Sheep and goat production, while down the last couple of years due to drought, has increased tremendously in popularity over the last 20 years. According to Dr. Jodie Pennington, small ruminant specialist with Lincoln University at the Newton County Extension Center in Neosho, Mo., sheep and goats fit in well with multi-grazing systems. “I have worked very closely with Crowder College and there, we run sheep and goats together with the cattle and the horses; many people do across the region here,” Pennington told Ozarks Farm & Neighbor. There are also a few corn and soybean farmers who will turn the small ruminants into fields after harvest to clean up the crop residues.
Forages and grasses for sheep and goats are similar but not identical to those for cattle and horses. Sheep prefer more forbs or broadleaves, while goats will eat browse – brushes and other woody plants – before they’ll eat grass. Pennington said sheep, and in particular the hair sheep breeds more popular in the Mid-South, will also eat browse, but don’t need to have dedicated acreage with those plants set aside for them. And, Pennington said, “In drought situations, where grass essentially dries up, goats will go in the woods and do acceptably well on browse, while you can’t reasonably expect a cow or a horse, or even a sheep, to do that.” Because of the different tastes in forage, multispecies grazing can result in increased efficiency; Pennington said when cattle and horses are on the same pastures as sheep and goats, the rate of gain can be 10 percent or even 20 percent higher, as the sheep and goats will eat the browse and weeds that cattle and horses may not.
But even though sheep and goat enterprises look attractive on paper due to recent high prices, Pennington said management can be an issue, particularly with regard to parasites. Goats are particularly susceptible, and one internal parasite – Haemonchus contortus, known as the barber pole worm – can be a significant problem. Dr. David Fernandez, Cooperative Extension Program livestock specialist at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, said H. contortus can be controlled, but not eliminated. “They’re going to have it; that’s a normal thing,” Fernandez told OFN.
One management tip to defeat the pest is to avoid overgrazing. “You want to try to maintain your pasture height no lower than about 3 inches in height for your grass blades,” Fernandez said. “That’s about as far up the grass blades as the barber pole larvae can crawl.” He also recommended rotational grazing; when the eggs laid by the worm in the previous pasture hatch, the larvae will develop and climb up on the grass. If they are not consumed by their hosts, they’ll simply die off.
Veterinarians recommend against routine application of dewormers. Fernandez said all worm populations are now resistant to at least one and in some cases several chemistries, and animal health professionals are hoping to preserve the efficacy of the remaining treatments. Instead, producers should only deworm animals with significant infestations, and that can be determined through what is called FAMACHA scoring. Fernandez explained, “You look at the conjunctiva of the eye – that’s the red tissue that you’ll find beneath the eyelid that surrounds the eyeball itself. That’s what we’re comparing to a color chart and as the animals become anemic, because this is a bloodsucking parasite, the color of that conjunctiva will fade from a very bright red to an almost white color.” Even pale pink tissue, he said, could be an indicator for treatment.
Other health concerns include Clostridium C & D, also known as “overeating disease.” If the animal consumes too much grain quickly, it can cause the naturally occurring gut organism to bloom and produce a toxic effect. But undernutrition can also be an issue; Fernandez, who raises his own sheep, said, “One of the batches of hay that I bought this winter and tested was only 7 percent protein and about 52 percent Total Digestible Nutrients. I had third trimester pregnant ewes, and they were actually growing ewes as well – they were yearlings, and they required closer to 16-17 percent protein and roughly 62 percent TDN, so I had to supplement them quite a bit.”
He said sheep and goats have higher protein requirements, and usually higher energy requirements, than do cattle; they’ll get that protein from broadleaves, but those species can get grazed out if the pasture is heavily used – and in some cases, that was the farmer’s intention. “They’re looking at brush or weed control, and looking to suppress the broadleaf plants in favor of the grasses,” Fernandez said. “You want to manage your goats a little bit more carefully because they do prefer those broadleaved plants, especially the brushy plants, so they can kill them very quickly and leave you nothing but grass, which is what they don’t prefer.”
