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NOTE: There were 3 speakers identified in this transcript. Speaker separation errors can arise when multiple speakers speak simultaneously.
0:00:00 - Cal
On today's episode, we start out discussing hair sheep and then we transition to biosecurity, which is an important topic for anyone out there. It's a really good listen, so let's get started with the Fast Five. What's your name?
0:00:16 - Wyatt
I'm Wyatt Catron.
0:00:17 - Samanatha
I'm Samantha, or Sam.
0:00:21 - Cal
Which do you prefer, Samantha or Sam?
0:00:23 - Samanatha
It really doesn't matter to me.
0:00:24 - Cal
Yeah, it's kind of like when my wife yells at me, it really doesn't matter to me. Yeah, it's kind of like when my wife yells at me, it doesn't matter what she calls me, I'm going to come running. You're still in trouble either way. Yeah, either way. If I get by with her just using a little bit of my name, it's better than the whole name. But that's yeah. What's your farm's name?
0:00:43 - Wyatt
So it's Paragon Ranch. They're based out of Stillwater Oklahoma, so that's where we've got the U Flock.
0:00:49 - Cal
Very good. And that answered our next question Where's the farm located? Stillwater, what animal? Or sorry, I almost jumped ahead. What year did you start?
0:00:59 - Wyatt
grazing animals. We started in 2019. The flock got to Stillwater in early 2020, at least Okay. So we've been doing it up there for a bit.
0:01:11 - Cal
Yeah, and what species do you graze?
0:01:14 - Wyatt
Predominantly low input hair sheep. So we try to make hair sheep that are really parasite resistant, very maternal and still make really good easy keeper use. We do bring in some custom-grazed cattle. That's all we've got as far as enterprises. We also sell fiberglass posts Some of that going on but those don't eat much grass.
0:01:35 - Cal
Yeah, typically not, but you'll lose a little bit of area wherever they're stacked. Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, the podcast dedicated to sharing the stories of grass-based livestock producers and exploring regenerative practices that improve the land, animals and our lives. I'm your host, Cal Hartage, and each week we'll dive into the journeys, challenges and successes of producers like you, learning from their experiences and inspiring each other to grow and graze better. Whether you're a seasoned grazer or just getting started, this is the place for you. Attention ranchers, are you ready to boost your ranch's profitability in 2025? Join Noble Research Institute for Noble Profitability Essentials in McKinney, Texas, this January 28th-29th. This transformative two-day course will help you unlock the full potential of your land and livestock. Noble's experienced advisors, with over 200 years of combined experience, will guide you through proven strategies to enhance your bottom line. You'll learn how to improve soil health, maximize forage quality, reduce costly inputs and optimize stocking rates. This course is designed to address your unique challenges and build lasting solutions for your ranching operation. Through hands-on activities and interactive conversations, you'll gain valuable skills to create a more resilient, productive and profitable ranch that will thrive for generations. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from the best and secure your ranching legacy. Space is limited, so visit nobleorg today to enroll in Noble Profitability Essentials in McKinney, Texas, January 28th 29th. Invest in your land, livestock and livelihood this January.
Ten seconds about the farm. I really don't have too much, except you all will understand this, as I sat down to record this, I got a phone call and I had cattle out, so went and got them in and got to repair a little bit of fence. At least the weather was nice we have some cooler weather coming in though. For 10 seconds about the podcast. Thank you. For 2024, we are over 301,000 downloads for the lifetime of the podcast downloads for the lifetime of the podcast. So we ended 2024.
In 2024, I didn't look up that number, but I think we're about 160 downloads for sorry, we're about 160,000 downloads for that year. So very good. Wishing you a happy new year, Excited to see your growth for this year, and hope you stick with us throughout the new year. Also, on the podcast, today we're talking about biosecurity with Wyatt and Samantha. If there's something I didn't ask, shoot me a message. I think on the website you can even leave a voice message. Leave one of those and I'll get in touch with Wyatt and we'll record a follow-up episode. To get started in our conversation today, tell us what you're doing currently and then we'll hop into your background.
0:04:53 - Wyatt
Okay, so I'm a mobile food animal veterinarian. I work at the Joplin Regional Stockyards and Leach Livestock Auction. When I'm not at those two places, do mobile work and leech livestock auction. When I'm not at those two places, do mobile work. We focus predominantly on small remnants so I'm licensed in six states now. So we go all over providing services to flocks that are big or small, all varieties.
0:05:16 - Cal
Very good and Sam.
0:05:18 - Samanatha
Yes, so I'm a postdoc fellow at the University of Arkansas, so I basically graduated with my PhD in May and stayed on within my lab to continue my research, and so my research is on the respiratory microbiome and its role in bovine respiratory disease.
0:05:35 - Cal
And that's very impressive. I'm sorry it's got that Arkansas part in there being an OSU alumni you know, but okay yeah.
0:05:52 - Wyatt
Did you both have interests in cattle and grazing growing up? Yeah, so I grew up on a we call it a hobby farm, like we had all kinds of stuff, and I always thought that I'd be in a real mixed practice somewhere, you know, working on a little bit of everything. And then, the more I in college, the more I was exposed to it. I was like, you know, what I really want to do is be helping livestock producers and that's what got me to where I'm at today is helping them make like. Our mission for Catering Veterinary Services is helping our producers be more productive and profitable, because I feel like that's needed in every operation. Oh, yeah, yeah.
0:06:29 - Samanatha
I grew up on a commercial cow-calf operation in southern Oklahoma and I was always really interested in science from a very young age, like I used to. Apparently I don't remember this, but my parents say I used to ask them to read me the Merck vet manual, but I never wanted to be a vet.
0:06:40 - Cal
Oh yes.
0:06:40 - Samanatha
And for some reason which doesn't make a lot of sense. But then I went to Oklahoma State and majored in animal science and got involved in undergrad research and kind of fell in love with the laboratory and the microbiology side of stuff.
0:06:54 - Cal
Oh yes, and does Wyatt get you out helping with the sheep? Very much.
0:06:58 - Samanatha
Yes.
0:06:59 - Cal
I was afraid of that.
0:07:00 - Wyatt
you know you have to do farm calls.
0:07:03 - Samanatha
Yeah, sometimes farm call.
0:07:12 - Cal
Yeah, right that you know a few farm calls. Yeah, sometimes our call. Yeah, right now. Regente practices when did you all become aware of more regente practices when you grow?
0:07:15 - Wyatt
when you were growing up, were regente practices the norm no, it was when we, when I was starting out, I wanted to get some sheep. The real reason I got sheep is I wanted to practice, so, artificial insemination. Oh yes, so I I got a small flock of wool sheep thing. One thing after another, tried to expand those and the bank wouldn't give me any money because they're like oh, we can't give you a loan on sheep. Sheep don't make any money. There's no like with cattle. We know the value of them. That that's what their thing was. I started looking at different ways to basically finance stuff and looking at grazing, because you know, if you've only got a small place, you need to make the most use of that grass. And so that's what got me started down that path. We we actually ended up. I bought a small flock of sheep with just the cash I had sold them and then realized, hey, I can buy some stalker calves, we can leverage those stalker calves to buy more sheep oh yes, yeah, because the bank alone attic.
Yeah, because they have a value to the bank and so the bank will loan you money against them. And so that's what kind of jump started us back into the sheep world. And those the first set was we'll use, and in April, when I sheared them for the first time, I said I'm never doing that again, oh yeah.
