This year’s Symposium features presentation sessions focusing on Nutrition & Grazing, Milk processing & Marketing, and Labor & Farm Management, followed by a day of Farm Tours, and finishing with an optional Cheese Workshop. Scroll down to learn more!
The DSANA Dairy Sheep Symposium is the major annual event of the dairy sheep industry in North America, providing an educational environment and fostering connections among dairy sheep producers, processors, and researchers. For 25 years, dairy sheep producers from all over Canada, Mexico, Europe, Central & South America, New Zealand, and the United States have attended.
As a small but growing industry, the symposium provides a critical time for producers to meet, gain exposure to the latest in dairy research, learn from experts in the field and one another, and help guide the dairy sheep industry for the years to come.
Come join us for ...
Opportunities to meet other dairy sheep producers from the US & Canada, and around the world!
Visits to dairy sheep farms -- see how others are raising dairy sheep and marketing their milk or sheep-milk products
Presentations from experts and producer panels, on dairy sheep production, economics, reproduction, and nutrition
We are developing a tremendous schedule for our 2019 Dairy Sheep Symposium. Watch this page for updates on the symposium program. We will fill in details as speakers and producer panels are confirmed.
Our invited speakers and producer panels will be presenting on a diverse list of topics including farm labor, grass-based dairying, dairy sheep nutrition, milk quality for processing and dairy sheep flock health.
Between sessions you can talk with presenters, vendors, and the fellow producers you’ve just met during the morning sessions. Half the value of the Symposium is the soulmates you meet, the friends you make, and the information you glean from other dairy sheep producers!
The relationship between cheesemaker and sheep-milk producer is so so so important. When it is positive and constructive, both sides benefit – great cheese with great yields on one side, and a steady source of income on the other side. To make this relationship enduring and stable, each side’s needs and expectations have to be very clear. At this year’s Symposium, two cheesemakers who purchase milk from multiple farms will talk about how they create positive and dependable relationships with their milk suppliers. They will discuss their contracts with their milk suppliers and how their agreements have evolved over the years; their testing/analysis processes and milk quality requirements or limits; how they calculate milk payments; and what challenges they have faced in purchasing milk. Photo: milk test day at Jean-Paul Houde’s farm in Quebec.
Pricing artisan cheese is somewhere between an art and a science. Three producer-processors, representing markets on both the East and the West Coasts of the US, will discuss the processes they use to price their cheeses for the wholesale marketplace and the direct-to-consumer marketplace. They will answer questions such as “Do you have a formula that includes costs and margins, or do you base it on the prices of other cheeses in the marketplace?”; “How do you factor in additional costs such as shrinkage, samples, demos, promotions and shipping costs into your pricing?”; “How much room for negotiation do you have with your distributors?”; and – this is a really interesting one – “Have you incorporated any business advice from others, about how price your products?”. We always learn so much from our friends who are in the same business, with similar niche products, facing similar tight margins! Photo thanks to Glendale Shepherd, Whidbey Island, Washington.
We know that generally speaking in dairy animals, milk yield and component percentage are inversely proportional: higher-producing ewes (and ewe breeds) tend to produce a lower percentage of milk fat and protein. The same holds true in dairy cattle. But what if you could identify those special ewes that both have higher milk yields and higher component percentages? (And also identify those animals with lower yields and lower components!!) DSANA members who participate in the Production Improvement Program can send their individual ewes’ milk samples into Rocky Mountain DHI to have analyses done on individual ewes. Chris Tucker of RMDHI will be speaking at the Symposium, introducing us to his DHI lab, and the processes he uses to do component analyses and somatic cell count analyses on the sheep milk samples he receives. Photo: vials sent by RMDHI to sheep milk producers for taking milk samples on metering day.
Some of our DSANA members who are producer-processors of farmstead cheeses, describe US sheep-milk cheeses as facing “headwinds” when positioning alongside European imports in the wholesale marketplace. The “headwinds” include consumer and cheese monger perceptions of the American vs European cheeses, seasonal North American cheeses vs the year-round supply of European cheeses, and the landed cost of both groups of cheeses at the retailers’ counters. We have invited some cheese mongers and fromageophiles from the West Coast and Intermountain West, including cheese monger Sarah Zediker of Jackson Whole Grocers, and specialty cheese distributor Greg Hessel of Portland’s Cowbell LLC, to give us their perspective on what North American farmstead cheese producers might do to make their position stronger. We’ll ask them how they mark up or set margins, so that we can know how to set our wholesale prices to reach their target retail price. And we’ll ask them our burning questions, such as “what is the market potential for domestic sheep-milk cheeses?” and “are blended-milk cheeses our future?”. Pictured: Cowbell’s Greg Hessel (top), and Jackson Whole Grocer’s March Madness Wine-and-Cheese pairing brackets.
