Ep 161 Spring Breeding/ Fall Lambing

0:00Well, what's the other episode? It's a very cheap podcast. I'm your host, Big Tom Partners. A lot of Dr. Camer, Meyer Lee, and Cam, the weather has turned. Yes. Spring has officially really sprung. Yeah, I'm going like 10 days at a time because that's the furthest out all. I don't really trust the forecast that far out but still like decent amount of confidence in that 10 day forecast. And there was one day I think high was 42. So I can deal with that. The only problem is the keeping the barn dry right now is miserable. We are going through so much straw. It's ridiculous. Yeah, it's very humid. You were here yesterday. Yeah, it was a good trip

1:05to fall. The first thing I'd point it out was just look at how wet this concrete is. It's terrible. It's just everything sweaty. I was last night and when I finished up with the hose, the hose was just, it was much water on the outside. It was all through. Yeah, I couldn't believe how much condensation was on that. Yeah, I actually, after you left yesterday, I went in the house, took sweatshirts off, pulled the jeans off, put a pair of shorts on and worked the rest of the day in the shorts and it was just beautiful. Yeah, I wore shorts all day yesterday. So I'm, you saw how muddy it was here, but at the end of the day, I had mud all over my legs, all over my soul. Yep. Yeah, it was a mess, but it was horribly, horribly muddy. And they were calling for rain this morning. And then the rain was supposed to stop around noon, which was been nice,

2:08except then they were calling for massive thunderstorms. Yeah, that was probably the takeaway. I actually shared that with dad last night, because I got such a kick out of it. Tom and CJ were looking to get in some work done today, Saturday. And however it happened, Tom, you're like, well, it's only supposed to rain in the morning. It's like, oh, good. You know, I'm free in the afternoon. It's like, well, it's only supposed to thunderstorm in the afternoon. It's like, I'm holding onto that one because that one got me pretty good. But yeah, this is this time of year to be expected. Yeah. And now, I mean, here we are. Sunshine is beautiful out. So I don't know what's going to happen this afternoon. It better storm this afternoon. I'm the ear tag because we changed our plans all around. So because we want to be standing out in the rain, doing all this, but we're getting ready to do till tomorrow. Probably that's what's going to happen. I'll end up working in the rain all day tomorrow in the rain. But yeah, what's supposed to happen is we've got a group of about 75, maybe 72, something

3:16like that sheep. We're going to separate into two groups. And then we're going to start cedar. Because we're looking to do some spring breeding for some fall landing. Yeah. And when we're talking cedars, you know, this is the time to get out and plant pastures, breed, replant aphil, whatever you're doing. And we're not talking about the S-E-E-D-E-R cedar. We're talking about the C-I-D-R, which stands for controlled internal drug release is device that we would insert into those sheep that has progesterone on there and helps to synchronize those used for that spring breeding season. Yeah. I remember how many years ago that I first used those. For the first couple of years, I had a lot of success with it. And then I started reading, well, I had done a lot of

4:16breeding in the beginning with, but I talked to some gal. And this was her tried intrude method. And that's what she did. So I did her way. And then I started reading where there were other ways to do it. And I thought, oh, those are even quicker. So I'll try those. Her way was, you put the cedars in. You left the cedars in for 12 days. They pulled the cedars out. You get into the half c-Cs of PG-600s and put the ramps with them. And that was what she tried and true method. Then to do some research, I found a boatload of different protocols. There's a five-day protocol. There's a seven-day protocol. There's a 10-day protocol. I think you could just keep going on and on with it. Yeah. And that's, you know, I'm sure there are people that have like their own, like, oh, with a nine-day protocol, I found to get the best results for this time. Yeah. Sure. There are breeders out there that in season and out of season. I know we've used them

5:20in season to try to limit our workload in that spring-laming event that I'm a big fan of that. I'm a big fan of using any type of tool technology we can put into place to make my life a little bit easier so that I can spend time doing other things. But I think the package label instructions are for that five-day insert and then pull it at day five. And then adaptations from that, from other protocols that, again, people have found to be successful. And have you decided or landed on one this year, Tom? I'm going back to the 12-day this time around. The last couple of times I've done it, I've had really porous success with it. I don't know. We had some major weather challenges right after and right during while we were trying to breed out of season. And I don't know if