0:08:36 - Cal
That's why we were into hair sheep. When I was in high school, in FFA I showed dairy cattle and I'd see all the people with the sheep and the amount of times they sheared them and shaped them Like I'm never having sheep and yeah, and then the pig people. Just all the work, I was like dairy cattle is much easier, of course, then you're milking twice a day, so it's a little debatable, yeah, Depends on the work you want to do. I guess Right exactly what you find fun versus what you find tedious.
0:09:17 - Samanatha
Yeah, yeah, sam, when were you?
0:09:18 - Cal
introduced to regenerative practices? I probably might be. Oh yeah, so how did you educate yourself on regenerative practices, Wyatt?
0:09:27 - Wyatt
YouTube University was probably the biggest one. Oh yeah, youtube videos. Listening to podcasts I got really into podcasts in undergrad. I mean, I see you've got a stack of books behind you there. This is one of the bookshelves. Oh yes.
0:09:41 - Samanatha
The last stack of them.
0:09:49 - Wyatt
Yeah, the all kinds of books, and that's kind of how I got exposed to that was through YouTube, reading different books, like we haven't been to Raging for Profit, but following some of those guys, oh yeah. They're great for the program.
0:09:57 - Cal
Yeah, just on that tangent, have you read the books by? I'm trying to think David Pratt's books. I couldn't think of his name.
0:10:04 - Wyatt
So let's see, I've got both of them, but it's one of those deals that my trend is. You don't have to explain.
0:10:13 - Cal
I want to say I've read all of these and I guess I'll put it on the record I'm a better book buyer than I am a book reader.
0:10:21 - Samanatha
Now, I have every intention of making it.
0:10:23 - Cal
Yeah, I love books and just getting to them takes some time. I really enjoyed the Pratt's books. They're they're not quite the writing style I enjoy and like, but there's a lot of information in there and I really thought they were really good. And then, just falling on that ranching for profit, I haven't been there yet. One of these days I'll make it, yeah.
0:10:45 - Wyatt
Well, and I was lucky enough at the OSU library, they had a. It was actually by Stan Parsons. You know the original ranching for profit. Yes, his blue book in there, and so I read it out for several weeks and that's what I was going through all that and it looked like his printed on typewriter.
0:11:01 - Cal
But oh yes. Well, that's very, very interesting. I'm actually needing to go down to the library. There's a book on breeds I'm wanting to look at and they have a copy. So I have to add that to my list to go down there and look at yeah, it was really neat.
0:11:14 - Wyatt
I was and that's what gave me a lot of exposure to the range of profit stuff other than what's out there on the internet stuff right, right.
0:11:22 - Cal
So what were some of those YouTube channels you found most beneficial, greg?
0:11:26 - Wyatt
Judy's got a great one. Greg Christensen we read Greg. Oh, yes, following him and what he's doing. I mean there's quite a few and just different lectures that they'll have recorded. That's somebody who recorded a conference and then put it online, yes, and there's several of those like different Bondsma lectures and Johan Zietzman.
0:11:49 - Cal
I really enjoyed those, oh yes, yeah, I think oftentimes I need to put together a list of those videos out there and I know I don't know them all. But yeah, when you start searching, there's a lot out there, but sometimes they're hard to find. When you got the wool sheep, did you start implementing more regenerative practices into your practice then I?
0:12:12 - Wyatt
did, because we had to make do with the pasture we had, and so we started rotationally grazing a little bit and getting that exposure, and then, when the stalker calves came in, that's when I bought some polywire and we started to expand that.
0:12:27 - Cal
Now, when you started rotating those sheep the first ones I'm going to put you on the spot again, wyatt. Sorry about this, but when you started grazing those first sheep, were you doing it because you thought this is going to be more regenerative, I'm going to be able to grow more grass, or was it for more parasite management?
0:12:45 - Wyatt
That's a great question. So I think it was probably for the grass side of things. Oh yeah, it's definitely both of them. We see both sides of it. Oh it is you get more grass, you get more rest and then you have less parasites if you're good about it. You know, as a veterinarian, we see some guys that come back too fast. Oh yeah, parasite issues, but yeah for come back too fast. And oh yeah, parasite issues, but yeah, for the most part, managing your grazing takes care of all three of those yeah, I know a lot of times when I talk to people.
0:13:11 - Cal
If it's cattle, they're like I need more grass, I need lower inputs. If it's cheaper goats, they're like I gotta keep these things healthy. Yeah, and it benefits both of those. Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah. So you brought in stalkers. When you brought in those stalkers, did you go back and buy wool sheep, or was that your point? You went with the hair sheep.
0:13:34 - Wyatt
That was the point I went with the hair sheep Because I said it took me like two days to shear 10 ewes and I said I can't do this again Like my back hurts. If we said I can't do this again Like my back hurts If we grow, we're not. Definitely not, because the only sheep shear that I knew of in the time was actually west of Stillwater and these ewes were all in eastern Oklahoma. Oh yes, and so I was like not driving half a trailer load to Stillwater to hang around all day and then bring them back, and so got into the hair sheep because the market easier to market too as well oh yeah, yeah.
0:14:11 - Cal
You're starting to see lots of hair sheep around, just kind of like goats have blown up over the last couple decades.
0:14:17 - Wyatt
You're seeing goats a lot more well, last night at leech that's somewhere in there had what 2000 head in and I'd say 80 of those were sheep and goats and then of that 80, most of them were hair sheep oh, yes, yeah, I I have not been to leech auction.
0:14:37 - Cal
I've heard about it and I've often thought I'd get over there. We typically market ours through diamond missouri. Okay, yeah. So yeah, one of these days I'll have to make over a leech. See what they're doing over there yeah, it's a.
0:14:50 - Wyatt
It's a neat place. I really enjoy Joe and Kyla like they've been really good to me and we do all the ultrasounding for their special placement sale they have twice a year.
0:14:58 - Cal
Oh yes, it's been a good opportunity for us when you went with hair sheep, what breeds did you go with or what were you looking for for those initial sheep?
0:15:10 - Wyatt
So I knew that they were going to be grazing. So parasite resistance was key for me Because of OSU. They had a hair sheep flock already and they had got into the Hopping Brothers genetics early on. Oh yes, and being exposed to those ewes, how they were so parasite resistant, they were moderate, easy fleshing, like that's. When I knew I was like, okay, we need to find some more of these hopping sheep. And so all of our ewes are hopping in some way, whether they're direct from Joe and Haas through Greg Christensen or you got a few from Lee Ford. Oh, they're all. All of those are hopping genetics, kind of separated by time and place.
0:15:52 - Cal
Oh yes. So as you work on more parasitic resistance and Mormon maternal abilities, are you staying within those lines or are you bringing in some others?
0:16:02 - Wyatt
So we've historically stayed within those lines and tried to keep buck limbs out of the best or the best buck limbs that we see at the time when we go through and work everything. And the way we've historically done it is we've kept, you know, 10 to 20% buck limbs intact that we thought were good. And then, you know, there's always going to be fallout as they go, as they age, and so by the time breeding season comes around, there's always going to be fallout as they age. And so by the time breeding season comes around, there's usually some that you really like and some that you thought you really liked, and so we turned those out as buck lands and kept a yearling buck or two around as the second cycle came in. But this year we actually did something different. I've got a client that raises easy cares. Oh yes, yeah, that breed, that's a half Romanov, a quarter white door per quarter ton. So we bought some bucklings from him, actually kicked them out. Our goal is to increase our lead crowd.