The second stop on our Farm Tour day (Saturday November 9th) is Winter Winds Farm in Victor, Idaho, a goat dairy and creamery. Nate and Ginny Ray will give you a tour of operations, discuss the process of setting up a new farm and creamery, and how they market their seasonal goat-milk cheeses. They will also talk to us about their transitional buy-out process of their turn-key operation, with the young prospective buyer who is living and working on the farm with them. Winter Winds Farm is cradled by the Grand Tetons, and rumor has it that the drive to Victor is breath-taking. Pictured: Winter Winds goats at the feeder.
Butch Cargile is a vet specializing in dairy cow nutrition at Progressive Dairy Solutions, and who is also setting up a sheep dairy in southern Idaho. Butch believes that his performance as his clients’ nutritionist is the “single largest factor in their economic success. In traditional sheep flocks the rule of thumb at lambing has been to withdraw grain for a day, to give the ewe’s gut time to settle and to avoid diarrhea. However, it is starting to look like this rule of thumb is not at all a good idea for our higher-producing dairy sheep. Some producers, whose Lacaune-sired yearlings can produce close to 8 pounds of milk a day at peak, are actually seeing ketosis -- sometimes fatal -- a week or 10 days after lambing. The high-producing dairy animal clearly has unique nutritional needs. Here in North America, most of us don’t know much about the nutritional and metabolic needs of high-producing dairy sheep, but there is certainly a lot of understanding in the cow dairy world. We have asked Butch to speak on the metabolic and nutritional requirements of high-producing and lower-producing dairy cows, and how commercial cow dairies measure and monitor their animals’ metabolic status. This can help us understand the very different metabolism of the high-producing dairy ewe.
What is the most challenging aspect of operating a seasonal sheep dairy? Most of us would answer “LABOR!!”: can’t find it, can’t depend on it, doesn’t seem to have a work ethic, etc. This year a Texas agency called Head Honchos LLC helped a US sheep dairy get approved for the US Department of Labor’s H-2A visa program, for “temporary agricultural labor”. As a result, two Mexican fellows arrived on that sheep dairy in early February to work for the season. The farm manager, asked to describe these two guys at mid-season, said “they’re focused, they hustle, and they care.” Overall, the producer reports that “it’s been a complete sea change in our farm’s operation. We have labor stability after years of instability and drama and feeling vulnerable to the whims of our staff.” Todd Miller, owner of Head Honchos, will be speaking at the 2019 Dairy Sheep Symposium at Idaho Falls in November, explaining the requirements of the H-2A program, its costs, and its pros and cons. He will be ready to answer questions about a farm’s application process, and his experiences with farms that have successfully used the program to source reliable labor for many years.
Cheese made from pasture-fed dairy animals has a singular flavor, unique to the farm– a strong marketing point used by many artisanal cheesemakers. But where does that uniqueness come from? Tom Pyne, partner and farm manager of Twenty Paces, a sheep dairy and creamery in Charlottesville, Virginia, will give us a little bit of forage chemistry background at the 2019 Dairy Sheep Symposium at Idaho Falls in November. Tom will explain the relationship between a ewe's diet and the sensory characteristics of her milk and the resulting cheese. Tom, who is working towards a Masters in Agronomy, specializing in Forage Science, will give us an overview of the scientific research on the influence of forage species, and feeding strategies, on cheese flavor profiles.
About half of our DSANA members, in both the US and Canada, are producer-processors, meaning that they both milk sheep and then process the milk into yogurt, cheese, etc. A small number of us add value to our milk by selling bottled milk direct to the consumer for fluid consumption. At the 2019 Dairy Sheep Symposium at Idaho Falls in November, producer-processors on one of our producer panels will discuss their personal experience with bottling, selling, and marketing fluid milk direct to consumers. From these producers we’ll find out who is buying bottled milk, and what the public reaction has been. And we’ll hear about their packaging choices, and hear their opinions on the pros and cons of adding this to their product line. (Photo here: Sheep's milk for sale at Misty Meadow Farm and Sheep Dairy in Petersburg, New Jersey.)
