Sheep Industry News August 2021

Hess Returns Home to Lead Nevada-Reno Sheep Research W ith more than four years of experience working for AgResearch – a division of New Zealand's Crown Re search Institutes – Andrew Hess, Ph.D., knows a thing or two about turning scientific efforts into practical tools that can be implemented at the ranch level.

In his new position as an assistant professor in the University of Nevada-Reno's Department of Agriculture, Veterinary and Range land Sciences, he will be tasked with exactly that. While he will work with both sheep and beef cattle in his new role, he was hired as part of the university's investment in the Great Basin Research and Extension Center. Announced in fall of 2020, the center is now home to the Rafter 7 sheep flock that was developed by the univer sity some 30 years ago. "It's great that the university has the Rafter 7 flock back," said Hess, who got his undergraduate degree from UNR in 2011. "They sold the flock around the time I graduated from UNR. I'm really excited to have that flock available as a resource to conduct some of these studies." UNR hired Hess in the summer of 2020, but his arrival was delayed by the global COVID-19 pandemic. He returned to the United States in late June of this year and had been on campus in Reno for just a week when he was interviewed for this story. Despite that, Hess has some clear ideas about where his re search is headed in the months to come, and it will involve genetic research that lends itself to practical application for the ranchers of Northern Nevada. "I’ve got a few projects that I’m trying to get underway. One of them is focused on improved health in sheep," Hess said. "Mostly what I’m focusing on right now are polymicrobial diseases that cause pneumonia in sheep. I'm looking at the microbial profile to see if we can better use that to characterize the disease and select on those to improve the health of our sheep flocks.” "With pneumonia, it’s usually caused by multiple microbes. Usually, one comes in and makes the animal more susceptible to another one. It’s the combination of those different pathogens that actually causes the disease. So, one of the things that I am inter ested in – rather than focusing on just one of those microbes – is focusing on the whole profile to see if I can better characterize that animal’s disease status and use that information to select for healthier animals. "Another area that I am interested in pursuing is trying to get a feed efficiency measurement – or a proxy for a feed efficiency measurement – for animals that are out in the field in our range land environments. The goal is to be using digital agriculture tools

Andrew Hess

to assist in that and get more so a proxy than a direct measurement of feed efficiency." Hess is on board with the ongoing push for the use of genetic and genomic advancements to improve the American sheep indus try. "The first step is helping producers understand the benefits of genetic testing and getting genomic information, and the gains that they can make when using genomics compared to your standard pedigree-based analysis," Hess said. "So, part of what I’m focused on doing here first is just reaching out to the local ranchers and talking to them about some of the potential benefits of genomics. From there, it’s just extending it further into a broader toolkit." At AgResearch, Hess worked with implementing genomics in multiple species – from sheep and beef cattle to mussels and deer/ elk. "I got a really rich experience across a range of different species that are at various stages of implementing genetics or genomics," he said. "It was a really neat experience for me. Sheep were probably the furthest along in that area, while mussels were in the very early stages. My experience with mussels was actually demonstrating the benefit of genomic selection when they were considering imple menting that into their breeding practices. "I'm just excited about this opportunity to come home – most of my family lives in the Reno area – and I look forward to working with the ranchers of Nevada and the American sheep industry."

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