0:16:55 - Cal
oh yes, entity, that's the reason those came well, I'm I'm very interested in genetics on both sides. I'd love to get a couple hopping brothers rams in here. I'd love to get a couple Hopping Brothers rams in here. I'd love to get an Easy Care ram or two in here and try them out. We're very Katahdin based and we raise our own rams, I think, but I think it's time we introduced some new blood, and that's definitely the areas that I'm looking at to introduce into my flock.
0:17:22 - Wyatt
Yeah, yeah, I think both those sheep had their place. Like the easy cares, he's more of a confinement operation, so I'm interested to see how those lambs do in pasture. For us that will be, but I think we've got enough parasite resistant already built into those ewes that I don't think we'll see him struggle too much on. Oh, yeah.
0:17:41 - Cal
Yeah, that'll be interesting to follow that and see how that goes for you. Now, one thing I always struggle with is picking out RAMs that I want to keep, because here's an issue I have that you may not have, because you're probably going through an ultrasound in yours. That gives you a leg up, but making sure I'm looking at a twin ram versus a single ram, because those single rams can look really nice.
0:18:11 - Wyatt
Yeah, yeah, they can, and that's what most of the time it's observation in the pasture and that's you know. Over in Australia they want everything to look white, like all their sheep breeds are white. Oh, yes, I prefer a little bit of color because when you go out in the pasture you know I can think out those names and be like okay, there's twin lambs.
This one's got weird spots on his head Right and I kind of write it down where I take a picture. So when it comes time to work them, when they're 20 yards away, and then when we get into the pen, I can find those ones that I really like. To make sure those gets pulled out, oh yeah.
0:18:47 - Cal
Are you tagging lambs when they're born?
0:18:50 - Wyatt
We did the first year, first two years and then it just got to be too much labor, like there's too much going on and we haven't found a better way yet. You know there's some nice technologies coming out that hopefully make that easier, but tagging at birth worked great until we had too many sheep.
0:19:09 - Cal
I've tried it. I've had mixed results with it. I think I caused too many orphans one year when I was tagging early. I think I was tagging too early, but I'm slow, so I need to catch them when they're young. Yeah, in the hours, not days. That's good.
0:19:28 - Wyatt
And tagging at birth does give you a good opportunity to get that. Like there's a few guys that do a maternal maternal score and so does that. You take off like it kind of helps on the maternal side, but still it's just the labor that goes into it. You got to be out there like we were twice a day before school going out checking everything, and then after classes we're coming back out re-tagging and it works good on the front end and on the back end, but when you're having 10 to 20 lambs a day, oh yeah, something comes up. It's just that's the first thing that got dropped. It was like look, later.
0:20:02 - Cal
Well, and I know from y'all's Facebook, you guys are not very busy, so I don't know how you get everything accomplished. So good job on that.
0:20:13 - Wyatt
Well, thankfully right now in Stillwater I've got two guys that work part time for me. Oh yes, between both of them we managed to get a lot of the stuff done that needs to be done, and if it wasn't for them, there'd be a lot that got dropped.
0:20:26 - Cal
Well, actually I have that wrote down. How are you able to manage regeneratively long distance?
0:20:34 - Wyatt
long distance. So it's been, that's been a learning curve because, like when I was so we were when I was still in school and we were grazing hard, I was trying to rotate those ewes every one to three days. We've kind of backed off that just a little bit now. Oh yes, and the way our, the way our operation works is it's all leased ground but it's all separate different pastures, and so that was really handy too is we can chop down the pastures that we're in and manage them that way. Oh yes, and so our biggest place is 100 acres. We've got some smaller, like a 10-acre piece, that we go to, and that was very easy because we drive the used down the road. They hit the 10 acres for a day or two and then we go to a different place further down the road.
0:21:23 - Cal
Oh yeah, are all of those fenced with permanent sheep type fencing, or are you having to go in and do anything there?
0:21:33 - Wyatt
It's a mix of all the above. So our main place, it already had nice two by four wire in it and so that's where we try to land. Keep those ewes on, it just reduces predator pressure. And then, as those lambs are a little bit older, we go into places that they've got offset high tensile wire off of the marb wire fields and then we've got we've got another pasture that's crossed too, and it's one of those things you just make it work. But he's got a lot of there's a lot of town dogs out there, but they've also got a lot of coyote pressure and so we don't guard dogs out to that pasture, we just pin at night. And oh yeah, we learned the first year that we're only taking mature, dry ewes out there, because we had two baby issues where it was like I know she had a pair of lambs this morning. Oh yeah, yeah, we learned, just take, once the lambs are weaned, they go out to that pasture because they're dry and can go run on those different packs, right, and that makes sense.
0:22:33 - Cal
On your offset high tensile are you just one strand?
0:22:38 - Wyatt
I think you do it with one. Greg Christensen up in Kansas does it with one. We put two because I like to do it. Oh yeah, and we did have some Spanish goats.
0:22:48 - Cal
Oh okay, that's a whole different game.
0:22:50 - Samanatha
Emphasis on dead.
0:22:51 - Wyatt
Yeah, emphasis on dead, and they stayed in really well on that offset. I think there's an animal, there's, there's a depth perception issue with those right, and so I think they're going to walk into it every time. First, you get shocked rather than being able to judge. Oh yeah, and I mean the issues we have with the spanish goats. They were getting out on our good fences, oh yeah.
0:23:15 - Cal
They found some rocks. They'll help you find any holes you have.
0:23:21 - Wyatt
Yes, they were very good at that. Yeah, I live with my father-in-law with the rest of his spanked goats.
0:23:28 - Cal
Oh, yes, yeah. So was that Sam's idea to get into the goats?
0:23:36 - Samanatha
It was really your idea.
0:23:37 - Wyatt
Yeah.
0:23:38 - Cal
I like baby goats, so yeah, I tell people all the time that my favorite animal on the farm are the goats. They just have so much personality. They make me say words. I didn't know I wanted to say, but I love my goats. I've got a dozen head out here. I'd sold all down and then I bought a few more because I enjoy them most of the time.
0:24:04 - Wyatt
Those other times we were like I don't know if we should be running.
0:24:07 - Cal
There's other times I don't carry a rifle on my pickup because those other times happen and we would be having goat stew yeah. Times happen and we would be having goat stew yeah. On the. The fence on your offset is that are you coming in so far in front of that fence and setting like a temporary fence or temporary or fiberglass pole, or do you have those offsets that set on your fence pushing out?
0:24:35 - Wyatt
I like the fiberglass just because it's going to stay away from that fence. It's a very rigid piece so we go a foot out and a foot up, oh okay, like on that second wire. It's two foot up, oh yeah, but I like the rigidity of those fiberglass posts, whereas I think those pin locks or something like that, where you've got a place, you know they break. We do have beer that come through there, as I can tell it still hooks sometimes with that barb and so you can bring it out and flip it off. But I think with those plastic pieces or even the metal ones, we'd still have some issues, oh yeah, with being able to pull that fence away from the existing fence.
0:25:16 - Cal
We went through and put a lot of those offsets, the metal, out there with the pin. Yeah, yeah, in places we didn't get them close enough together. They're getting tangled up in the bob wire and that does so good for the electric fence running. So, yeah, has some issues. Yeah, sam, I want to include you more in this conversation. What, what have you told why he should do with the sheep that he's not done?
0:25:43 - Samanatha
the biggest thing I think that made my life significantly better was the tapari shoot. That made my life so much better when we worked stuff oh, yes, yeah.
