New Harvesting Plant in the Western United States for American Lamb
must be held on feed and can’t be slaughtered on time.Colorado Lamb, LLC is a state-of-the-art harvest facility (under construction) located in northeast Colorado, the largest lamb feeding region in the United States. To our knowledge, this is the largest infrastructure project underway in the United States to benefit the American sheep industry. Keystone principles of this new and innovative plant include strict adherence to all applicable federal/state regulations for employees; food handling and storage; and best management practices for animal welfare and humane handling.
There has not been a new packing plant built in the region for over thirty years. The Colorado Lamb, LLC harvest facility will help alleviate the constricted flow of lambs from pasture and feedlots that bottleneck into the limited capacity of existing processing plants. The bottleneck at the packer level periodically creates a backup of lambs in feedlots and on pasture, resulting in a less desirable product when lambs
Colorado Lamb, LLC will provide a much-needed source of lamb carcass availability, giving breaker-only businesses a new opportunity to buy American Lamb. Lambs from all over the western and mid-west United States flow through Colorado feedlots on the way to processing plants. Packer concentration is a problem in the lamb market, as only a few large-scale slaughter plants exist in the U.S. Reduced competition drives down market prices, cutting into the profitability of lamb producers, feeders, and breakers. A new processing plant will give American lamb producers and feeders expanded marketing opportunities for their lambs.
2020 Howard Wyman Sheep Industry Leadership School
The Howard Wyman Sheep Industry Leadership School (HWSILS) offers a continuing education opportunity for individuals in the sheep industry. As landscapes and businesses change, it is imperative for animal agricultural industries to not only learn about the changes but be able to adapt to keep their businesses and the industry viable. The HWSILS bridges the gap and provides regular education programs and tools to support the current generation as well as the next generation of lamb producers in the US. In addition, by moving the program to different locations each year, the participants are exposed to differences in lamb production by region, offering opportunities for improvements in their own production and growing programs. For 2020, NLFA will more closely align with the American Sheep Industry Association and American Lamb Board and the Young Entrepreneurs program to provide an enhanced educational opportunity for even young sheep industry leaders.
- Introduce the attendees to the Texas sheep industry, touring and evaluating: growing and raising operations, feeding operations, sale barns, wool facilities, research facilities and programs, and producers of lamb/wool branded products.
- Introduce the participants to state and national industry organizations; providing information and details about the different organizations, how they work together to benefit the industry, how they are funded and how to get involved and become leaders in the organizations.
- Provide "training" in functional areas such as spokesperson development, utilizing social media to advocate for the lamb industry, branding and marketing, etc.
Commercialization of Research Lab
U.S. wool is primarily an export commodity. Certified tests for average fiber diameter, clean wool yield and other wool metrics is required to sell wool in international markets. There is only one commercial wool testing laboratory in the U.S., and it has served the industry well for over 50 years. However, in 2019, because of events outside the control of the proprietor, turnaround time between submission of wool core samples and receiving test results exceeded the acceptable length of time for commerce, which resulted in a loss of revenue for the wool sector of the sheep industry. At a meeting of wool warehouse men, buyers, growers, New Zealand Wool Testing Authority (NZWTA), ASI and other interested parties in July 2019 at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in San Angelo (AgriLife) it was concluded AgriLife should collaborate with the industry and NZWTA to develop a new wool testing laboratory in the U.S.
The goal of this proposal is to provide leadership and technical assistance to American sheep producers in wool testing, production, preparation and marketing to help improve the quality, marketing efficiency and competitiveness of US wool both internationally and domestically. The objective is to convert the Bill Sims Wool and Mohair Testing Lab (BSWML) into a commercial wool testing facility to serve the US wool industry with core test results for market transaction.
A foundation for genomics: building a repository of genotypes in Rambouillet sheep
The 2014 American Lamb Industry Roadmap prioritized genetic selection as an indispensable tool to cost-effectively produce quality lamb. The National Sheep Improvement Program (NSIP) serves to meet that objective as the main provider of genetic evaluation services to U.S. sheep producers. Its remit is to generate and distribute Estimated Breeding Values (EBV)—predictors of an animal’s genetic merit—for growth, carcass, wool and fitness traits to sheep breeders across all sectors of the industry. Yet, for those services to remain up-to-date and globally competitive, evolving genetic technologies, particularly genomics, must be incorporated. Fortunately, genotyping in sheep has become much more cost-effective. Still, the foundation to utilizing genomics requires building a repository of genotypes on substantial numbers of animals within a breed that also have performance records on traits of interest. That initial investment remains costly. Support at a national level, however, would facilitate establishment of the necessary stockpile of genomic information to utilize this selection tool industry-wide.
Our aim is to provide integration of performance and production data from sources that can help enhance the National Sheep Improvement Program, which is a priority of the National Sheep Industry Improvement Center (NSIIC). In this project we propose three specific objectives:
1. Build an industry resource of genotypes necessary for developing tools to obtain more accurate genomic EBV in younger animals. This would increase the rate of genetic progress that could be achieved each year.
2. Characterize the extent of genetic diversity, which underpins any genetic improvement program, in U.S. Rambouillet sheep. This would enable the design of selection schemes that best incorporate genomic information.
3. Identify genetic markers associated with performance for production efficiency and fitness traits in this breed.
Similar efforts are underway in the hair (Katahdin) and terminal sire (Suffolk) sectors, but not yet in a western range breed. Combined, these objectives will support integration of data from an industry group—the Fine Wool Consortium—in developing innovations within NSIP with opportunity for broad benefit to the national sheep flock.
Investigating the main mastitis causing pathogens plaguing Western sheep flocks
Recent research at Montana State University, University of Wyoming, and United States Sheep Experiment Station has indicated subclinical mastitis to be much more prevalent than previously thought. These studies have shown that 54% of sampled ewes had diagnosed subclinical mastitis. Additionally, these infected ewes weaned litters that weighed 11 lbs. less at weaning that litters reared by healthy ewes, which represented an economic loss of $26 per ewe. Using somatic cell count to indicate subclinical mastitis, the economic loss was calculated to be up to $31 per ewe if she had a somatic cell count of 500,000 cells/mL (diseased) compared to a ewe with a count of 100,000 cells/mL (healthy). Using somatic cell count to indicate mastitis and assuming a 500 ewe flock (inferring the results of the sampled ewes), 140 ewes would have subclinical mastitis and the producer would be losing nearly 1900 lbs. of lamb at weaning. This is equivalent to an economic loss of $3500 in this flock, which would not have been lost if those lambs were reared by healthy ewes. However, this research only sampled ewes at these three research flocks, with management systems meant to best match commercial sheep production practices. Therefore, mastitis and the bacteria identified within these flocks are likely to be different than bacteria identified in commercial flocks due to environmental, geographical, and management differences. A producer survey of grower-selected ewes would allow the most common bacteria species found in milk and environment (e.g., bedding, soil, gates, etc.) within regions or management systems to be identified. Additionally, the differences in bacterial composition between the environment, teat, milk, and lamb is unknown and will likely influence both the prevalence and severity of mastitis. Another purpose of the producer survey is to evaluate the relationship between these bacterial populations of the environment and milk. After this information is collected, we will have a foundation for understanding the dynamics of subclinical mastitis including the bacterial species infecting the mammary tissue, length of infection, and production impacts. This will lead to further research to mitigate the effects of subclinical mastitis, thus improving animal welfare and health, while increasing productivity and revenue in Western sheep operations.