When it comes to weather these days, we all understand that abnormal is the new normal. How do we prepare for the weather extremes that we now know are our regular future? What strategies should we as dairy sheep farmers be planning to adapt to the effects of climate change, particularly on our primarily pasture-based grazing dairy systems? Joshua Faulkner, Associate Professor at UVM, will be speaking on climate change trends at the 2019 Dairy Sheep Symposium at Idaho Falls in November. Joshua’s extension and research focus at UVM is on agriculture and climate change, and he talks about “climate-resilient agriculture”. In Idaho Falls this fall, he will discuss how climate change is predicted to impact dairy production, what we can do to be proactive in preparing our businesses for these events, and what we as farmers can do to help mitigate climate change on our own farms. It will be great to have the perspective of someone who is studying climate change and farming, and can give us some guidance and perspective on this challenging subject.
8:00 pm, Wednesday November 6th: Open Q&A session for anyone participating in DSANA’s PIP, or anyone interested in participating. We’ll be in the hotel lobby, so join us after you’ve arrived and gotten yourself in you room and unpacked.
Want to know the value of the PIP? Here’s a Pop Quiz!! At the right are four pictures of four ewes in a PIP flock. Three of the pictures were taken during the same milking in April of this year.
#1602 produced 627 lb in 184 days in 2018.
#1529 produced 1,336 in 178 days in 2018.
#1642 produced 904 lb in 207 days in 2018.
#1545 produced 498 lb in 178 days in 2018, but her picture is from 2018, not 2019, because she was culled!
Can you guess which is which? Your sustainability as a sheep dairy producer is linked to productivity. Whose daughters would you keep? Whose ram lamb would you like to use in your flock? Udders don’t tell all. Why milk 200 ewes if you could get the same amount of milk by milking 100 ewes?
Laurel Kieffer, PIP Project Manager, will be on hand to answer any questions about DSANA’s Production Improvement Program, on Wednesday evening, November 6th, at 8:00 pm in the hotel lobby of the Hilton Garden Inn. It’s an open Q&A session, so that you can drop in when you arrive in Idaho Falls. Laurel and some producers enrolled in PIP will answer any questions on * how your production can improve when you make replacement decisions based on reliable and accurate data; * how other producers are using EBVs to make breeding, selection, and culling decisions; how to interpret the genetic information you receive in the PIP; and * how to get your flock enrolled in PIP for 2020.
Answers to the Quiz: Udders, top to bottom: 1642, 1529, 1545 (culled), 1602
And here is the PIP results on the potential contribution of the three ewes that remain in the flock. If you were buying a ram, which dam would you prefer?
Above: 2018 spring flooding near Rexburg Idaho, near Lark’s Meadows Farm, the site of our Symposium Farm Tour. Below: Joshua Faulkner
Nutritional requirements of the high-producing ewe
Managing a milk-supplier network
Pricing of sheep-milk cheeses
Sheep-milk component testing
Pricing US vs European sheep-milk cheeses
Selling fluid milk for retail consumption
The effect of pasture species on flavor profiles
Using manure analysis to indicate forage quality
Manufacturing custom pellet for dairy sheep
Hiring H2-A workers
Developing a plan for climate change and weather extremes
Cheese!! and Wine!! Our Wine-and-Cheese Reception features samples from the enormous variety of cheeses produced by our DSANA members. The Cheese Reception is included in the price of your registration.
Friday night is our Banquet! We have our evening of good food and good company. We present the year’s recipients of the Boylan Award for service to the dairy sheep industry and the DSANA Mentorship Award. The Banquet is included in the price of your registration.
Hop on the bus and visit a sheep dairy farm with on-farm processing and direct sales as elements of their operations. Lark's Meadow Farms, in Rexburg, Idaho, is owned and operated by the Russell family, who milk 145 ewes, and produce award-winning cheeses each year, which they sell both wholesale and retail at the farmers' market.
Also join us for a discussion of a successful 12-hr suckling system for lambs in the 1st 30 days. Remember the "MIX" system trialed at the Spooner Station and presented by Dave Thomas and Yves Berger so many years ago? Many of us tried the system, and gave it up. Kendall Russell, however, successfully adapted the system, and raises lambs on their dams for the first 30 days, but also milks their mothers at the same time. The result: almost no lambs raised on milk replacer and <3% mortality in lambs under 30 days of age. Kendall's system was picked up by Meadowood Farms in NY, wherethe 12-hr-suckling-system has been successfully used for the last four years. This year Meadowood has raised 50 lambs on the system; at between 19-26 DIM, their 25 dams averaged 3.7 lb milk/hd/d in the parlor while simultaneously nursing twins.
Cheese-making workshop. Kendall Russell, cheesemaker at Lark's Meadow Farms will lead a cheese workshop for a maximum of 15 attendees. Lark's Meadow produces about 23,000 lbs of sheep-milk cheese every year, with an additional 11,000 lbs of cows-milk cheeses made in the off-season.
