The Pipestone Lamb and Wool Program is hosting an in-person Lambing Time Short Course and Bus Tour Fe. 4-5 at the Minnesota West Community and Technical College in Pipestone, Minn.

The program, consisting of classroom instruction and on-farm visits, helps educate producers to recognize and deal with common problems at lambing time. Sheep veterinarian Larry Goelz will lead learning and discussion on common lamb and ewe health problems. Two sheep farms will be visited on the second day of the short course.

Farms on the tour are Caskey Pine Lawn Farms and Blair Hellewell’s farm.

Caskey Pine Lawn Farms, Holland, is a multigenerational, family-owned sheep farm that manages a performance-based operation and a commercial-based operation. It recently added a new lambing barn to enhance ewe and lamb comfort and to make flow-through more efficient. The lambing barn includes a self-contained lamb milk replacer room with independent ventilation, slated flooring and storage pit. There’s also a cold-housing pole barn, a hoop barn and a self-feeding dry forage system.

Hellewell, a New Zealand native, partners with another family on his Balaton farm with 450 commercial ewes. He and his team use a multiple lambing-period system to efficiently use facilities and labor. Hellewell converts an open-front pole barn into an insulated, mechanically ventilated lambing barn. He has incorporated numerous labor-saving concepts to enable handling a lot of sheep with minimal effort.

Here is the 2022 Lambing Time Short Course and Bus Tour schedule:

Feb. 4

6:30 p.m. Registration
7 p.m. Welcome — Opening remarks: Philip Berg
7:15 p.m. Cost-Effective Ewe Feed Rations: Philip Berg
8 p.m. Effective use of Records and Benchmarks: Ann Kolthoff
8:45 p.m. Preparing for Lambing
9:30 p.m. End of evening program

Feb. 5

8 a.m. Registration
8:10 a.m. Opening remarks: Philip Berg
8:30 a.m. Making Lambing Time Easier: Philip Berg
9:15 a.m. Handling Common Ewe Health Concerns: J.L. Goelz
10 a.m. Break
10:15 a.m. Getting Lambs Off to a Good Start: Ann Kolthoff
11 a.m. Managing the Leading Killers of Baby Lambs: J.L. Goelz
Noon. Lunch
1 p.m. Board buses
1:45 p.m. Tour Blair Hellewell farm. View lambing barn layout, expanded metal flooring in lambing pens, self-feeding soybean hulls to ewes, low labor-management concepts, electronic record keeping.
2:45 p.m. Board buses
3:30 p.m. Tour Caskey Pine Lawn Farms. View self-feeding ground forages, easy sheep flow through lambing barn, milk replacer lambs raised on plastic flooring, tubing lambs, fixing inverted eyelids, hoop barns for sheep, year-round drylot feeding.
4:30 p.m. Board buses
5 p.m. Arrive back at Minnesota West College

The cost for the program is $115. A minimum enrollment of 20 people is needed, with a maximum of 100 paid registrants.

For more information and to register online, visit the Pipestone Sheep webpage at pipestonesheep.com. To register with a credit card by phone, call Sue Lovell at 507-847-7929.

Source: Pipestone Lamb and Wool, which is solely responsible for the information provided and is wholly owned by the source. Informa Business Media and all of its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.