Exclusively raising market lambs for 4-H and FFA shows is a very distinctive feature of Wagner Club Lambs. Unlike many other farms in the state, their only product is sheep. They reach a broad national market for their Suffolk, Hampshire and crossbreds through shows and their website. Clay and Rhianna Wagner have lived just outside of Greenwood, Ark., since 2003.
Clay Wagner is a pharmacist and the manager of Health Depot in Barling. Rhianna teaches Agriculture at Mansfield. Clay’s father lives next door and plays a major role in managing the farm. The Wagners like the opportunity that the farm gives their two sons, Caden, 10 and Jackson, 6.
To combat internal parasites the Wagners administer anthelmithics four times per year, rotating to avoid resistance and to prevent temporary sterility in the rams. “The class of dewormers that contains ivermectin will make the rams sterile, so we have to use a different kind right before breeding season,” Clay explained.
The summertime temperatures directly affect breeding as well. “It’s hard to get ewes to cycle in the summer,” he said. “The heat is really hard on the rams,” he added later. The Wagners use several techniques to offset the heat during breeding season. “We try to breed on a dry lot because fescue raises their body temperature. It’s only a degree or two but it is enough that they don’t ovulate,” Clay said. “When they are in the lot we feed them Bermuda hay and feed. In September we bring them in to do their yearly physical, we sheer them and vaccinate. That jolts their system so that the ewes start ovulating.”
They start supplementing the ewes with feed about a month before breeding season. The rest of the year, the flock of 50 ewes grazes about 60 acres of pasture surrounded by web wire. A few years ago they discovered that feed rations can impact their breeding in unexpected ways. “We were using feed that had a lot of soybean meal and cottonseed meal in it. It was lower cost but the soybean meal contained too much plant estrogens and counteracted the testosterone. That made our rams sterile,” Clay said. He said that changing out the feed quickly corrected the problem.
Annual vaccinations include leptospirosis and Chlamydia which, if not treated will transmit to the ewes from the carrier rams, causing the pregnant ewes to abort about a month before they should deliver. They also administer 1cc of Bo-Se every other year to compensate for low selenium levels in Arkansas soils. “It keeps the afterbirth clear instead of cloudy or yellow,” Clay explained. “The ewes would not clean the lambs,” Rhianna said. “But after we started giving them Bo-Se, the afterbirth cleared up and they started cleaning them.”
“We also do genetic testing for Scrapies resistance,” Rhianna said. They said that the test results indicate whether the sheep has a natural resistance to the disease. Clay explained that the genetic testing report comes back with the gene pair where ‘Q’ stands for susceptible and ‘R’ for resistant to the disease. QQ would mean that an animal carries no resistant gene and is more likely to acquire the disease. He clarified that a single R gene offers a significant amount of resistance.
Although raising sheep presents unique challenges, it offers several advantages. “Lambs are smaller and easier for our kids to handle,” said Rhianna. “Which is a good selling point for people looking for their first show animal.”