6:23that was the issue. That was mainly heat and just unbelievably dry. Some of our ramps weren't as fertile as they should have been or dues were just maybe we, maybe they actually did conceive and then because it was so hot and dry, you know, they aborted their hands on it early on. Yeah, retain them. Yeah. So I don't know what the issue was, but both those times I used a much shorter window. And I haven't ever tried the five days, but I haven't gone down to the seven days. And if you have vaccine, my records are back, but obviously on 12 days, that just seemed to work better. So that's what we're going to try. Yeah, I think you bring up a really good point there, Tom, on, you know, we can spend the money because we have to remember, too. I think I saw just the other day on like the premiere one site, they were up to like 190 bucks or something. I may need to fact check that one because they are insane. Yeah, whatever. I don't remember what

7:27I first paid, but it was well under $100. Yeah. Yeah. And we were getting them for a while, a pack was 105 bucks. We'd buy them with a kind of a co-op group of breeders. And you know, we'd get a hundred packs across a number of breeders. And that seemed to work out pretty well. But yeah, I mean, it's definitely an investment. Yeah. So I've got a valley vet on these cedars. We've got 215 PBS Animal Health is 196. I don't see premiere ones on here, but I mean, those, those would be two reputable, you know, animal, yeah, premiere one is 189 for a pack of 20. So I mean, that's, that's $90. It's more expensive than what I remember paying for these not that long ago. So yeah, not only is the investment significant, the investment is more significant now than what it's ever been before. And one of the things you brought up was the fertility of the Rams. And you might be tired of hearing us talk about BSEs and checking those

8:31rams, but it's something that like as I talked to producers and we hear about some issues during breeding season here about just some of the stuff that we've had some issues with. Tom, you've seen some issues with, especially trying to get sheep bread for that December lambing windows of breeding those in July. Ram fertility, I can spend all the money in the world on synchronizing my use, get a phenomenal cycle through those sheep and get everything perfect. But if I have rams that aren't fertile, it's, it's all a waste. I still don't get lambs at the end of this. And so compared to the cedars, if we're being honest, the BSEs are cheap compared to the cedars. And especially if it makes it so that our whole situation isn't a waste. So I think that's where I would probably start is with the ram fertility side of things. And then how can we get in and adapt

9:38that that ester cycle to fit our needs in that out of season breeding application? Yeah, my breeding sound is exam has been, do you want to breed these hues? And they always say yes. And that's what I go with. Throw them in and go. Yeah, go and go. It's not the best thing in the world to do. I have kept, we keep fairly accurate records. We've used as many as three, four different rams I guess it was. And that has not seemed to be the issue. It's not as though one ram isn't getting anybody bred, but the others are. So it wouldn't surprise me a bit of the heat that definitely had something to do with that. They are kept in the barn so they're undershade. There's definitely a lot cooler in the barn than it would be outside. And we're hoping that you don't heat. Didn't have anything to do with that. But we're going to find out here. So we're getting ready to separate these here tomorrow. And we're going to do

10:43four use at a time in each group in each group. Yeah, so to kind of break that down, you've got two groups out of these 70 some odd use. You've got two groups and these are going to be single sire-mated groups. So you've got a ram. The goal for these is for you to collect all the data. For these to be enrolled in NSIP, you're going to collect all or collect all the data. But the set of use for one ram, set of use for another ram. And 12 days with the the cedar in those use, you're going to pull that. Give your two and a half cc's a PG 600. Yep. And then turn them in with the ram after you pull that and give the shot. And so you're doing four sheep per group. So eight use total. And your I think your system or protocol, maybe unique compared to,

11:44I know compared to what we've done in the past. And to some other breeders I've talked to, I know of other breeders that are doing what you're doing, but you're making sure that everybody has 12 days. So the four use that you're going to pull in 12 days from now, you're going to insert or well, 12 days from tomorrow, you're inserting four cedars into those four use and then per group. And then you're going to pull those in 12 days. And then how often are you pulling those every day, every other day? Every other day. So every other day we're going to insert cedars into four use in each group. And then after 12 days, then we start pulling cedars every other day out of four use in each group. Now, when we insert the cedars, we'll write that your tag number down of that you. And that first set of use in each group will paint a number one on their back with that blue animal paint. I guess there's different colors, but what we have is blue. So we'll paint