0:25:57 - Wyatt
So we've got a few nice pieces of equipment. I try not to have a lot of overheads, but right, there's definitely turns where some great equipment will make stuff more efficient and so like. For us we've got a tapari sheep handler because we can keep better records on those used. Track weights Makes working them a lot easier, and so that's what she's referring to.
0:26:21 - Samanatha
Because I used to be the catcher and I still am, but it's much less and it'll be different this year because I actually had a client that made his own marking cradle.
0:26:32 - Wyatt
You know, like you've probably seen in Australia and New Zealand, where they put them down a little chute. You know, like you've probably seen in Australia, new, zealand, where they put them down a little chute. So we're going to try that out this year because he got it made and it was I think it was August when I picked it up, so our limbs were too big to fit in it, so I'd even try to mess with it.
Oh yeah, I'm looking forward to trying it and seeing if that makes it a little easier for us.
0:26:52 - Cal
Oh yeah, yeah, I will admit, getting some sheep equipment made a world of difference for us Before I'd go out and wrestle them in our cattle pens who I thought would work great for sheep and they don't, and I would come in and well, usually that day I was just tired. The next day I was sore and knew I got beat up. It's like oh Now, wyatt, I think you went to Arkansas. Yeah, you did go to Arkansas, but you went to Australia with Dr Gold down there.
0:27:23 - Wyatt
Yep With Dr Tim Gold. For flock's sake, it's his business name. Nice little flight of words it is yeah.
0:27:33 - Cal
It sounds like a very Australian name of a company. To be honest, yeah, absolutely.
0:27:37 - Wyatt
He was a sheep consultant. That's all we did while I was down. There is mess with sheep every day. It was a great opportunity to see how a country that does it on such a scale, what they're doing and how they're able to do it, because, from a perspective, the United States has 5 billion ewes, australia has 50 million ewes oh wow.
0:27:56 - Cal
I has 5 million ewes. Australia has 50 million ewes. Oh wow, I hadn't heard those numbers.
0:27:59 - Wyatt
It's not surprising to me, but it is somewhat 10 times as much, yeah, and the other best way to put it is everybody in the US has cattle, some people have sheep or goats. Everybody in Australia had sheep, some people had cattle oh, interesting. And so like we were talking about, like I was jealous of all the sheep products that were over there and they're like, yeah, but we don't have any good cattle products. And I was like, oh, yes, I was like you make a fair point.
0:28:29 - Cal
I'm sorry. Yeah, what? What did you learn being over there that you brought back and thought I've got to do or I've got to do better or, or try to mimic that in some way?
0:28:41 - Wyatt
the biggest thing was scale. Like they do everything at a much better scale, like they're able to run stuff more efficiently. Genetics, record keeping, that type of stuff like just need to be better record keeping, keeping, the keeping the right records. Tim, we put on a couple of workshops about land and survive and Australia's extension programs over there are very good at you know they've got one program called Towards 90. It's about boosting land survival or life to you management, which is about taking care of those ewes because it'll make you more productive, and so I brought back a lot of stuff that we're trying to implement now.
Oh yes, yeah, also, I guess, from a vet side. Yeah, my pregnancy scanning crate that we use now is modeled after Tim's and I made a few revisions to it, like took some ideas off a Scottish crate, but that's what it allows us as a veterinarian to really officially go through some of those commercial flocks, and so we can run 150 to 200 ewes an hour and we're calling open singles and twigs, oh yes, whereas, like, if you were to call your local vet, they're probably going to come out with an ultrasound that's not really made for sheep and goats. It'll work. Then you're also going to have to grab every one of them, walk up behind, bend over, put it in the avenue, whereas I sit in a nice comfortable little lawn chair and we run through, hook it up next to an alley and we're good to go, oh yes, and with that and I know asking this I can tell you the answer immediately, what you're going to say, because I'm going to ask should all producers be doing that?
0:30:23 - Cal
And I know where you're selling this as a service. The answer is yes, but can you tell us some reasons why we should?
0:30:28 - Wyatt
Yeah, so, like there are certain operations where they don't have enough numbers, where maybe blood testing would be better, we're calling your local local veterinarian after numbers are big enough, but that's usually like in the single digit flocks. But the main reasons why I tell clients they need to be doing this is number one. You can get rid of your opens or do something else with it, and the biggest part is nutritional allocation. So a twin needs a lot more nutrients. A twin bearing you needs a lot more nutrients than a single bearing you. A single bearing you still needs a lot more nutrients than an open.
Oh yeah, because an open you is just on maintenance. She's freeloading, she didn't punch her ticket Right. Like, you've got options, you know, and if you know those things, you can put your open use in a different pasture where you can kind of forget about them, or you can take them to the sale, sell those cull ewes and pay back some of your hay costs Because, like, we've got one client that they sold their open ewes and of course they made money on the open ewes but we figured out on the feed savings alone, on what they would have cost to feed those open use. That paid for me coming up there. Oh yeah, so the cost of me scanning was cheaper than feeding open use that long, and so that's a really. I guess that's a really good opportunity to add some value to an operation. And it doesn't necessarily hurt them, because most of the time they're going to be saving money by having me come in oh yeah, well, one aspect, and we haven't done this.
0:32:06 - Cal
We just what I do whenever I'm lambing. When they land, they get or the, the ewes that haven't lambed yet are pushed forward, the ewes with lambs are left behind. So then I'm working with two flocks as I work through and when we're over it, usually whenever the cell is and we've said they've had long enough to lamb, everything that's not lambed yet goes to cell. But if they're going because they're open, they would never lamb. I just fed them. How many days? 150 days for no benefit or very little.
0:32:41 - Wyatt
Yeah. So like guys will say, like you need to be charging yourself for that, because whether a bred ewe or a ewe that had twins is eating that grass or you bailed it and sold it to somebody, like you should kind of be charging those ewes that price, right, yeah, and so yeah, an open ewe.
0:33:04 - Cal
She's going to hang around your operation for 100 to 150 days depending on when you go through. Yeah, and then the other thing that, as I was looking at your website and thinking about it, the other thing is you can cull on those single bred ewes. I think you had it on one of your graphics. Maybe that that would be a way to improve your lambing percent and improve your genetics for future lines, Because we want to sell those that have singles. But saying doing that versus actually doing that is a little bit tougher than you think it would be.
0:33:35 - Wyatt
Well, I've got one client. They actually do the opposite on their ULAMs. They only want their ULAMs to have singles.
0:33:41 - Cal
Okay, I can see that on ULAMs. Yeah.
0:33:43 - Wyatt
And their logic was she has a hard enough time counting to one. We don't really want her to count to two. Yeah, what it did was we we sorted off the twins, and those twins were. They had a lot more value in them because they were able to say, hey, these things are carrying twins to somebody that was worth a lot of money. Oh yeah, they didn't want to have to deal with that and so they actually increased the value of those ULAMs by knowing that there was twins inside there. And then one earlier cow talking about making replacements. It's harder when we've got smaller flocks, like we don't even do it yet. But if you have the opportunity to split those singles and twins into different groups, oh yeah, then you can pick your replacements out because you're like well, if it's in that pasture, it had to have been a twin oh, oh yeah, that would help out yes, you got to manage two pastures and then it's going to look well.
0:34:38 - Cal
Yeah, there's some trade-off there, but I could also see the benefit. It's really going to be how you value the inputs versus the outputs there. One thing on those yearly new lambs, if they have twins. I know Dr Dave Sparks I'm not sure if you knew him when he was alive with Kiko goats. Dr Dave Sparks, I'm not sure if you knew him when he was alive with Kiko goats. He always said for does he expects them to have three kids in the first two years? It can be two, their first year, one, their second one, their first two, their second. He said it just takes too much out of them to have twins as a first one, to expect them to do twins every year after that.
