Tom Boyer

As we enter this fall in what has to be one of the lowest points in the history of the sheep industry, I feel the need to rant and rave some. The industry is still not the hot spot for Harvard grads, and as a matter of fact I am not sure it is even a desired destination for illegal immigrants. Much of the sheep industry may be better termed as a welfare project in shambles with the remnant resembling a 200 pound ‘lamb’ falling off a truck. Here’s a few of the problems I see dragging us into oblivion.

First, Scrapie has become a major boondoggle where the cure could be more devastating than the disease. The lack of understanding of both the disease and proposed eradication plan is a sad commentary on producer interest in the industry. On one hand, we have those who say it is not a problem now, never has been and never will be as it is a black face problem and they don’t live long enough to exhibit the disease. Others desire a government mandate and demand that every sheep in the United States in five years must have an R in the codon (which is an official genotype test where they examine the codon at locations 171 and 136). To take the first position and propose that we move forward without any plan to cleanup the problem shows ignorance of the markets, economy and consumer demands of today. Only a brief analysis of the Starlink corn case should be necessary to reveal the perils of assuming that we can force a product on consumers today. It does not matter whether the product poses a health problem or not, rather it is the perception of the consumer that matters. The genetically modified Starlink corn is as safe as any other corn, but a few radical consumers using the Internet to reach all parts of the globe have created hysteria over the corn resulting in one of the largest tasks ever undertaken by USDA to identify and separate the product. Then there are those who would swing the pendulum to the other extreme and demand that we move immediately toward a mandate by the government that all sheep in the country have an R in their codon to move across state lines. Folks, a morphine addict possesses adequate economic acumen to realize that plan is laughable to say the least and will bring about the immediate end of the US sheep industry to say the most. Providing more rationale is the idea that we sort of do a drop shipment of all breeds except Rambouillet on New Zealand and Australia and just produce only this breed as they appear to be generally free from the disease. That should take care of things quite nicely wouldn’t you say? Why can’t we find the reasonable middle ground where every animal is identified and a reasonable record keeping system is established based on that single original identification that will provide traceback and assure consumers that lamb is a healthy wonderful food? Hopefully, reasonable minds will find the middle ground and prevail when the final draft of the UM&R is created.

The fall season brings on the State Fairs. Years ago, the State Fair was one of the few opportunities producers had to take their animals to a common location and learn how their animals compared to others. Often they would trade, buy or sell selected breeding animals. Like most other facets of agriculture, that has all changed. The state fair of today is often filled with sheep that are on the show circuit, moving from show to show, often in groups of 50 to 100 head. The sheep are blanketed during the entire time they are at the show, except of course for the few minutes they are in the show ring. The public enters one end of the barn and swiftly walks through the isles often holding their noses because of the strong ammonia smell. Occasionally, one will stop and ask, "Why do you have the sheep covered?" They are told it is to keep the sheep warm and they then leave. In a few days the sheep are loaded up along with several thousand dollars of premium money and moved on to the next fair and the process continues. As a high school dropout would say, DUH! Are we missing a golden opportunity here or what? A few years ago, I was trimming at the end of the sheep barn at the Utah State Fair, where the swine barn is located immediately to the north. The pork producers were giving free pork barbeque sandwiches to the public as they left the pork barn. Folks, I was stunned as I watched one person after another walk out the end of the swine barn, see the sandwiches, look back at the hogs in the barn and say, Oh Yuck! They would then walk away from the free sandwich fully disgusted at the thought of what they would be eating! The urban sector of our nation actually believes that our food comes from a store. Perhaps we should consider this as a call to begin a major education process of the thousands of people that we can reach at every state fair in the country. We need to immediately begin the process of moving our focus away from the showing of our animals, to the use of the animals to educate the public. Demonstrations of wool to fabric, live lamb to food products, the relationship between grazing and weed control and fire protection and so forth need to begin now. Partnership booths between agencies like the NRCS, Forest Service, BLM, Weed Control boards and like groups should be in our sheep barns to educate the public of the benefits of sheep in our ecosystem. Additional booths showing the numerous food, fabric and byproducts also need to be involved. In the past, many of the state woolgrower organizations have had booths, trailers and other educational activities and materials. Those need to be resurrected and utilized in the educational processes of the new sheep exhibits. If the premium money currently leaving with the show circuit sheep were used for these educational exhibits we can begin to make a difference in how the public views sheep. Another possibility for the use of that money would be to offer large scholarships for youth who have champion ewes in the junior shows. This has proven successful in stimulating youth showing of breeding sheep in Texas as opposed to the market lamb shows which are so far from the reality of the sheep industry as to leave a normal teenager in a stupor. I enjoy showing as much as anyone and am not advocating that we eliminate that from our fairs, rather I am advocating that we alter our focus by enhancing the showing of regional or in state sheep with the educational exhibits that will educate the urban sectors as to the value of sheep in the economy. Perhaps splitting up the premium money to provide funds for exhibitors of sheep as well as show ring premium money would provide for owner participation in the educational process. There is a downside to this change, it will eliminate much of the guessing that goes on in the Supreme Champion Shows by breeders as to which sheep is what breed. It won’t effect the public as they have given up on that long ago, but it is fun trying to decide if the sheep is a Rambouillet, Columbia, or a Dorset on that particular day or just as fun is the challenge of distinguishing between the black face breeds. What a joke! It now appears that there are only two breeds, black face and white face, and I am not sure they’re straight anymore.

