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Sheep producers face ups and downs in market Pam Burke community@havredailynews.com
Sheep and lamb producers in Montana are seeing a mixed market this year with meat prices down and wool prices higher than they’ve been in at least a decade. “It hasn’t been a good year” for the meat side of production, Max Hofeldt, a fourthgeneration sheep producer just south of Chinook, said. Producers are seeing about $1.20 per pound for lambs this year, down from $1.50 from 2017, and this price has been holding pretty steady since the first part of July, he added. “From July to December is when most Montana growers market their lambs, so it hasn’t been a market to participate in,” he said. Part of the problem, Hofeldt said, is that producers are having trouble finding processing plants this fall, the traditional shipping time for Montana producers. One of the two closest processing plants, which are located in the Denver area, had to shut down for improvements earlier in the year and took longer to get functioning to capacity again, he said, and this has created a bottleneck. He said he has had to look further afield and will likely ship in December to a plant in eastern South Dakota, which has stronger ties to markets in the eastern states. Hofeldt said that in the past he shipped
feeder lambs up into Canada, but livestock export across the northern border became more difficult about 10 years ago after discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also called BSE or mad cow disease, in cattle from Canada. And now, he added, the processing plant he used is partnered with a company in New Zealand, one of the main competitors along with Australia with the U.S. in the sheep market. “I told the buyer to give me a call if they decided they wanted my lambs, but they haven’t called back,” he said, laughing. “I don’t know why we have this drop in the lamb market here in the last 12 months,” said Brent Roeder, Montana State University associate sheep and wool Extension specialist and sheep producer in the Fairfield area. It could be partly blamed on the economy, which is important because lamb is a relatively expensive meat, Roeder said, and it could be too many imports competing with U.S. producers. “The thing to keep in mind is that we’re the fourth-largest importing country of lamb in the world, so we know the market is there, the consumer demand is there, we just have to figure out how to stay competitive against the foreign countries,” he said, especially Australia and, somewhat, New Zealand, which transport carcasses to the U.S. in container ships. “The figures I’ve seen say it costs them about 7 cents a pound to send lamb from
Havre Daily News/Ryan Berry Penelope, a ewe at Hofeldt Feed Lot, chews some hay in the middle of a pen Nov. 21 in Chinook. Penelope is part of a small flock that Ryder and Rhett Hofeldt are working with. Australia to the U.S.,” he added, “I can’t haul my lambs from Great Falls to Billings for that price.”
Wool Market Contrary to the drop in the lamb meat market, prices in the wool market have come
www.havredailynews.com now, the military is stepping up. They’ve always used some wool in their uniforms and military wardrobes, but now they’re stepping up,” Hofeldt said. Roeder added that the figures he has heard is that U.S. military uses 75 percent Montanaproduced wools because of the quality of wools in Montana, which is also seen in Wyoming, and western North Dakota — a three-state area that he said has pretty much taken over fine wool production from Texas and New Mexico. “The U.S. military has been sourcing wool out of Montana and this region of the country for quite a while The growers up here are very patriotic people and they’re very proud of the fact a lot of the wool they produce is being used by service men and women all over the world,” Roeder said. A trend in the private sector that is helping the wool industry is a widespread move among consumers to return to natural fibers that use source-verified materials, which they can get with American wool, and specifically Montana wool. “The demand’s still there. A lot of people want something that’s a natural product. They want something that’s sustainably produced, they’re tired of plastic and polyester, and it’s just fashion styles’ve changed and so they want some sustainably produced, from-theearth type deal. … The demand is there; the sheep numbers worldwide have just really dropped off,” Roeder said. The number of fine-wool producers in the Montana-Wyoming-western North Dakota region means that producers in the region will be profiting more from this trend for next-to-skin soft wool, which are wools under 18-19 microns, Roeder said. One of the big concerns that remains is tariffs that China has placed on wool, McKamey said. “If that get’s straightened out,” he added, “I think we’d be in pretty good shape.” The Fight Against Predators The only hurdle bigger than the consumer market and trade wars, the producers said, is predators. Producers have seen an uptick in predators since the 1960s, primarily coyotes, McKamey said, but also the occasional black bear, wolf and mountain lion in his area. Many sheep producers are changing their practices to cope with these age-old adversaries. McKamey said he has hired a Peruvian herder and started using guard dogs. The herders stay with the sheep from April until all the lambs are shipped in the fall, he said, because the lambs are particularly vulnerable and during that time the herds are out on pastures. He said he also utilizes Wildlife Services, a USDA program in the state that provides educational services and will verify a kill by a grizzly bear, wolf or mountain lion so that they can be reimbursed for those losses. Producers can also report heavy losses from coyotes to the Department of Livestock, which will help cut down on the number of predators by hunting and trapping the coyotes. Along the Rocky Mountain Front where Roeder ranchers, wolves are not a big issue, he said. Like McKamey, he sees mostly coyotes, though, he recently has had issues with mountain lion and grizzly. He said he has to night pen and use guard dogs.