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With Redmond, we're going to talk about biosecurity on the farm, and this is a question I reached out to you all to see if you all would come on and talk about biosecurity, Because I've had some listeners reach out to me to say, hey, we need more information on biosecurity. So maybe to start the ball rolling, what is it when we say biosecurity?
0:36:45 - Wyatt
So the goal of biosecurity is to prevent more diseases from coming in. I mean, that's the overarching goal. And I'll say there's a spectrum on biosecurity. Like you can be as biosecure as some of these poultry and swine facilities are now to having zero biosecurity. But there's a spectrum. You know, some guys, it depends on what you're comfortable with.
0:37:08 - Cal
I know for us. We had some broiler houses for a while and biosecurity there was much greater With our beef cattle. Maybe I shouldn't put this out to the world, but biosecurity is not really something we think about, to be honest.
0:37:23 - Wyatt
Yeah, and I'd say that's the mindset of a lot of producers that raise ruminants. You know they don't. It's something that's in the back of their mind, but it's not until you have an issue. And then have an issue, you're too late.
0:37:39 - Cal
So yeah, I I know with my goats there is. When I got goats back in the early 2000s I had a few. I wanted to expand my flock and I found some not too far away and they just didn't look very good, to be honest. Now, if I could go back and tell myself what was wrong with them, I could now, because I know exactly what was wrong with them, but at the time I was coming to it with a very cattle mindset that I can solve their problems, I can get them in better condition and they'll make some good animals. What I did was brought in some parasites that were a little too resistant and caused me problems for years.
0:38:23 - Wyatt
Yeah, and so parasites are a big one. You talk about abortion, diseases, food rot, I mean. Those are all things that I see not every day, but we talk about producers with all the time.
0:38:35 - Cal
So what should a producer have in their biosecurity plan, or how they approach this?
0:38:43 - Wyatt
So the best way is whether I'm going to because I'm a veterinarian, I'm going to say work with your local veterinarian or work.
Right right, of course. Of course, there's a reason for that is you need to work with somebody else, because we all have blind spots. Working with somebody that's outside of the operation is going to allow you to find some of those issues that you may not have realized you may have in the future. Does that make sense? So when we talk about, like one of our CE conferences recently, we talked about developing a biosecurity plan for feedlot, well, you've got to think about the silage that comes in, the feed that gets delivered every day, the fuel, the people that are coming in, and so there's stuff that I mean you Cal. It slips the back of our mind that that even comes in, oh yeah At all, and so to have an outside person can evaluate stuff is very, very handy.
0:39:42 - Cal
When we think about the average farmer out here and you may want to go, well, I was going to say the average the average in Craig County, where I am, is a few hundred acres. Some other counties have a little bit smaller. But when you think about the average farmer, what should they be planning on? Should they and when I ask that, should they be isolating new animals? Should they be worried about visitors?
0:40:07 - Wyatt
I guess big things. They should they be isolating new animals. Should they be worried about visitors? I guess big things. They should definitely be isolating new animals, like that's the biggest thing. We recommend 30 days and so with. We like those animals to be in either a separate facility, like if you've got a play, if you've got a pasture that's way across the farm, or separated from the farm. That's a great opportunity to isolate those guys for three days or have like two degrees of separation. So don't make them share a fence line. Have two fence lines between them. That way they can't have nose-to-nose contact Visitors. I would say it depends on the visitors. You know. If it's other producers, depending on their operation, you might want to be a little more cautious.
0:40:48 - Cal
Oh yeah.
0:40:49 - Wyatt
And I mean there's ways around that, like like I've got one client that he was worried about getting foot rot and cause he was. They had had a guy coming to buy a sheet from him that had foot rot. He was like, what do I need? Oh yeah, and so stuff like that. Just ask them to wash their trailer and you can disinfect it when it gets there. And something else we don't think about is our working facilities. You know our working facilities usually where we also have people load out of, and so we're worried about somebody bringing stuff in A lot of times. Our working facilities are centrally located because it's easy for us.
0:41:24 - Cal
Right, yeah, as I think about ours.
0:41:26 - Wyatt
It's right here in the middle, yeah, yeah but when you have somebody that's going to be loading stuff out and potentially bringing stuff in, you kind of want to have a separate facility, even if it's just a pin with a ramp that you could have on the edge of your place, so they can back in to the edge of the property and load out and go on. Oh yeah, instead of driving across the whole farm and loading up in the middle and knocking shadings and infective material.
0:41:51 - Cal
You know right where everything's gonna walk so one thing is you think, as you say that and I think about so we're bringing, if we bring new animals in and to be honest, we're not someone who brings a lot of new animals in but if we bring new animals in, we send them, we unload them. They're we send them, we unload them, they're into our tub, they're right up our chute, our alley, and then well then they're out with the herd. So I should be isolating them. But you also mentioned I should be disinfecting and sanitizing my chute and alleyway.
0:42:22 - Wyatt
That would be my recommendation. If you're bringing new stuff in and because you're going to have a, you're going to have a little herd immunity. I mean, I would recommend it before and after, Because your flock may have something that they haven't been exposed to.
But we argue that they're going to get exposed to it as soon as you kick them out of quarantine. Yeah, but definitely after, because stuff like foot rock can hang around your facilities for about two weeks that bacteria can, and so if you unload them, process them and kick them back out to your isolation pit, well, something might happen and you may have to work a year through there in the next week. Oh yeah, well, if you don't do it immediately, you know it's something we forget about. And then, all of a sudden, everything's got foot off.
0:43:06 - Cal
Oh yeah. So when we say sanitize and disinfect, when I say that I'm thinking you're washing stuff and some kind of bleach mixture to sanitize, is there a better way?
0:43:22 - Wyatt
So there's a lot of different disinfectants out there on the market. We use one that covers a broad spectrum of bacteria and viruses. Because we're taking this scanning crate from farm to farm, we disinfect it every time oh yeah the key part to remember is that most disinfectants do not do well in organic matter.
So manure, hair, dirt and so we need. So we need to wash everything, get all the debris off and then disinfect, and that's what a lot of people forget. They'll just be like oh okay, well, we just spray this disinfectant on. It works, but the manure will actually render that disinfectant ineffective. It's always important to wash everything first and then disinfect.
0:44:07 - Cal
Oh yeah. Well, that washing would be our first step that we haven't done. So, as I think about that, that's quite an undertaking that I don't look forward to.
0:44:19 - Wyatt
It can be, but like we've got a little, I've got a Harbor Freight spray pump.
0:44:23 - Samanatha
Oh yes, Jim's laughing because he sent me to Harbor Freight this morning. Oh, yes, yeah, but it's a little batteryight spray pump.
0:44:28 - Wyatt
I love Harbor Freight. Oh yes, jim's laughing because he sent me to Harbor Freight this morning. Oh yes, yeah. But it's a little battery-powered spray pump and after we leave a farm I pull into a car wash, we wash everything you know, pump and spray down the whole skating crate, spray the tires, and then I go sit in the truck for 10 minutes and let it set and then I come back out and rinse everything off and we're on to the next place.
0:44:50 - Cal
Oh, interesting, yeah, and I never send my wife to Harbor Freight because I want to go in there. She will not buy enough.
0:44:58 - Wyatt
Well, I usually try to not take soon.
0:45:01 - Samanatha
Yeah, it was stressful.
