The Collie Farm Blog

I keep an eye on sheep listed on craigslist, mostly because it’s helpful to see the price ranges out there, and how cheap a buyer could get an animal compared to what I might be wanting to charge. My opinion of animals listed on craigslist is that they are generally “bottom of the barrel” quality; with a few listings maybe being lucky hits for nicer animals that people are just clearing out of their herd for acceptable reasons. In general, it is my opinion that breeders of good animals often don’t need to advertise, especially in a forum like craigslist, because demand for their animals is already pretty high via word-of-mouth.

All that said, I am tempted by things I see on craigslist, especially when there are seemingly good deals, and the animals conveniently nearby. In the back of my mind, I’ve been thinking I’d like to increase my flock size a little bit more, right now, with some unrelated animals. And, with all this scrapie reading I’ve been doing, it occurred to me that if I add animals quickly, before my official start date, I’d be a little bit ahead of the game. Katahdins are not very common in our region, so this is what led me to express interest in a certain ad I spotted, offering for sale two 50% Katahdin ewes, both bred.

The advertiser explained they were mature ewes, proven breeders, good feet, one was black (I really want a black one!) and that they were bred back to a nice purebred ram. She wanted $100 apiece, which is pretty fair for middle-aged, bred ewes. None were registered, but I was thinking, that’s ok, I’ll know their breeding, and I can register the 50% offspring next year. She also mentioned she was selling them for a friend who was in over her head with her own pregnancy and needed help re-homing some animals (but was a knowledgeable and experienced breeder), and that one of the ewes was “a little thin.” Ok, so, I can deal with that, I’m graining now anyway, and ooohhh, a solid BLACK ewe!

I didn’t ask for pictures, because it all sounded good, and I didn’t think anything in a photo would convince me not to buy them. She was a 2 hour drive away, so I made a Sunday appointment to visit. Kirk decided to join me, which would turn out to be a good thing. I drove the van, brought cash, and halters and lead ropes, ready to haul them away if I/we decided to buy them.

Well, when we get there, there is a lot of hubbub and things going on-kids, pets, livestock, toys and fowl all over the place. Someone else is there with some not-very-purebred, scraggly-looking poodles, which she explains, she just procured by trading them for a saddle (and she’s got another poodle she’d like to unload, and wants to know if we’re interested in buying it off of her). This kind of thing strikes me as odd, the idea of trafficking poodles. I’m not so keen on that, coming from the venerable dog show community where a purebred dog purchase is a serious lifetime commitment. But, I let it slide, change the subject, and we go check out the sheep.

The black sheep is a cool sheep- a bit small, but otherwise nicely put together, good feet, good udder, good teeth. But, the other sheep- ooh boy, she’s not “thin,” she’s a pregnant skeleton! But some part of me says, “aw, poor thing, I can fix her…” Both sheep are flighty, ramming into gates to try to escape us, which is suddenly making me appreciate my calm and stable flock.

The lady won’t sell just the black ewe. So I tell her, well, that other sheep has no value, as I’ll have to put a lot of feed into her to bring her back, and her lamb may not survive or thrive. So, how about I pay you $100 for the black one, and I’ll take the other one off your hands as a favor? She hems and haws, she’s got money into them in feed already, she wants to recoup her investment of helping out her friend. I come up to $150 for both, but she still doesn’t bite, she’s wanting at least $175, and then, $160.

While she’s waffling over $10 increments in price negotiations, Kirk is starting to give me the kind of look that says, “let’s get out of here! This is crazy!” He says, “it’s up to you, but I don’t think this is a good idea, we don’t have the right setup to take care of that ewe…” I waver, then realize he’s right, retract my offer and thank the lady for her time. She’s lost the sale worrying about $10, which she’ll easily dump into those sheep in feed over the next week or two. But I’m relieved that her flea market haggling gave us both enough time to realize this was a dumb idea.

On the 2 hour drive home, and later, I reflect upon this decision, and that Kirk talking me out of this purchase may have averted disaster. What if that sheep had scrapie or some other contagious disease? I could have risked the health of my entire flock, trying to save a buck on some new sheep, getting lured by superficial characteristics like color, and feeling sorry for a pathetic case that needed nursing. Saving a skinny kitten or puppy is one thing, but you can’t be a softy when it comes to livestock intended for food and profit. And had passers-by seen that animal in my field, they’d question my ability to care for my animals- not good PR!

Ok, so from now on, I think I’m going to stick to slightly more expensive, but good breeders, who have an established breeding program, registered animals, are in the SFCP or NSEP, and just generally have it together, with nice, well conditioned animals to sell. No more poodle traders for me!

