Heavy Lambs and Product Promotion –Sept 1986

In the sheep business as with the rest
of life, I guess the tendancy is to look else-
where for a scapegoat when things go
wrong-even when a mirror might show
us the real culprit.
I was reminded of it again this past
week when I saw that industry officials
were voicing concern that cheap corn this
year will encourage Midwest farmers to
feed their lambs to excessive weights,
thus creating a large price spread be-
tween heavy and handy-weight carcasses.
I think I’ve heard this lament, mostly
from western ranchers, every year corn
prices have dipped below three dollars.
At meetings where this was discussed,
the mere fact that I was from Iowa seemed
to imply guilt. I would look down at the
floor a lot as I weakly tried to explain that
corn price wasn’t really that big a factor
in Iowa because most of the feeding op-
erations were small, and more than like-
ly used their own corn anyway.
It never seemed to get me off the hook.
Than one March a few years ago, fol-
lowing an ASPC board meeting in Denver,
a couple of friends and I decided to visit
a local lamb slaughtering plant before
catching a plane back to Des Moines. and
there, low and behold, within shouting dis-
tance of ASPC headquarters, and right
under the noses of some of those ranch-
ers who had voiced righteous concern,
was one of the sources of a serious heavy
lamb problem.
I remember wondering aloud if some
hogs had somehow found their way into
the kill line as a 98-pound carcass floated
past the scale window along with count-
less others that were in the 80’s. Nearby,
literally thousands of 150-pound-plus
lambs waddled dully around feedlots we
were told were operated by packers.
Never before had I seen so many lambs
so grossly overfed. And incidentally, I’ve
never seen anything that would even
vaguely compare to it back here in “corn
country!”
When you read this, the National Sheep
and Wool Referendum will be history. Re-
gardless of your opinions regarding that,
some serious questions need to be ad-
dressed before we go too much further
with promotional efforts. This point was

etched firmly in my mind recently by a
comment from a young New Zealand ag
trainee visiting in this country. His parents
operate a sheep and cattle station.
He said that his country’s National
Sheep Board believes (as I do) that our
promotional efforts here have been both
effective and efficient in recent years. But
where the rub for us comes is that as our
Kiwi friend bluntly pointed out, “You
Yanks just don’t have that much to sell.”
Right now lamb slaughter is running
nine percent below year ago levels. if this
were a mere blip on the charts, it wouldn’t
be too alarming. But it’s been going on
unabated for 30 years except for a brief
respite in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
Sadly, the young trainee was right on
the mark. For promotion and advertising
to work, both demand and the product
have to be there. It goes back to the first
law of merchandizing: “You can’t sell it
if it ain’t on the shelf.”
When ours isn’t, guess who’s will be…

Originally published The Shepherd Magazine September 1986