12:50a number one on that back. And that's our two purposes. We'll gather that group of sheep up, just grab the first four we come to for the most part, insert the cedars, paint the number one on them, let them go. And then we'll let that whole group go. Then we skip a day and we'll come back to that group again, gather them all up again, go through. And now the ones that have number one on, we don't have to grab them, check through your tag number. First year we did this. We didn't we didn't mark them. We just wrote to your tag numbers down. And it was surprising how many times we would grab you, read your tag number off, like a back of the last time. Yeah, yeah, just over and over and over again. So we started painting them. And till I say, well, you skip that day, gather those, use up, grab the ones that have not been painted yet. Write your tag number down,

13:50insert the cedar, paint number two on those. And then let them all go, skip a day. We'll just keep going through this till we get all the way through that group. And we're going to do that in both groups at the same time. Just so we have everything out, you know, all together and all our tools are there ready to work. Then when we hit day, technically day 13, because the very first day doesn't count as a day, you've got to wait till the next day before you get a day one. And then we come back and we will start and pull cedars. And we'll grab up that whole group of sheep, go through the number ones, pull the cedars, give them the two and a half cc's of PG 600. And at that point, you know, we're letting a ram in with them. Then from there on, as we're pulling cedars, and there's times where we have enough use, we're still inserting cedars on some sheep yet,

14:50but we'll have the ram in there with them. Yeah, because I mean, really, you're up north of 30, use a piece. So if you're pulling four per group every other day, you know, even even 28 use, you know, you're talking about 14 days worth of cedar poles. So you're you're up almost to three weeks. And this is something that I think, you know, a lot of times we need to have, I think really planned ahead of time for this stuff. This is not something that I would want to just hop on, say you're, you know, listen to this episode, say, oh, I need cedars. I'm going to order everything and then I'm just going to put them in and figure it out. I would sit down, pen and paper, and maybe I'll take the Troy Bishop approach like pencil and paper so you can erase it, change it. That's really what ends up happening. But it can turn into a logistics nightmare. And if not properly planned out, it can turn into a lot of work. I think it's

15:53still going to be a lot of work for what you guys are are doing, but there's a purpose for it. And as long as you have a plan, and like you said, you've figured out what things need to change, what items that it's like, hey, we need to start marking sheep because we're wasting time and adding frustration to grabbing sheep that we're reading ear tags and we've already put cedars in or pulled cedars out whatever it is. So just the logistics and planning on that side, I think is really, really important. One of the things too, Tom, that you mentioned here was the every other day on on pulling those cedars and exposing them to the ramp. And it would be really easy, but all your cedars in tomorrow, wait 12 days, pull all your cedars in 12 days, and then you only have to be out there for two days, one to insert them, one to pull them. We know with those two rams out there, we can't really ask him to go and breed 35

16:56years in a 24 hour period, maybe a 48 hour period depending on how they respond to that cedar pole. That's too many sheep for that ram to breed. And again, if we're going to invest the time and energy and money into putting these cedars in, then we want to see the greatest return on our investment. And so that's one of the biggest reasons I want to hit on that, not only pulling on a staggered timeframe, but you're even giving that ram a day of rest in between to kind of recuperate, make sure that if those use respond in 24 hours, great. If they respond in 48 hours, you're still okay. And gives him time to to cover those use. And hopefully that ends with a positive result. And we'll have all the ultrasound data from this here in a couple of months. So that'll be exciting to kind of come back and say, this is what was done. This is what we're seeing. How do we rank it? Was it good or was it bad? So, you know, that's kind of what's the