Well, it happened, and sooner than I wished: the coyotes snagged a sheep Thursday night. Of course I knew this was a possibility from the beginning, the coyotes howl in the valley every night, we see them occasionally, and I know neighbors lose livestock to them. They are definitely part of the fabric of this huge valley full of nature. Thus was the precaution of getting the llama. But, I had hopes that she’d be more effective.

My biggest concern was for the safety of the lambs, but it turns out, that’s not what I needed to be worried about. The lamb is fine- he runs fast and stays tight with the herd. What they got was a mature ewe who was probably lambing, or had a fresh lamb on the ground. Of the six ewes I bought, three were “probably bred,” but I didn’t know when. One has already lambed, another looks very close, and this third one didn’t look close at all. So she was far from one I would have thought was at risk. But, I’m guessing she had a single (so wasn’t very big looking), it was her first, and she got preoccupied with birthing and did not run, but stayed to fight. And that is a splendid opportunity for a coyote family: a single animal out in the open, just standing her ground.

The llama probably stayed with the group. And, though she is aggressive and threatening with dogs, she’s also not dumb: I’m not sure she’d risk her own skin to save another. I discussed this with another sheep-raising friend who has no livestock guardians at all, and has lost a lot of sheep to predators. She confirmed this is her experience: flighty ewes will bolt and leave their lamb to run or die, but calmer, bolder ewes stick around to argue, and they lose.

It’s hard to lose a sheep, I was sick to find her carcass in the field, and lamented the investment in her and her lamb. She had the nicest feet of the group, but  if she did not twin, she probably would have gone to slaughter this year anyway. And, now we know where we stand with the coyotes. So, I have moved #33, who is big as a hippo, up into a dog kennel next to the house, where she can lamb safely. She is not happy about the confinement, so hopefully she’ll get her job done soon and can go back out. She had triplets last year, one of which I think was a bummer. Since she’s so huge, I suspect she may do this again, so it’ll be good to keep a close eye on her and her lambs the first few days anyway.

The other three ewes aren’t due until the first week of March, so I’ll plan to bring them up then. As for the carcass of #11, well, the coyotes did a pretty clean job, eh? What they didn’t get, a yearling, still-brown bald eagle has been polishing off. At least nothing went to waste. Such is the cycle of life.

Here is the rest of the story on my final decision-making regarding scrapie programs. It turns out there is a lot written on scrapie and both the NSEP and SFCP, the information is spread out all over the place and not easy to find or understand. At first, I didn’t understand that there are two programs, so I found the phone number for my state veterinarian’s office, dialed them up and naively said “hi, I need some information on enrolling in the scrapie program.” Fortunately, I was immediately connected to Stacy Wozniak, one of the NSEP/SFCP coordinators in our state, and she was immensely helpful, and patient with my long email lists of questions. When she didn’t know the answer to a question, she found the expert who did. Over a couple of months, we got all my questions answered, and I was finally able to make an educated decision on what I wanted to do!  I should also mention that Stacy was supportive and did not push me towards either option, but rather let me draw my own conclusions on what was right for me.

Here are some of the questions I had to consider. First, I realized, if your only concern is to maintain flock health, and you don’t care about USDA regulations, you don’t have buyer perception concerns, and money is not an issue, you could do a fine job of managing scrapie risk solely by using DNA testing in your flock. I’ll get to DNA testing more later. But, suffice to say, it looks like it’s entirely possible to manage scrapie in your flock by buying the right breeding animals in the first place, and using DNA testing as a tool to make sure your flock stays scrapie resistant. Doing this, you could give yourself close to 100% odds of not having scrapie in your herd. The Wensleydale folks are having good success with this concept in their entire breed by limiting ram registration to only RR animals-wow, what a great leadership role they are taking on this front! Given this, there is an argument that could say “I don’t need any stinkin’ government program to eliminate scrapie in my flock (or breed).” 

But, this reasoning didn’t work for me for three reasons. For one, the DNA testing can get expensive and encroach on profitability. Two, I already have animals that didn’t come to me with DNA information, so likely I’m not starting off with the right animals to build a resistant flock quickly. And third, there is consumer perception: many buyers care to know that you’re “playing by the rules.” This led me to quickly decide I wanted to enroll in one of the two programs (and maybe use DNA testing on a limited basis in addition).

But, which program? The overhead of the record keeping and inspections involved with the SFCP is not a deterrent to me- I’m already keeping good records in my cool sheep management software solution. But, I did have some concerns about the restrictiveness of the SFCP. I only have seven sheep now, and I know I probably want a larger flock. But I don’t know how much larger yet. If it turns out that I’ll eventually want 100 head, I’m probably going to need to bring in more ewes to make that happen, and not have an inbred mess of a flock. But, there are very few SFCP Katahdin breeders near me. Would that be limiting my options too much if I could only buy future breeding stock from them?