0:45:04 - Wyatt
Yeah Well, and if I go in there with she's like, okay, what's on your list?
0:45:08 - Samanatha
I'm like yeah, I make him.
0:45:10 - Cal
Oh yeah, I won't worry about all these. Well, you know, to be honest, I cannot stand going in a grocery store and my wife and I approach a grocery store differently. She's going to check each aisle to see what's available and I'm going to work from a list and get out of there.
0:45:30 - Samanatha
It's either like Hungary.
0:45:32 - Cal
Oh yeah, it is yeah. Then you find the cookie aisle.
0:45:35 - Samanatha
Yeah, and you're like, oh, I want, I need this.
0:45:38 - Cal
Yeah.
0:45:39 - Samanatha
I started doing Walmart pickup a lot. Oh, I love Walmart. Yeah, I love Walmart pickup I could be on track a little more.
0:45:44 - Cal
Yeah, I love Walmart pickup. Getting back on the subject of biosecurity, is there?
0:45:56 - Wyatt
anything we should worry about from species to species. Yeah, there's diseases, crossover, but if you're not changing those, if you're not changing the animals on your operation, there's not a ton of things that you really have to worry about. Does that make sense, as long as you're not rotating all the time? Rotating is in like buying and selling is what I mean by that.
0:46:15 - Cal
Right. So for my flared, most time they're operating separate, but sometimes they're together. Basically they've already infected each other. If they're going to infect each other because they've been together a lot, now I know for a lot of dairies, goats as well as cattle yonis is a big thing. That's not to us, has not been traditionally a problem with our beef cattle. Is that something we should be concerned about? Should we want animals tested for that before we bring them in we should be concerned about.
0:46:47 - Wyatt
Should we want animals tested for that before we bring them in? So that's a great one, because there's no program Like we've got a brucellosis program, a psoriasis program. There's no governmental program that tells us this is what we need to do, which would be helpful in some instances because we would actually test more often. And so certain producers we see it a lot, seed stock producers that check for yonis oh yeah, because those are high-value animals For most people. They don't test for it because it's one of those diseases that it's going to affect your older animals, it's going to make them less productive and so usually they just cull. I mean, that's the oh yeah. And I see a lot At Joplin. I see a lot of cows. You could have yonis.
0:47:33 - Samanatha
Oh yes, Just based on the clinical signs.
0:47:35 - Wyatt
But it's something that if we're not testing for, we don't know, and so the testing's not. Nobody does it. A ton besides those select operations, oh yeah, they want to keep that out. But it a ton besides those select operations, oh yeah, they want to keep that out. But it is a concern. And you know we talked about Australia Over there. You know this is a big disease and they actually vaccinate for it in some areas. So they've, got areas that are clean and areas that are vaccinated.
0:48:00 - Cal
Oh OK, kind of like brucellosis used to be more so I know that's changed a little bit, but yeah, yeah, same idea there. When we think about respiratory diseases. Is a 30-day isolation good enough, or quarantine good enough, or should we be doing something different there?
0:48:22 - Wyatt
Sam may have a different opinion than me on this. Sam may have a different opinion than me on this, Harris, her level of knowledge on the respiratory system. In vet school we covered about this steep.
0:48:34 - Cal
Oh yeah.
0:48:34 - Wyatt
He's gone all the way. My hands are going down Deer, but I think 30 days is enough, because when we take it to a feedlot perspective, when they bring in new cattle, we look at BRD cases. Most of those cases of BRD happen in your first two to three weeks. So 14, 20, we see most of those BRD cases. There's some nuances to that, but most of them we see in the first two weeks.
0:49:03 - Cal
And let's shift gears just a little bit and talk about bringing breeding stock in, because most people, for most farms, the main new animals we're going to bring in are new breeding males.
0:49:17 - Wyatt
Yeah, so with the males, I always try to advocate to get a breeding soundness exam done to make sure he's indeed fertile before you turn him out, because we have seen issues with that. We had one flock. We scammed 600 ewes, five pursuit bred. Oh wow, that would hurt. That's a bad day. Yeah, that is so. We had a lot of conversations but we were looking in the rear view mirror. We were already past all the stages of intervention we could have done beforehand. And so making sure those, those new guys, have a semen eval done over in Australia they taught me to look at the four T's, so we look at teeth, testicles, toes and tapble, which is fetus.
0:50:03 - Cal
Oh, okay, because I was struggling with the fourth T there, but okay yeah.
0:50:08 - Wyatt
That's I don't, I guess that's their word for it, but I was like okay, tackle, it is.
0:50:16 - Cal
Well, now when I go fishing, I no longer have a tackle box. I'm just changing that. Now it's going to have a new name.
0:50:22 - Wyatt
Yeah, but we want to look at teeth. Like you know, unless you're buying ram lambs or bulls that are 18 months or something like that, if you're buying something that's got a little age to it, you want to be sure those teeth are actually still there because they can be a broken mouth. They can chip off teeth because they have to be out grazing. So broken mouth sheep, you know he's got some age to it. He he's gonna have a harder time keeping in good condition when he's breeding ewes if he's having to work a little harder to eat toes. We want to make sure those toes are nice and short.
Uh, we don't have long toes. I don't like triggered feet, so we try to cull for that on our ewe flock. I agree, but that is an issue is, you know, you want to make sure to at least look at them and oh yeah, they're not long, overgrown, curled, something like that. And then on the testicles, make sure, like as a veterinarian, we palpate them, make sure they feel like they should, because, especially with sheep, you can have ovine brucellosis and that actually causes a lot of infertility in your buck or in your bucks, which means that ewes, don't get bred, oh yeah.
0:51:33 - Cal
When you think about your breeding soundness exam. We're really bad about not always doing that. We do it sometimes. We think we should do it. I'll be honest, I just turned out six rams and I didn't get it done on any of them. I'll be honest, I just turned out six rams and I didn't get it done on any of them. But I tell myself I'm going to be OK if I have a dud in there, because I turned out multiple rams.
0:51:57 - Wyatt
Is that going to to solve some of that issue? So there's yes and no, so it can. But the other thing that comes into effect is you can have the dominant bull, the dominant ram effect, where if your dominant one is infertile, he's still not going to give everybody else the chance to breed. And so some research out of Australia and New Zealand, the New Zealand group. They did DNA testing after the fact in multi-sire groups and showed that one buck bred like 60 to 80 percent sired 68 percent of lamb crop. So you got to think about so, if he does that but he's infertile, all those ewes are taking more time to either cycle and get bred or they get bred in the breeding season. And so there's yes, it can work, and no, it can also work like there's good and bads to, oh, to multiple ones and not own Cause. In the past we've done it too, you know, and just said oh yeah, years crossed, I hope they're fertile.
0:52:55 - Cal
Oh yeah, and I'll be honest just a couple of years ago I had a terrible breed back percentage with my cattle. Now I feel it was my mineral program at the time, but yeah, that that really hurt when I did the pregnancy test on them.
0:53:09 - Wyatt
Yeah and the and that's another reason I pitched for pregnancy scanning and and check checking your cows is because if you don't do it, you know. You kept that cow for nine months without you know a sheep. Thank goodness we just got to wait five months. But yeah, if you keep them that long, you're waiting for something that never arrives, and so if you know ahead of time you can make plans.
0:53:31 - Cal
And to chase that just a little bit more and I know we're moving off of biosecurity just a little bit with this question. But we do blood tests, the bioprime, and I say that I've also done some of the instant tests, which are 15 to 30 minutes. I did a handful of those just to try them and see how it went. Yeah, that versus palpation, versus ultrasound, is there going to be a big difference in the results? What's your thoughts on those?