18:03textbook tell us, whether it's good or bad, and then what Tom, what Tom decides is good or bad, are probably two different things because like, we know, like, I know, Tom, and I know that if if we only stick 80%, we're going to be a little disappointed that 20% didn't really like it. Still be great. We'll still be thankful for it. But it's still frustrating when you're you're really trying, you really need to get sheet bread and you want it to work. So you're putting in the effort to that it should just happen. Yeah, well, we'll see what happens with it. If you read all the literature for whatever reason, it says that after you give the PG 600, that ram will that you should come into heat, the Rams should breathe here. Some I think it says 48 to 72 hours later. I think it's what the literature says. That's never been my observation. Usually I kind of cycle early after you pull it. I have given the shot and turned

19:12that you loose and the ram breezer immediately. Yeah. I mean, we're talking two minutes for Rams to breathe here. I don't think the PG 600 works that fast. I'm not sure exactly what the PG 600 does, but I think the ram says she's in heat and I'm going to breathe. So that is always amazed me. I talked to other people. They experience the same thing. But I have had a few use that did go. It was the next day. You would see her get bread. We have marking harnesses on those Rams. We can see who's getting covers who's not. The other part of this because it will be such a long window because there's so many use. Typically I do this with a group of maybe 10, 12 use per ram because it'll be so many use. There's a good possibility that some of these use are going to breathe just naturally. I'll see you.

20:13And so I have a marking harness on those Rams and we'll be able to know which use that has happened to. Yeah. I know we've got our spring breeding group in the barn now getting flushed and we've got a teaser in there with them with a harness on and we've been seeing some marks here. It's a little early. We're in a wait until late March, April to expose a lot of those sheep. But you know, those sheep are cycling now and we're seeing some daylight increase. You know, time of daylight is definitely going kind of in the wrong direction for our seasonal breeders. But you know, I enjoy it. So that's the yeah, I have more time to spend outside doing stuff. But yeah, we're headed in the wrong direction in terms of that natural seasonality of some of these sheep. But yeah, the teasers in there doing his job and

21:13we don't have any fancy lights or barns that are tight enough that we can do any type of you know, light cycle manipulation. So how the extent of what we're we're going to mess with is the the cedar and maybe some exogenous hormone. But but yeah. And then you've got a teaser as well that you're looking to put in. I think that's another one we think about the kind of the full like the big picture. Every variable or every aspect we can kind of implement to get our our best results. Having that teaser ram in there getting those used cycling ahead of time is is going to improve or should improve the effectiveness of using those cedars. Yeah, Ted's going to go in tomorrow. It's it's really late for putting our keys or in but it's just the way things have worked out this year. So some of those users are going to get that that ram effect. Others it's I don't know if we put the cedar in if the ram effect still helps or not

22:14but we'll find out. I do know folks that don't have a teaser ram and they'll end up putting the ram in a pen next to those use and that does help. I definitely believe that helps. But that teaser is really work. Those use need to be to put you away from those rams. They need to have no sight, no smell, no sound from those rams. We found when we could breathe in a barn and just because we have those rams in the barn the rams start making noises and the users respond and so we think that just like put them in the barn that they get some of that ram effect. But you know I know can you always say that the that there's that touch part of it where the you know the ram is out there. Yeah you know you know sliding up against those cows saying how you doing baby. Yeah that's kind of things. And there's no uh yeah there's no uh there's no

23:15mood music. If I thought that would help believe me I would have a stereo out there playing. Pipe it through the barn. Pipe it through the barn somehow. The other part of this too is these are all this is because of my barns full of use and lambs. We're going to do this up on the heavy used area and a small little very small pasture that we have enclosed with woven wire. And so we're going to use those two areas to do this. And I'm a little concerned because those areas are already getting tore up and kind of muddy. I don't know what this is going to look like by the time we're done. It might be a horrible mud mess. If some of this rain would just shell off for a while but things dry out sometimes. Oh man Tom you can't have it one way or the other. I know I don't think we ever have I don't think we've had a single episode of 160 episodes that we didn't complain about the weather at some point. Yeah we probably not sure at this point I don't know what would be the perfect weather. I know growing up I had a great uncle who said that we could