I wrestled with this, but finally decided it’s ok. I can still bring in non-SFCP rams, so that gives me some room to maintain genetic diversity. Since I do have a few people within driving distance from whom I can buy, at least the option is there if I need it. And, worst case, if I decided that some non-SFCP ewes were a must-have, I’d just have to re-start my clock to zero upon obtaining them, and that’s not the end of the world. Just being enrolled in the SFCP is valuable marketing-wise in itself, and apparently it’s allowed to re-start your clock as often and as many times as you choose. And, if I end up not needing to bring in non-SFCP ewes, my clock will be further along than if I wait several years and then decide to enroll.

My other question was whether I could take my sheep to shows or rent them out to herding trials. It was hard to find the answer, but the answer is a limited “yes.” The important thing is that you keep a barrier between your sheep and other sheep to limit fence-to-fence contact, and make sure they are on clean bedding (to prevent the possibility of them being on old bedding that could have birthing fluids on it). This “limited contact” is ok, but “commingling” is not.

I also had some confusion about the rules regarding rams. The wording in the SFCP is very confusing, in some places, it implies that a ram coming from a non-SFCP flock would downgrade your status; but it turns out, that’s not the case. I’m still a little confused about the details of this, but I think the ram has his own status, so he doesn’t “inherit” your SFCP status when you buy him (such that he would get upgraded) but he also doesn’t downgrade your status either. The only exception would be if it were ever found that he was previously exposed, then he would downgrade your status back to zero. So, even with rams, it’s probably still desirable to purchase from another SFCP breeder. I have a year or two before I need to think about that, however, since I can keep using the ram I have.

So, I decided to go for it, and enroll in the SFCP. The next complication was figuring out whether I need to re-tag the sheep I have. Two have lost their tags, and the rest have a mix of three different kinds of tags. Stacy and I were able to deduce that two of the tag styles are the new “tamper evident” style that’s now required, so they are OK. But, the third tag style is not, so that sheep needs to be re-tagged (with her original tag also left intact for traceability back to her flock of origin).

My order for the free tags and tagger is on the way. I plan to order some different colored tags for this year’s lambs (I have to pay for these, but they’re cheap). I’ve learned from other farms that it’s nice to be able to tell apart age groups at a glance by tag color, so that’s my plan for the future, is a new color each year (and a new numbering system as well- this year’s lambs will all be 0900-something for the year 2009). 

The other tip I learned from Shirley, who sold me four sheep, is to wait to enroll in either scrapie program until you have been assigned a flock ID from the breed registry (if you are registering your sheep). If you have this, the scrapie program will use your state abbreviation and flock initials on your tags, rather than a randomly-assigned, and hard-to-remember number. This was a great piece of advice. So, since our flock ID is KMC, now our SFCP ID will be WAKMC- easy! Thanks Shirley!

Once I have them all properly tagged, then I must provide an updated inventory list, schedule an inspection, and then we are on our way!

For the last several months, I’ve been reading up on the subject of scrapie in sheep, and the government-mandated programs established with the goal of eradicating scrapie in our country. First, for the uninitiated, scrapie is the form of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) that manifests in sheep. TSE manifesting in cattle (bovine) is the infamous BSE, or “mad cow disease.” Manifesting in deer, it’s called Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), manifesting in felines: FSE. And, of course, in humans, it’s Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). It’s called scrapie in sheep because one of the symptoms is incessant itchiness, which causes sheep to rub up against things, and eventually “scrape” their wool off.

Of course, everyone knows the story with mad cow disease, and why we should all be concerned about it. Occurrences of BSE devastate the market for meat, both the local and international market, as consumers become fearful of the product and stop buying it. And all of these diseases are horrible ways for an animal (or person) to die; scrapie can destroy one’s herd, slowly and terribly. Check out some appalling videos of animals suffering from scrapie here. It’s certainly sad to watch these, but I assume these animals are being kept for research purposes, to learn more about the disease, and thus not euthanized once the problem is known. I have to imagine that these videos, earned at the cost of a few animals’ suffering, hopefully will convince legions of people to be worried about this disease.

Scrapie gets less consumer and media attention and, thus far, only bizarre laboratory attempts have gotten TSE to “jump” between species. We don’t (yet) have huge losses to scrapie in our country. But, it is still of grave concern, as it would be terrible to find scrapie in one’s own animals, and poor industry management of the disease impacts the international market. And, ignoring it risks the “someday” possibility that a form of it could start species-jumping, creating a catastrophic problem for our meat supply, and human health.