0:54:00 - Wyatt
So on the blood test with the bioprint, I don't know anything. I haven't done any digging on the instant results as far as how accurate there's going to be, oh yeah, so the bioprint, it's accurate, it's like 90, 95% accurate. But there's caveats to it. So it tells you when, brit. But if you have it, if you have something that slipped that pregnancy, the protein that they're looking for will still float around in there for another 60 days or so.
Oh yeah, so in all actuality, like if I had been scanning, she'd have been. I called her open. Oh yeah, best called it bread, and so there's nuances like that you also have to. If you're going to do blood tests, you got to have the ability to bring them back in. If you're going to do anything with that, oh yeah, you got to bring them in, sort them again. Whereas pregnancy scanning, we know right there open singles, twins and they get a paint mark Whether we sort them off the gates, off the front, or they do something with them later. They've at least got it known right there. They don't have to read your tags.
0:55:02 - Cal
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, good, good points with that. I know, or I don't know. From what I recall reading about the bioprene, it's 99% accurate if it calls them open. Seen in in a couple flocks is we've actually diagnosed some tumors. Oh yes, what comes? Sheep?
0:55:31 - Wyatt
And so they would have had no idea. So I asked him, I said, hey, what's, what's the history of this human? And he's like, well, she actually hasn't marked any in like two months. And I'm like, oh, it's because she's got a tumor we need to talk about and so something like that, you know, a bioprint blood test would have never picked it up and we didn't.
0:55:50 - Cal
Oh yeah, yeah. Now you mentioned marking there. Do you all use marking with your Alzheimer's?
0:55:54 - Wyatt
No, we don't. Um, just because it's been so hard, it would be hard to keep up with those guys and we, we run multi-syropatics, so that's what we to Several, yeah, and so it'd be hard to keep track of those crayons and catch them. We just labor gets in the way of that one.
0:56:13 - Cal
Well, I'm. I'm an efficient farmer, so I don't. And you know, efficiency is just laziness with good PR. I'm really a lazy farmer and that sounds like more work to me.
0:56:22 - Wyatt
Yeah, it can be yeah. Yeah, it's really beneficial in, like our club land producers when they oh, yeah, oh, because they're putting them in jugs for guys like us that are pasture lambing. I just kind of chalk that up as information we're not gonna really need Like data, we're not gonna use cuz like we'll still crank, scheme them and know whether it actually worked or not. So having a mark date isn't really to help us, or it isn't going to allow us to do much, Right?
0:56:50 - Cal
yeah, Not going to change your management much. You know, to be honest, we got a scales in our cattle shoot and we cannot run an animal across that without weighing them. And I tell dad, sometimes we don't have to weigh them. We just got to weigh the other day and we're not doing anything with it, but you know we went so long without one. We just weigh everything.
0:57:10 - Wyatt
Well, I'm always curious when they run across our sheep handler. You know, sometimes I just want to know when they come across. I think it's 140 pounds when they come across. Oh, it was actually 150. Okay, and you kind Like yeah.
0:57:26 - Cal
Yeah, we do not have scales in our sheep alley, so that would be really nice. Of course, our sheep alley is not really made to isolate one by one. You know it's an alley that I get them in the 16 foot where I can do something with them.
0:57:41 - Wyatt
Yep, Yep, and it works really well and it's good to have at least a reference way, at least an idea. Oh yeah, Because we talked about deworming. You know it's good. You don't want to underdose, you don't want to overdose, you want to be pretty accurate.
0:57:57 - Cal
I know we got off the subject of biosecurity. I just want to swing back to it and ask is there anything we didn't discuss about biosecurity we should have brought up?
0:58:08 - Wyatt
So one thing I had written down and we can hit on some loading facilities in the quarantine isolation is even in your own operation it's good to keep in mind the order in which you see your livestock. So you want to start with, like, your youngest and healthiest stock and then move backwards to your older and then eventually sick stock. Oh yeah, so you've got bottle lambs. You want to go check on them first, then you want to check on the ewes, whatever, and then the bucks or something like that, and then, lastly, is your new introductions where you're sick pin, because we don't want to go backwards from that and drag everything from the sick pin back into everything else, because you're probably like me you don't spray off your boots and disinfect on your own place from pin to pin.
0:58:56 - Cal
No, I don't yeah.
0:58:58 - Wyatt
But if we keep in the back of our mind, hey, let's check on that sick pin last, because that'll be the last thing we do for the day before we go inside, the odds of bringing something back out of there are pretty.
0:59:11 - Cal
I've heard that before and I think that's a great reminder. And, to be honest, in practice I never do it, so that's something I just I need to start thinking more about and, to be honest, we don't often have a sick pen, so it's not really a big thing, I think, for most farms, but whenever you do, it's important to remember that. But going from young stock and work up in age makes a lot of sense.
0:59:34 - Wyatt
Yeah, and it's something like that. You know most operations they don't have a giant sick pin like a feed yard would, because they deal with that every day?
0:59:42 - Cal
Yeah, and if we do, we've got other problems. Yeah, yeah, and if we do, we've got other problems. Yeah Well, wyatt and Sam, it is time for our famous four questions. Same four questions we ask of all of our guests, and we're going to make both of you answer them, so get ready. So, wyatt, if you need to steal some of Sam's answers, go ahead.
1:00:11 - Wyatt
Our first question what is your favorite grazing grass related book or resource? So mine is Thoughts and Advice from an Old Cat by Gordon Hennessey. Oh, yes, so that book, you know, talked a lot about how he ran his stocker operation and he was pretty low input. And he talks about there's one line in there and I'm probably going to butcher it, but he talks about the difference between being cheap and being tight. He said most people think I'm cheap, but really I'm tight. And his example was if he had two hammers, he needed some cash. He'd sell one hammer and go on, but anytime he looked at adding something, he wanted to make sure it returned value, which is what we showed. Oh, yeah, yeah. And he said you know, if I can spend a dollar and make two dollars, I'm going to spend that dollar. And that was his example of being tight versus being cheap. Is he held on to it, unless he knew?
1:01:03 - Samanatha
it was going to steal Wyatt's answer because I don't read a lot of books like that.
1:01:10 - Cal
For the papers you're reading. I don't know if a lot of our audience is going to be reading them. I'm probably not going to be reading them.
1:01:16 - Samanatha
Yeah, so I can tell you about my favorite paper, but it's not very uplifting.
1:01:20 - Cal
Oh, yeah, yeah, Okay, we'll go with that. Our second question what is your favorite tool for the farm?
1:01:30 - Wyatt
so I had several that came to mind, whether it's the tapari, the she peddler, makes it more efficient. We we imported an auto feeder that actually allows us to feed lot those lambs a little bit. It reduces acidosis and it just keeps it feed in front of them, which is what we needed, because I've got written down here If it's hard to do, you're not going to do it for very long.
Oh, exactly right, you're probably thinking of some times where you did that and if you're, if you're having to drag feed buckets out to a feeder pit every day, it's probably not going to want to feed lambs very long. Those would be. My two favorite tools would be those things, because it allows us to be very efficient when we're doing things.
1:02:12 - Cal
With the auto feeder. What type of auto feeder is it? Does it have an auger? Or is it one of these self feeders that's supposed to limit their intake?