24:20just get it to rain an inch every Sunday. That would keep us from going out working on a Sunday and it'd be the perfect amount of rain every week. In a perfect world that doesn't sound terrible. No so I don't know that's never happened but yeah I'm thinking you know we should change name of the podcast and the guys who could play about the weather. What was the grazing weather podcast? The grazing weather podcast or the grieving weather podcast. It was just never the grape. Maybe the grape. That's great that may be an offshoot coming to a yeah a platform near you but yeah I mean it is weather podcast. We're never happy with it. It is the reality though of where we live that we do have a mud season and we're right now we're very fortunate. We've got for me personally we've moved use into the barn we're coming up into this like very late gestation

25:21period getting very close to to lambing the main group and kind of that floodgate will open hopefully but I don't mind not having sheep out on pasture right now and reality is like we would need to have a a truly defined sacrifice area and probably multiple sacrifice areas so that when one got pugged up and the pugging and the damage we see from sheep is not nearly what we see from other grazing animals like cattle or I just remember you're growing up we were hauling bales out cows all the time and you would leave 12 inches I mean the mud would be about up to the bottom of the tractor like you'd have just a clearance to get in put a bail in and then you you would just try to reclaim that ground for the next nine months until you had to put cows back in there and feed hay but it

26:23wasn't just the the area that you were feeding those cows it was the tractor tire ruts driving all the way out to the field every two days you know to get a bail out out to those cows you know that's something that as we've transitioned to being primarily a sheep operation we're not going back and fixing there are a couple little things here and there that you've got to drive around and gets money but you know that is off of the the job list and that was an annual job fixing those pastures and fixing those those tire ruts you know now we've got them in the barn we don't have to worry about hoof issues we don't have to worry about okay if if user out there what is their their welfare their comfort do they have somewhere dry to lay and what are what other issues are we creating then also we we've got to clean that up we've got to reclaim some of that as we

27:24move into the grazing season so yeah it's definitely a challenge when we think where we're at overwintering sheep this period of time I am less of a fan of managing sheep outside right now than when it was zero degrees out and the ground was frozen we had snowpack yeah that was ease wasn't the most fun to be outside but that was easy and I I felt good about how the use were doing handling that weather versus right now if they were out in that sacrifice lot yeah it's pretty money up there already the dry lot's not that bad um by the time we get to the end just uh oh just a little bit of the work that will come up on there and it won't be much but when it's wet then they just keep walking through it it's just you get this little little tiny bit of sludge right there on the top that they're all kind of walking through it's definitely yeah it

28:24can be slick and there is uh where there'll be eating round bails there'll be some waste around that and we have found there's the easiest way for us to put round bails in there especially when there's use in there is just to come in from the side and drop the I kind of toss the bail in with the skidler yeah and uh because this is dry bail then we can kind of flip it roll it but we try to move that feeding area around a little bit so that where the waste hay was it got a little bit of a dry spot to to get up on the lay down and I know in the other side um that's just grass there's no no base to it like the the heavy use area has and we can't even get a tractor in there without causing massive massive ruts and so we use the tractor it says the skidler it was so money on the outside that couldn't even get up close to the fence they'll use the portal drive tractor with a loader and again kind of flip that bail in and then we climbed in

29:29rolled that bailer where we wanted it set the feeder up and they think that's what we're going to have to do each time it just gets a bail in and then take the feeder down set it up around that bailing just to get through this this mud season but uh I think I have enough crowd panels and I can set things up and leave them set up in both uh in both areas there that we can take the dog run those sheep in hopefully one of a few days the sheep other day where they're going and we're going to this pen and then we get let back out yeah and uh had a group of ram lambs up there that would run from one side to the other and I could close that off so that I could get in there when the ground was frozen to you know put new hay in for them and they call them pretty quick first couple times they take the dog and they would kind of run around the dog would have to work on a good bit last couple of times to like put the dog in the dog would swing down around them and those sheep knew where they were going to go to keep skewing the dog

30:31because they're going the other side the dog would lay down and close that gate and we're going to shape so hopefully you figure the same thing out it's not a big uh a big rodeo every day to get those caught up but yeah and you know we think we have a plan yeah you've got the plan set and you just got the look to do it and I was going to say the uh between that and all your speaking engagements next week it's going to be a busy second week of March here. Yes I'm going to be up at the uh western Pennsylvania grazing conference in Clarion, Pennsylvania I was speaking there in the afternoon we're going to talk about the parasite issues and how you can combat those so it'd be awesome to have a bunch of people there for that for sure. Well that's a really nice conference I mean this will come out of the conference on Tuesday and if you're within I would say within a three to four hour drive of Clarion PA like I would run over I mean the the times that I've been to that conference for regional grazing

