Where are all the sheep going? –Aug 1986

Not too long ago, retired Iowa State
University extension livestock specialist,
Tom Wickersham, wondered out loud in
a newspaper article he authored, why
sheep numbers have resumed their
steady fall in recent years when good
prices should be warranting good profits.
Tom noted a few possible explanations,
but mostly tossed out the question as food
for thought.
I’ve mulled this over in my own mind
for a long time. And though the answers
may be a little different for some, I’ve
come up with a list that I know fits us, and
I think fits a lot of other Midwestern pro-
ducers. They follow in what I consider to
be their order of importance.
1. Production and performance. Ten
years ago when ASPC’s “Blueprint for
Expansion” program was in full swing, a
tremendous amount of new and extremely
useful information concerning lamb pro-
duction and sheep flock management
became readily available. The potential for
profit was obvious, and many new pro-
ducers came into the business while lots
of seasoned veterans plunged forward
with expansion. But the follow-up was
poor. And when producers ran into prob-
lems or needed help in implementing the
plans that looked so good on paper, often-
times the hands-on assistance they
needed wasn’t there. In my opinion, this
is why the sheep program at Pipestone,
Minnesota, has been so singularly suc-
cessful. The program doesn’t just tell you
what is possible, then leave you dangling.
Though our lambing rates and pounds
of lamb marketed per ewe are consider-
ably above the average for the state of
Iowa, they are still much below what is
possible. With our current costs, it takes
about 140 percent lamb crop marketed to
break even. A 150 percent crop should
generate more than $20 per ewe profit.
But pushing that to 175 percent would
more than double net per ewe. At 120 per-
cent, which is about Iowa’s average, there
is no profit, thus little expansion will oc-
cur unless most of the operations are of
a hobby nature.
Most sheep organizations now are em-
phasizing promotion almost exclusively.
Most check-off dollars are going for that

or to finance research. Those two areas
are very important in the long run and for
the industry as a whole. But the individual
producer functions only in the short-term,
day-to-day cash flow world. And if you
can’t sell lamb and wool right ncNI for less
than it costs you to produce it right now,
you’ll not be in business long enough to
enjoy any long term benefits that may
derive from promotion and research.
2. Coyotes. Despite several helpful
techniques, including electric fence,
guard dogs, scare devices, and others,
pasturing lambs in our area is chancier
than any game in Vegas. There is little
doubt that a pasture lambing operation is
the lowest cost, highest profit situation
here-if you can keep the sheep alive!
But predators can negate that profit poten-
tial in one night, too.
3. Lack of lambing time labor. This
limitation is really just an extension of the
coyote problem mentioned above, for if
predation weren’t a problem, we would
shed lamb only a small number of ewes
in winter. I would venture to say that at-
tended shed lambing is the bottleneck for
virtually every commercial Midwestern
sheep operation. Most farmers produce
enough feed for flocks, two, three,
perhaps even several times larger than
what they have, but they simply can’t take
care of any more at lambing time.
Predator-proof pasture lambing could
eliminate this obstacle to Midwest expan-
sion altogether.
4. Desire to reduce or eliminate debt.
Many southern Iowa farmers have sold
their sheep right along with the cows in
order to whittle interest payments down
to manageable size. In some cases, this
has worked; in many others, it has mere-
ly bandaged a scratch while more severe
wounds continue to bleed. Unfortunate-
ly, earning power is whittled right along
with indebtedness when the animals go,
especially if the producer was efficient in
his business. But at any rate, when the
banker says “you will,” you usually do if
it’s his money!
5. General pessimism. Most commer-
cial farmers believed during the inflated
boom years of the late ’70’s that the good

times would never end. If they are still in
business now, the mood is just the oppo-
site-that we may never see boom times
again. Many feel betrayed, and are sus-
picious of markets they consider to be
manipulated by traders, packers, whole-
salers, super large feeding operations,
government, or all the above. Whether the
suspicions are true or not is really irrele-
vant. As long as producers perceive them
to be true, they’ll not invest in expansion.

Originally published The Shepherd Magazine August 1986