1:02:23 - Wyatt
So it has an auger in it. Oh okay, it's a Feedtech auto feeder that we imported from Australia and so it augers down the line and ours is about 40 foot long, so we've got basically 80 foot of feeder space, and so you can set it up to where there's a sensor and if that proximity sensor has feed in front of it it will run. But when they lay the feed it'll kick on again. So if we're doing an ad lib feedlot system works well for that, keeping fresh feed in there.
Oh yeah, because with self feeders they can kind of do some sorting and you end up with just old feed in the bottom, or you can do it at a limit feed where you know how much it's going to auger out when it runs until it gets cool. So you can have it kick on twice a day or three times a day, and so it's pretty flexible, and I like that part. It's very flexible and modular too. If we want to add on to it, we just extend it a little bit. But with that 40-foot unit we could feed a lot 960 lambs or something is what we figured up on the headspace. Oh, yes.
1:03:24 - Cal
And we're not there. Yeah, we're not there. Yeah, we're not there. Yeah.
1:03:29 - Wyatt
But you know we don't have to keep adding things to it. Yeah, that's what I felt was key in certain times is sometimes, in order to get to that next step, you just got to get the equipment to do it.
1:03:42 - Cal
Oh yeah.
1:03:42 - Wyatt
Figure out how to get there, rather than getting there and be like I'm so tired of working 23 hours a day feeding lambs.
1:03:51 - Cal
Well, you know, we talk about the work-life balance. Not that it's a balance, but you've got to have somewhat of a balance there, even with the ebb and flow of everything.
1:04:03 - Wyatt
Sam's looking at me because yeah, this week at Joplin they had a special sale. So oh well, yeah, we had a yearling special on Monday and then a special cow sale and regular cow sale. On Wednesday we sold a thousand. The cow sale on Thursday had two thousand. Head back and forth I put in 80 hours this week oh yeah, no by Thursday, right Thursday night.
1:04:26 - Cal
Oh yeah, yeah, well, I put in 80 hours this week. Oh yeah, no by Thursday, right Thursday night. Oh yeah, yeah, well, just to go on that subject. Of course you're younger, you can handle it, I cannot. Sam, what's your favorite tool?
1:04:37 - Samanatha
And I know you're not going to say Wyatt, because he's already talked about the lawn chair he uses on the farm- I really like the sheep handler because before anytime we worked everything, which I still do, catch the little ones because they're too small to go through, but it was me catching everything because most of the time it was occasionally we would have a few extra people when we worked, but it would like. There's been times that it was just us two, and that can get exhausting.
1:05:03 - Wyatt
Well it can. I should say that it's not my idea to have someone catch everything.
1:05:10 - Samanatha
I don't, I don't like to do anything.
1:05:15 - Wyatt
Oh okay, needles, vaccinating stuff like that. He's like I'll just catch Seriously halfway through. I'm like I can trade you. She's like, nope, I'm not injecting them, we're not doing anything.
1:05:29 - Samanatha
I didn't even know, hold on.
1:05:32 - Cal
Yeah, okay, Okay, she chose that. I'm like as long as you made that decision, Right, yeah, yeah. Now everybody driving by is going to think I'm a lazy person out here making my wife do all this.
1:05:46 - Wyatt
I mean body's going to think I'm a lazy person out here making my wife do all this. Yeah, I mean. But the sheep handler, when it catches them pneumatically and run them automatically, actually, with the sensors it's got on it, it makes it really easy to work stuff.
1:05:57 - Samanatha
We also use it, so my parents have, I don't know, a lot of Spanish goats. Oh yeah, they're also, and it makes it a lot easier.
1:06:07 - Wyatt
Because deworming the goats?
1:06:08 - Samanatha
Because they're even worse than the sheep. I think they know how to use their horns.
1:06:12 - Cal
Oh yeah.
1:06:13 - Wyatt
And a goat will use its body weight and throw you around and so by the end of the day your wrists hurt and everything. And the first time we took it down there I said Patrick, I don't know if it's going to work or not on these goats. It, patrick, I don't know if it's going to work or not on these goats, it's like it's built for sheep. We're going to try it and you guys castrate kids. I'll work the doe goats off and we'll see what happens. Well, so usually we castrate kids and then work does. I had finished the does, me and another guy and we didn't break a sweat.
And they were still over there castrating kids and afterwards Patrick goes hey, you're going to bring it back. Every time we got to work. So I knew that from somebody who did not want it, did not want it down there, that it must work. Real well he was all for it.
1:07:02 - Cal
Yeah, he wanted to run it next time.
1:07:06 - Wyatt
We did let him this year and they were like oh okay, awesome yeah.
1:07:12 - Cal
I've seen YouTube videos. I think a sheep farmer in the UK has one that he uses. I can't think of the name, but I was like, oh, that's amazing, or it appears amazing to me it is.
1:07:25 - Wyatt
Yeah, it's really awesome and I need to be better about taking videos and recording everything. Or it appears amazing to me yes, yeah, it's really awesome and I need to be better about taking videos and recording everything. But the problem I get is I get so busy working everything that I'm like, oh crap, I really should have stopped and reported all this.
1:07:39 - Cal
So yeah, Our third question what would you tell someone just getting started?
1:07:46 - Wyatt
So my advice is and I think you've had this same, I think people have said it's a common theme is you got to start somewhere. If that's what you want to do, you got to get started somewhere, whether it's 10 acres or 100 acres. But also, when you're doing this, if you know that you want to be at 100 head or 500 head, build your facilities with that in mind, because you know we've got 20 head, the facilities for that place look a lot different than facilities for 200 head, and so if you know that you want to get there in five years, try, if you can afford it, build those facilities to run that amount of livestock so you're not having to change them every saw like you know every year or two when you've got way more stock, because that's the biggest thing that we've tried to do is we did that and we could have built for what we had, and then we had some more cash, so we built a little bit more.
Well, piece of advice, if you got the opportunity to try to build for what you're going to instead of build for what you've got, yeah, I think that's excellent advice.
1:08:48 - Cal
Yeah, and Sam, what would you tell someone just getting started?
1:08:51 - Samanatha
I think both in terms of like a grazing operation or like a career whether it's veterinary, medicine or grad school or whatever is never be afraid or ashamed to admit when you don't know something, because no one knows everything ever.
Even the experts still don't know everything, and so being able to admit when you don't know something and ask questions is how you learn new things and, who knows, like maybe no one knows the answer to it and you can kind of find out something new to like through the research side of things. But yeah, I think it's always admit when you don't know something and never be afraid to ask questions, even if they seem like maybe like dumb to you. There's no stupid questions. That would maybe be my advice.
1:09:38 - Cal
Excellent advice there, and if I didn't admit to what I didn't know, I wouldn't have much to say yeah, lastly, where can others find?
1:09:46 - Wyatt
out more about you so you can find paragon ranch on facebook instagram. We've got a website catering veterinary services on facebook instagram the website. So or you can just friend me on facebook, oh okay he shares everything. Yeah, I was gonna say, if you go to my facebook page, I've got everything linked.
1:10:07 - Cal
Very good.
1:10:12 - Wyatt
Wyatt and Sam. We really appreciate you all coming on today and sharing with us. Thanks for having us, cal. It's been a great opportunity.
1:10:16 - Cal
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Grazing Grass Podcast, where we bring you stories and insights into grass-based livestock production. If you're new here, we've got something just for you. Our new listener resource guide is packed with everything you need to get started on your listening journey with a grazing grass podcast. It gives you more information about the podcast, about myself and next steps.
1:10:41 - Wyatt
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1:10:47 - Cal
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Transcribed by https://podium.page