31:36discussion and an educational event they do a really nice job of putting that event on. Yeah I know um so they have breakout sessions all throughout the day and then the main speaker Steve Kenyan he's a good friend of mine from Alburga Canada he runs uh oh custom grazing operation and in the summer months it's no big deal for him to have you know 800 cows that he's custom grazing it's it's amazing to listen to him talk just the scale it's just so different the basis of it's the same but the scale is just so different and uh W interesting the first time it gets me him in person some excited to meet him and his wife and new baby and all that and uh but at that conference they have all these breakout sessions and then the morning they will ask you how many people are going to session A how many people are going to session B if you raise your hand everybody counts and so they have all these smaller rooms so they decide you know what what they're going to go into and then the most people will put their hands up for any

32:39give a session that's held in the big room so I thought it would be awesome that there'd be enough people there to listen to me speak that it has to be held in the big room I don't I don't know if that's going to happen but it'd be pretty cool to live yeah and I know we were talking about your your PowerPoint slides I had a very was just telling Megan I had a very fulfilling day yesterday talked with you for a long time we probably spent most of our time actually talking about the three-pronged pitchforks then actual content um and then I showed you the major I showed you the major difference yeah well and I'm gonna tell you I told you yesterday I I probably shouldn't share this like on the podcast because then it's competing bitters but it's like I have got to just pound some of these options this spring summer and find one because I've convinced on the three-pronged pitchfork and this what's crazy is if we had a log of how much time we've spent talking about three-pronged pitchforks 26 I'm not sure I feel comfortable sharing it because it

33:43might be a little embarrassed but I bet we spent half an hour talking about them at the Ohio grazing conference yeah yeah there were vendors there selling these and Tom was just beside himself he's like oh you see these square times this things were way too heavy and this you know the handle is not ergonomically yes for fork and hay like what are they doing like oh man I've got a lot to learn about pitchfork yeah I've got to I have got to find something one of these options and yeah Tom's gonna be the first first call but yeah ended up at it Tom's dropping some sheep off and then swung back through Daniel Aurez had some teaser rams we're just talking about teasers he made a bunch of teaser rams yesterday you know just plug for him if you need some he's been yeah he's been even teaser rams for as long as not as long as I've known him but most of his adult life he's been selling teaser rams and has a pretty good market there and they go and work so I ended up having having one made that we had here and couldn't fit another one on

34:49the the back of the truck but ended up buying another one from him so worked out worked out in his favor but yeah it was just a fulfilling day of sheep conversation and friends and it was something I was again telling me it's like it was just fun you know if if you can't enjoy being in this industry and hanging out with the people that make up this industry I wonder what are we doing why I there's a lot of other things I can waste my time doing and I don't think what I'm doing is wasting my time so it was yeah very fulfilling and enjoyable day but even if it was three prong pitch fork conversation I was just happy to see you know it like we're running out of time here but to go back you know five years or whatever not four or five years meeting Tom and having those conversations with Tom then versus now and like presenting at this grazing conference like could all of the items that you were bringing up yesterday could put you on the biggest stage

35:53in the industry across the country and it's like he would relate to the people in the audience and everything that's coming out would be sound and just common sense practical sheep management topics and yeah that was something it's like why why why is there a hurdle for people to do this so I wish I could make it I'm going to be on the road next week but if you can make it over there and we might have to have Tom do a little uh a little rundown of the presentation afterwards that would be yeah might have to be fun I don't have anything in there about three prong pitchforks though it may need to be added it definitely on my manifest strategies so well we thank you for listening to another episode of the Gracious sheep podcast there's a Facebook page there's a YouTube channel he's reached out to me at maketompercusesgmail.com if you do come up that conference be sure to come up and say hello this is always positive in people and for

36:53camp hopefully we'll talk to you next week there buddy yeah sounds good all right bye