common nutritional problems such as bloat, urinary calculi, grain overload, pregnancy disease, moldy hay, selenium, and copper. And of course, there will be plenty of time for discussion and questions.

A very practical workshop on sheep and goat nutrition: minerals and vitamins that animals need, the best ways to feed them, how to read feed tags, and what to do about some of the most common nutritional problems. I will cover each mineral and vitamin, including recommendations on what to feed. We’ll also discuss the rules of feed labeling, examine some feed tags, and show what each term means. We will also review the most common nutritional problems — such as mineral deficiencies, grain overload, bloat, and pregnancy disease — and describe how to avoid them and what to do when they occur. We will have lots of time for questions and answers.