FARM & RANCH Havre Daily News/Ryan Berry Max Hofeldt points Nov. 21 to a photo of his grandfather shepherding a hundred years ago in the same region where he still raises sheep today in Chinook. Hofeldt is a fourth generation Hi-Line sheep farmer. “It’s just a constant worry,” he said. “They always joke about it — the sheep guy is always worrying about everything, and literally you are because you just never know what’s going to happen.” Roeder also has kept tabs on the latest technology to see what might benefit his operation. In England, where sheep are kept in paddocks and damage from aggressive dogs can bring high losses, Roeder said, a couple teenagers hooked a heart rate monitor to collar and hard-wired it to a cellphone, so that when the sheep’s heart rate reaches a certain point, the cellphone is triggered to call the farmer who can then go deal with the problem. Researchers are trying to perfect this system in Australia, he said, also using heat monitors to detect sickness In New Zealand, where lambing is done in fields, producers are using a drone with an infrared camera that detects lambs with body temperatures above or below normal. The drone comes to the gate and takes the farmer out to the lamb that needs attention, he added. “That type of technology, labor-saving stuff, it’s going to be interesting to see as we move forward how we adapt that technology to farming practices in the U.S.,” he said. Sheep don’t have the ability like cattle to protect their young, he said, but sheep are management responsive and in the end that helps the producer.
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Sheep: U.S. Army has announced its new uniforms will be made of wool ■ Continued from page 3 one pound of lamb per capita in the U.S., some research shows hope from changes in dietary habits of millennials who drink less beer and more wine and spirits, Roeder said, and these drinks pair better with lamb. An increase in ethnic populations, especially in the northeast, along the West Coast and in Michigan has spurred more lamb consumption in those areas, which also have seen inclusion of lamb in the menus at higher-end restaurants. “It’s just changing demographics,” Roeder said. U.S. producers, though, are seeing strong competition for these markets from imports, especially from Australia. Changes in sheep production in Australia have helped the U.S. wool prices but are likely the major cause for the decrease in meat prices. While the 50 million head decrease in Australian sheep production has helped the U.S. wool market, it has hurt the meat market. Australia has, over that 20-year period, turned its focus on filling the need for lamb meat — even in the U.S. where they have replaced U.S. sheep 1 to 1, Roeder said. “We’re importing as much lamb as we’re producing right now,” he added. “Australia has been exporting a lot of lamb into the U.S.,” he added, “and there’s no tariffs, there’s no import quotas. We’re basically competing on a global market without any protection or
any plan. … So if they want to, they can bring in as much lamb as they want.” “Ag trade magazines in Australia say the American lamb market is the big emerging market,” he said. “They talk about it like it’s the greatest thing in the whole world, but you talk to producers in the U.S. and it’s a little bit of a different story.” The Wool Market The range of wool prices depends on the quality of wool grown by breed of sheep — the finer the wool the higher the price. A human hair measures from 90 to 120 microns in diameter, Roeder said, but wool produced in Montana is as low as 17 or 18 microns, and up to about 30 microns at the coarsest. He added, Merino and Rambouillet breeds have the finest wool, Targhee and Columbia are a little coarser in the low- to mid-20s generally, and Hampshire and Suffolk, the black-faced sheep, have the coarsest. Sheep shearers who are certified wool graders will sort the wool according to its microns as they shear in early spring, about a month before lambing begins, said Ken McKamey, who raises sheep south of Great Falls close to the Lewis and Clark National Forest. A third-generation sheep rancher and vice president of the Montana Wool Growers Association, McKamey said he