Speaking of the market lamb sector, I predict a major disaster is about to hit the entire sheep industry because of the mental midgets who continue to muzzle their lambs in public. If some sap limits roughage, starves, offers only liquid diet and otherwise abuses their lambs at home that is one thing, but to do it in public not only illustrates their ignorance and inability to create acceptable genetic combinations, but more important, it endangers the entire industry from animal rights groups as well as the general public who will not tolerate this. It will only take one example in the major media, and we will all look like the fools that in reality only a few really are. We will all pay a very high price as we then go under public ridicule and continuous scrutiny. Show and sale managers, now is the time to clean this up and it is up to you!

Now to the general state of the industry. Currently lambs are being donated with some buyers providing a kickback of $40 or sometimes even $50 a head. There are some ‘fat lambs’ weighing between 180 and 200 lbs still on feed. The good news in wool is that it didn’t cost quite as much this year to get someone to haul it away as it did last year. Range rams in the west have been ‘selling’ at $100-$250 a head while rams at the Midwest Stud Ram Sale set new high averages in some breeds resulting in the gap between the seedstock sector and the commercial sector reaching new levels. The Universities and Research centers are busy creating research projects where the outcome is easily predicted long before the project ever begins in order to get ‘published’. The end results of those marvelous projects is that we are still doing things roughly the same as we were doing them in the 1940's, while all of the marvelous research collects dust after befuddling some department Chairman who once seen sheep in an AT&T advertisement. Our one vain attempt at creating an industry wide infrastructure in the National Sheep Association now appears about to enter the history book as a failure, waste of time and money, leaving the producer groups ASI, and Lamb Feeders as the only groups who can continue to lead the diminishing defense. The challenge appears most formidable at this point as the clouds of dust left from the 201 Trade Action, the attempt at a checkoff, marvelous US funded advertising campaigns that appear from a producers view to successfully promote only foreign lamb, as well as the host of age old economic issues obscure the trail and will result in another significant, if not dramatic, drop in US sheep numbers this year.

Is there any good news out there? One ray of hope here is founded in a good friend Frank Moore, the new President of ASI, who has the ability, if anyone does, to stand as a Moses on the banks of the Red Sea and part the waters and lead the remaining diehards. The other good news is centered in the great nation in which we live. The entrepreneurial spirit that has made this nation great will sooner or later recognize the tremendous value that sheep always have provided and will yet provide to our country and the world. While we may be about to place a wreath upon the grave of the industry as we have known it, surely the entrepreneurs will soon emerge with new and exciting innovative technology, genetics and products.