Sheep Industry News April 2025

the throat. Don’t force the tube down, allow the lamb to swallow as tube goes down the esophagus. Generally, the tube can be felt on the outside of the neck as it is inserted down into the stomach. Although it is difficult to get the tube down the trachea (windpipe), the tube can be checked to see if air is being expelled (listen or moisten end of tube to see if a bubble forms). As with pulling lambs and navigating difficult births, tubing a lamb can be scary at first. Once perfected, however, the procedure is fairly routine. GRACIOUS HOST Veteran hair sheep producer Justin McCoy hosted the lambing school at Crane’s request, and offered new producers a look at ways in which they can put existing facilities to use when getting started in the sheep industry. “We love the industry, and we love to host people. We don’t have the greatest facility for hosting, but we’re happy to do it,” McCoy said. “We just want to share what we’ve learned with the industry and help people get started with sheep. I think sheep have a lot of potential for profit and for young producers getting into livestock. So, we want to encourage people to get in and start raising sheep.” McCoy’s lambing barn included a liberal use of wooden pallets to create lambing jugs, showcasing how producers can use items they have in abundance to create sheep pens.

“This is kind of a classic small sheep place in that they’ve made the most of what they have,” Crane said. “You don’t have to have the fanciest equipment. You can start from literally an open cattle barn and make it work for your operation to make money and provide for your family.” McCoy also hoped to give students a more hands-on experience at the school, but was happy with the educational content offered in its place. “Alison’s extensive knowledge was worth the price of admission,” he said. “She’s certainly a specialist in the area of sheep production, but she also has that personal experience because her family has its own sheep operation. She’s a researcher, but she also understands that you have to be able to make this pay for itself in a real-world situation. She did a great job of bridging that gap between research er and producer.” Crane said she hopes to conduct more educational schools and workshops in the years to come, and anticipates they might move to different locations to accommodate the vast area of the state. Fortunately, students traveling to Burns for the lambing school had weather on their side. “Most of the time, February and March aren’t quite this nice in Wyoming,” Crane said. “Hopefully we could time it a little better next time to make sure we are actually lambing during the lambing school.”

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