raises Targhee sheep to be dual-purpose producers of meat and wool. He has about 1,500 head of sheep sheared — over two days by a team of five people — each spring and this wool comes in at right around 21 microns, he said. There are finer wools, he added, but the Targhee work well for him and “it’s a very sellable product.” Part of what he does to improve that sellability is selectively breed for a consistent wool, he said. Through careful ram selection at the annual Montana Ram Sale in Miles City, and by having the wool grader return in the fall to grade his replacement lambs for finer wool that is of consistent quality all over the body, he said he keeps his wool quality up. Wool around the world is priced, Roeder said, according to the AWEX t ra d i n g p l a t fo r m b a s e d o n t h e Australian dollar exchange rate and futures market, much like crude oil is linked to the U.S. dollar. While trends in Australian sheep production are helping drive up the price of U.S. wool, some social trends are affecting it, as well. The U.S. Army recently announced that it will be returning to regulation Army green uniforms with a high wool percentage reminiscent of uniforms used during WWII. This news comes amid other news that the U.S. Navy is considering replacing its wool pea coat with a synthetic waterproof material, but the sheep industry is lauding the Army’s decision. “That’s another good market for our wool right
Havre Daily News/Ryan Berry Levi Hofeldt corners a ewe to tag its ear Nov. 21 at Hofeldt Feed Lot in Chinook.
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www.havredailynews.com up considerably. “We had historic high wool prices this year, mostly due to Australia which has produced most of the world’s fine wool for the last 20 years,” Roeder said, but Australian producers have started to drop their production numbers — from 120 million sheep to 70 million sheep — and most of the loss was in fine wool sheep. Hofeldt said he got about $3 per pound for wool and, with each ewe producing about 10 pounds of wool, the added $30 per head doesn’t replace the meat market, but it helps. Roeder said the highest wool he’s heard of this year is more than $5 per pound in-thegrease, which is wool that hasn’t been cleaned of its natural oils, dirt and debris. Overall, he added, the wool price has doubled in the past year and gone up about threefold in the last 15 years or so. Talking prices of wool can be tricky, he said. Wool has a lot of grease and debris because sheep produce a sweat and a natural wax to keep the wool in good shape. In Montana, about 55 percent of the raw wool, on average, is actually wool and the other 45 percent is grease and dirt or other byproduct. Generally, though, unless otherwise clarified, he said, producers talk about prices as related to wool that hasn’t been cleaned. Roeder also put this year’s price of wool in perspective with other Montana commodities. “The average ewe is going to produce, we always roughly figure, 10 pounds, and if you’re getting decent wool and you’re getting $3 a pound grease for it, that’s 30 bucks a head,” he said, “so it’s nothing to sneeze at. And we generally figure five sheep per cow, so now you’re talking $150 per animal unit just in wool, so it adds up pretty quickly.” Corn right now, he added, is more than
Havre Daily News/Ryan Berry A white-faced sheep looks over from its flock from one of the many pens at Hofeldt Feed Lot in Chinook Nov. 21. $200 per ton, and “from an agricultural commodity stand point, right now wool is about $6,000 a ton, so when you put it on those terms, it kind of gets people’s attention. If hay’s selling for $125, $130 a ton, and wool sells for $6,000 a ton, those little bags get to be worth a lot.” Lamb Market Driving Forces Though the producers couldn’t put a finger on definitive reasons for current prices, they did identify some of the driving forces for the lamb and wool prices this fall. Historically, the U.S. sheep numbers peaked in 1884 at 51 million head, U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows, but by 2017 that number was down to 5.25 million nationally. In Montana alone, 1997 lamb production was at 380,000 but 2007 saw 270,000 lambs, and by 2017 that number had dropped to 190,000, annual USDA data says. U.S. sheep consumption peaked in 1942, when it was used as rations during World War II, but the soldiers were getting cold, canned mutton in the trenches, Roeder said, and this caused a lot of negative memories for that generation. “It’s taken several generations to get, I guess, back to where households are even experimenting with cooking lamb,” Roeder said, adding that it’s also hard to compete with cheaper meats. Though consumption is down to one-half to