So, given the concerns over lost revenue in the lamb and mutton industry due to wary consumers and dead sheep, our good ol’ government, in cooperation with the sheep producer industry, has established a scrapie eradication project. The idea is to try to get rid of the disease completely in our country, and to boost consumer confidence in our country’s product. There are currently two concurrent programs in place, the mandatory one, and the voluntary one. And, this is what I have been studying, to decide what my participation (if any) should be. Following is my greatly simplified summary of what I’ve found out.

The mandatory program is the “lesser” of the two, compliance is easier. It is called the National Scrapie Eradication Program(NSEP), and requires that all breeding-age sheep and goats be tagged to their flock-of-origin before they are moved off the property, and their whereabouts need to be recorded throughout their lives. The idea is that if an animal is found to have scrapie, that our government needs to be able to track where that animal was born, and where it’s been, so that all possibly exposed animals could be found (and probably culled). Animals heading to slaughter don’t count, and don’t need to be tagged. Tags and tagger tools are provided free when you enroll in the program.

Though this program is theoretically mandatory nationwide for all sheep producers, I haven’t quite figured out what “they” do to you if they learn you are not complying—I think nothing, at this point. Certainly a gander on craigslist can find many small-potatoes sellers who are moving mature sheep and goats with no tags, probably without knowledge that they are breaking the rules. So, enforcement doesn’t seem to be happening, at least right now.

This mandatory program conjures up all of the understandable objections people have to the government getting involved in our private business. You can check out www.nonais.org to read all of the rationale for why we should be concerned about this trend: things like, will such a cumbersome government project actually yield useful results? Will the overhead cost of all this tracking end up costing more than the potential lost revenues from scrapie-wary consumers? Is it too much to ask of small-scale producers to worry about keeping records of every time they take their pet sheep to the county fair? Is it an invasion of privacy? Are all these weird diseases really a problem with factory farming, such that only those people should be regulated? Indeed, there are many valid arguments against embracing stereotypical government boondoggles, and I salute all those who remind us of these concerns.

On the other hand, TSE and scrapie are, well, terrifying diseases. And sometimes producers in an industry need to organize and cooperate to develop programs that inspire consumer confidence in their product, increase public safety and the safety of the animals which we raise. So, it seems we must do something to convince buyers of our sheep and lamb that we are doing everything practical to eliminate scrapie in our industry. And, that is where the other program comes into play—formally known as the “voluntary” program, the Scrapie Flock Certification Program (SFCP) is a much more rigorous method of maintaining and proving the health of one’s sheep flock (as it relates to scrapie).

The SFCP, like the NSEP, also requires tagging and tracking of all breeding animals. But, it additionally requires annual inspections, and it goes a step further in limiting you from bringing in new ewes to your flock—you can only purchase ewes from other people who are also in the SFCP, and have been in it as long, or longer, than you. (Or, of course, you can close your flock and not bring in any new ewes at all.) The idea is that scrapie is mostly transmitted via birthing fluids. So, if you carefully restrict your animals’ exposure to potentially unsafe ewes and their birthing fluids, you can nearly eliminate your risk of scrapie infection in your flock, over time. Once five years have passed, and none of your sheep are showing symptoms of scrapie, it’s reasonably safe to conclude you don’t have it in your flock, and thus, you become “certified” in the SFCP.

Of course, there is the third option of not participating in either program, and I’m not sure what the governmental ramifications of that are, if any. The reason I’ve been reading up on all this is a combined desire to genuinely reduce my risk of scrapie in my flock, and also to find ways to make my saleable animals more valuable in the marketplace. So, long story short: this has been my mission, to figure out which program (if any) was right for me.

After last Thursday’s flood, our sheep are still “up top” in their little pen near the silo. They are getting tired of being up there, I’m sure. The timing was right to start graining the ewes, who are all getting big, so at least they have had something good happen in their little pen. When we’re home, we let them loose back there to graze.

I was planning on putting them back down in the pasture today, but #10 lambed this morning. Without the llama back yet, and knowing it’ll be hard to walk her and her lamb all the way down to the pasture, I think I’ll wait until Sunday to move them. I may keep her and #33 up top a while longer, as #33 looks like a hippopotamus, I think she is due anytime now too.

I went out to feed the sheep at 6am this morning, and this ram lamb was dry and up running around. I found a second lamb dead, she never got the sack off of him, so he likely suffocated. She is a yearling ewe, this is her first lambing, so we can forgive her mistake. Hopefully she’ll do better next year. She seems to be caring for the live lamb well, I checked both her teats, and they are working  just fine. We saw him nurse twice today, and they seem well bonded.

The dead lamb was solid brown, also a ram. Here he is in the kitchen sink, where I checked for signs of life. He was stone-cold though, so she must have lambed hours earlier, there was no way I would have caught this in time. Tonight I butchered him up and gave half of him to the dogs, the rest of him will be their breakfast tomorrow. I hate to waste! They thought he was delicious. Such is the cycle of life…