Dairy Sheep Association of North America to host Dairy Sheep Symposium

The Dairy Sheep Association of North America will host the 25th annual Dairy Sheep Symposium Nov. 8 to 11 in Kansas City, Missouri. The symposium is a well-established fall tradition for the entire continent’s dairy sheep producers.

This year’s symposium will feature four half-day presentation sessions focusing on nutrition (Nov. 8), economics (Nov. 9) and genetics and reproduction (Nov. 9), followed by a day of farm tours on Nov. 10. The event will end with an optional cheese workshop on Nov. 11.

The presentation sessions reflect the changing industry, as more and more producers are utilizing imported frozen semen via laparoscopic artificial insemination, feeding rations formulated specifically for high-performance dairy animals and choosing to process their own milk into cheese and other value-added products.

In Missouri, producers will engage with Dave Thomas and Yves Berger, both formerly of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Catherine Durham from Oregon State University and Ron Lewis from the University of Nebraska. Genetic improvement is very much on the minds of every producer and there will be sessions devoted to the Assaf dairy sheep breed from Spain, as well as sessions focused on improving AI conception rates in dairy sheep.

The farm tours will be at Green Dirt Farm, Bethany Amish Sheep Dairy and Shatto Cow Dairy, all of which are local examples of successful on-farm agri-tourism and processing.

Go to http://www.dsana.org for additional details, registration and location information.