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Sheep: U.S. Army has announced its new uniforms will be made of wool ■ Continued from page 3 one pound of lamb per capita in the U.S., some research shows hope from changes in dietary habits of millennials who drink less beer and more wine and spirits, Roeder said, and these drinks pair better with lamb. An increase in ethnic populations, especially in the northeast, along the West Coast and in Michigan has spurred more lamb consumption in those areas, which also have seen inclusion of lamb in the menus at higher-end restaurants. “It’s just changing demographics,” Roeder said. U.S. producers, though, are seeing strong competition for these markets from imports, especially from Australia. Changes in sheep production in Australia have helped the U.S. wool prices but are likely the major cause for the decrease in meat prices. While the 50 million head decrease in Australian sheep production has helped the U.S. wool market, it has hurt the meat market. Australia has, over that 20-year period, turned its focus on filling the need for lamb meat — even in the U.S. where they have replaced U.S. sheep 1 to 1, Roeder said. “We’re importing as much lamb as we’re producing right now,” he added. “Australia has been exporting a lot of lamb into the U.S.,” he added, “and there’s no tariffs, there’s no import quotas. We’re basically competing on a global market without any protection or
any plan. … So if they want to, they can bring in as much lamb as they want.” “Ag trade magazines in Australia say the American lamb market is the big emerging market,” he said. “They talk about it like it’s the greatest thing in the whole world, but you talk to producers in the U.S. and it’s a little bit of a different story.” The Wool Market The range of wool prices depends on the quality of wool grown by breed of sheep — the finer the wool the higher the price. A human hair measures from 90 to 120 microns in diameter, Roeder said, but wool produced in Montana is as low as 17 or 18 microns, and up to about 30 microns at the coarsest. He added, Merino and Rambouillet breeds have the finest wool, Targhee and Columbia are a little coarser in the low- to mid-20s generally, and Hampshire and Suffolk, the black-faced sheep, have the coarsest. Sheep shearers who are certified wool graders will sort the wool according to its microns as they shear in early spring, about a month before lambing begins, said Ken McKamey, who raises sheep south of Great Falls close to the Lewis and Clark National Forest. A third-generation sheep rancher and vice president of the Montana Wool Growers Association, McKamey said he
raises Targhee sheep to be dual-purpose producers of meat and wool. He has about 1,500 head of sheep sheared — over two days by a team of five people — each spring and this wool comes in at right around 21 microns, he said. There are finer wools, he added, but the Targhee work well for him and “it’s a very sellable product.” Part of what he does to improve that sellability is selectively breed for a consistent wool, he said. Through careful ram selection at the annual Montana Ram Sale in Miles City, and by having the wool grader return in the fall to grade his replacement lambs for finer wool that is of consistent quality all over the body, he said he keeps his wool quality up. Wool around the world is priced, Roeder said, according to the AWEX t ra d i n g p l a t fo r m b a s e d o n t h e Australian dollar exchange rate and futures market, much like crude oil is linked to the U.S. dollar. While trends in Australian sheep production are helping drive up the price of U.S. wool, some social trends are affecting it, as well. The U.S. Army recently announced that it will be returning to regulation Army green uniforms with a high wool percentage reminiscent of uniforms used during WWII. This news comes amid other news that the U.S. Navy is considering replacing its wool pea coat with a synthetic waterproof material, but the sheep industry is lauding the Army’s decision. “That’s another good market for our wool right
Havre Daily News/Ryan Berry Levi Hofeldt corners a ewe to tag its ear Nov. 21 at Hofeldt Feed Lot in Chinook.
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www.havredailynews.com up considerably. “We had historic high wool prices this year, mostly due to Australia which has produced most of the world’s fine wool for the last 20 years,” Roeder said, but Australian producers have started to drop their production numbers — from 120 million sheep to 70 million sheep — and most of the loss was in fine wool sheep. Hofeldt said he got about $3 per pound for wool and, with each ewe producing about 10 pounds of wool, the added $30 per head doesn’t replace the meat market, but it helps. Roeder said the highest wool he’s heard of this year is more than $5 per pound in-thegrease, which is wool that hasn’t been cleaned of its natural oils, dirt and debris. Overall, he added, the wool price has doubled in the past year and gone up about threefold in the last 15 years or so. Talking prices of wool can be tricky, he said. Wool has a lot of grease and debris because sheep produce a sweat and a natural wax to keep the wool in good shape. In Montana, about 55 percent of the raw wool, on average, is actually wool and the other 45 percent is grease and dirt or other byproduct. Generally, though, unless otherwise clarified, he said, producers talk about prices as related to wool that hasn’t been cleaned. Roeder also put this year’s price of wool in perspective with other Montana commodities. “The average ewe is going to produce, we always roughly figure, 10 pounds, and if you’re getting decent wool and you’re getting $3 a pound grease for it, that’s 30 bucks a head,” he said, “so it’s nothing to sneeze at. And we generally figure five sheep per cow, so now you’re talking $150 per animal unit just in wool, so it adds up pretty quickly.” Corn right now, he added, is more than
Havre Daily News/Ryan Berry A white-faced sheep looks over from its flock from one of the many pens at Hofeldt Feed Lot in Chinook Nov. 21. $200 per ton, and “from an agricultural commodity stand point, right now wool is about $6,000 a ton, so when you put it on those terms, it kind of gets people’s attention. If hay’s selling for $125, $130 a ton, and wool sells for $6,000 a ton, those little bags get to be worth a lot.” Lamb Market Driving Forces Though the producers couldn’t put a finger on definitive reasons for current prices, they did identify some of the driving forces for the lamb and wool prices this fall. Historically, the U.S. sheep numbers peaked in 1884 at 51 million head, U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows, but by 2017 that number was down to 5.25 million nationally. In Montana alone, 1997 lamb production was at 380,000 but 2007 saw 270,000 lambs, and by 2017 that number had dropped to 190,000, annual USDA data says. U.S. sheep consumption peaked in 1942, when it was used as rations during World War II, but the soldiers were getting cold, canned mutton in the trenches, Roeder said, and this caused a lot of negative memories for that generation. “It’s taken several generations to get, I guess, back to where households are even experimenting with cooking lamb,” Roeder said, adding that it’s also hard to compete with cheaper meats. Though consumption is down to one-half to
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Sheep producers face ups and downs in market Pam Burke community@havredailynews.com
Sheep and lamb producers in Montana are seeing a mixed market this year with meat prices down and wool prices higher than they’ve been in at least a decade. “It hasn’t been a good year” for the meat side of production, Max Hofeldt, a fourthgeneration sheep producer just south of Chinook, said. Producers are seeing about $1.20 per pound for lambs this year, down from $1.50 from 2017, and this price has been holding pretty steady since the first part of July, he added. “From July to December is when most Montana growers market their lambs, so it hasn’t been a market to participate in,” he said. Part of the problem, Hofeldt said, is that producers are having trouble finding processing plants this fall, the traditional shipping time for Montana producers. One of the two closest processing plants, which are located in the Denver area, had to shut down for improvements earlier in the year and took longer to get functioning to capacity again, he said, and this has created a bottleneck. He said he has had to look further afield and will likely ship in December to a plant in eastern South Dakota, which has stronger ties to markets in the eastern states. Hofeldt said that in the past he shipped
feeder lambs up into Canada, but livestock export across the northern border became more difficult about 10 years ago after discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also called BSE or mad cow disease, in cattle from Canada. And now, he added, the processing plant he used is partnered with a company in New Zealand, one of the main competitors along with Australia with the U.S. in the sheep market. “I told the buyer to give me a call if they decided they wanted my lambs, but they haven’t called back,” he said, laughing. “I don’t know why we have this drop in the lamb market here in the last 12 months,” said Brent Roeder, Montana State University associate sheep and wool Extension specialist and sheep producer in the Fairfield area. It could be partly blamed on the economy, which is important because lamb is a relatively expensive meat, Roeder said, and it could be too many imports competing with U.S. producers. “The thing to keep in mind is that we’re the fourth-largest importing country of lamb in the world, so we know the market is there, the consumer demand is there, we just have to figure out how to stay competitive against the foreign countries,” he said, especially Australia and, somewhat, New Zealand, which transport carcasses to the U.S. in container ships. “The figures I’ve seen say it costs them about 7 cents a pound to send lamb from
Havre Daily News/Ryan Berry Penelope, a ewe at Hofeldt Feed Lot, chews some hay in the middle of a pen Nov. 21 in Chinook. Penelope is part of a small flock that Ryder and Rhett Hofeldt are working with. Australia to the U.S.,” he added, “I can’t haul my lambs from Great Falls to Billings for that price.”
Wool Market Contrary to the drop in the lamb meat market, prices in the wool market have come
www.havredailynews.com now, the military is stepping up. They’ve always used some wool in their uniforms and military wardrobes, but now they’re stepping up,” Hofeldt said. Roeder added that the figures he has heard is that U.S. military uses 75 percent Montanaproduced wools because of the quality of wools in Montana, which is also seen in Wyoming, and western North Dakota — a three-state area that he said has pretty much taken over fine wool production from Texas and New Mexico. “The U.S. military has been sourcing wool out of Montana and this region of the country for quite a while The growers up here are very patriotic people and they’re very proud of the fact a lot of the wool they produce is being used by service men and women all over the world,” Roeder said. A trend in the private sector that is helping the wool industry is a widespread move among consumers to return to natural fibers that use source-verified materials, which they can get with American wool, and specifically Montana wool. “The demand’s still there. A lot of people want something that’s a natural product. They want something that’s sustainably produced, they’re tired of plastic and polyester, and it’s just fashion styles’ve changed and so they want some sustainably produced, from-theearth type deal. … The demand is there; the sheep numbers worldwide have just really dropped off,” Roeder said. The number of fine-wool producers in the Montana-Wyoming-western North Dakota region means that producers in the region will be profiting more from this trend for next-to-skin soft wool, which are wools under 18-19 microns, Roeder said. One of the big concerns that remains is tariffs that China has placed on wool, McKamey said. “If that get’s straightened out,” he added, “I think we’d be in pretty good shape.” The Fight Against Predators The only hurdle bigger than the consumer market and trade wars, the producers said, is predators. Producers have seen an uptick in predators since the 1960s, primarily coyotes, McKamey said, but also the occasional black bear, wolf and mountain lion in his area. Many sheep producers are changing their practices to cope with these age-old adversaries. McKamey said he has hired a Peruvian herder and started using guard dogs. The herders stay with the sheep from April until all the lambs are shipped in the fall, he said, because the lambs are particularly vulnerable and during that time the herds are out on pastures. He said he also utilizes Wildlife Services, a USDA program in the state that provides educational services and will verify a kill by a grizzly bear, wolf or mountain lion so that they can be reimbursed for those losses. Producers can also report heavy losses from coyotes to the Department of Livestock, which will help cut down on the number of predators by hunting and trapping the coyotes. Along the Rocky Mountain Front where Roeder ranchers, wolves are not a big issue, he said. Like McKamey, he sees mostly coyotes, though, he recently has had issues with mountain lion and grizzly. He said he has to night pen and use guard dogs.
FARM & RANCH Havre Daily News/Ryan Berry Max Hofeldt points Nov. 21 to a photo of his grandfather shepherding a hundred years ago in the same region where he still raises sheep today in Chinook. Hofeldt is a fourth generation Hi-Line sheep farmer. “It’s just a constant worry,” he said. “They always joke about it — the sheep guy is always worrying about everything, and literally you are because you just never know what’s going to happen.” Roeder also has kept tabs on the latest technology to see what might benefit his operation. In England, where sheep are kept in paddocks and damage from aggressive dogs can bring high losses, Roeder said, a couple teenagers hooked a heart rate monitor to collar and hard-wired it to a cellphone, so that when the sheep’s heart rate reaches a certain point, the cellphone is triggered to call the farmer who can then go deal with the problem. Researchers are trying to perfect this system in Australia, he said, also using heat monitors to detect sickness In New Zealand, where lambing is done in fields, producers are using a drone with an infrared camera that detects lambs with body temperatures above or below normal. The drone comes to the gate and takes the farmer out to the lamb that needs attention, he added. “That type of technology, labor-saving stuff, it’s going to be interesting to see as we move forward how we adapt that technology to farming practices in the U.S.,” he said. Sheep don’t have the ability like cattle to protect their young, he said, but sheep are management responsive and in the end that helps the producer.
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