Alberta Sheep Breeders' Association
2011
Symposium Speakers
Richard Apps- "Hope is not a Strategy, Plan for Success", "Capable and Confident Producers",
"Wean More Lambs", "Gain From Genetics"
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Richard Apps comes from a family farming business in northern NSW running 800 -1,000 head of mixed age cattle covering breeding, backgrounding and finishing. He completed a Bachelor of Rural Science degree at the University of New England. He worked in the cotton industry for a short period before an extensive period of international travel – which included Canada and about a month on a ranch at Consort, Alberta.Upon returning from travelling he joined the Agricultural Business Research Institute (http://abri.une.edu.au) where he spent ~10 years as an Executive Officer for a range of beef cattle seedstock societies.
From there, Richard moved to central Queensland to establish a northern beef seedstock project – Tropical Beef Technology Services (TBTS) – to deliver technical breeding program advice and development of genetic evaluation among the northern Australian beef seedstock industry – northern Australia produces ~60% of Australian beef production. The project is still running and, more recently, has been extended to cover the southern Australian beef industry.Richard left TBTS and joined Meat & Livestock Australia in 2002 focussing on genetic evaluation and extension, and linking R&D outputs to delivery to sheep producers.
In 2008 he transferred internally in MLA from managing the Sheep Genetics (www.sheepgenetics.org.au) program (servicing some 800 ram breeders) to managing extension and adoption activity for sheep R&D nationally. This year Richard also assumed responsibility for southern beef extension and adoption activity.
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Woody Lane- "The Big Decisions: Managing High Input Costs", "Filling Feed Holes", "Untangling the Basics of Feeding Vitamins and Minrerals"
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Woody Lane is a nationally-known livestock nutritionist living in Roseburg, Oregon. He owns and operates an independent consulting firm "Lane Livestock Services,” teaches courses in forages and livestock nutrition to ranchers in the area, facilitates three forage study groups for farmers, and writes a popular monthly column called "From the Feed Trough...” for The Shepherd magazine. Woody earned his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Animal Nutrition at Cornell University and has published over 25 scientific, peer-reviewed research articles on sheep and cattle production. He worked on the famous Allegheny Highlands Project in West Virginia from 1978-1980, and in the 1980s, was on faculty at the University of Wisconsin as the State Extension Sheep and Beef Cattle Specialist. He has made his home in Oregon since 1990.
Woody is an expert on nutrition, pasture management, and grazing techniques. He has been featured speaker in scores of nutrition and forage workshops across the United States and Canada, and has worked internationally in New Zealand and Macedonia. In the past few years, he helped develop the well-known "SID Sheep Production Handbook", was the operations manager for the American National Sheep Improvement Program (NSIP), and together with the popular veterinarian Don Bailey, developed an instructional set of three videotapes called "Lambing Time Management."
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In these years of managing our sheep grazing company we acquired our first livestock guardian dog in 1992 after suffering through quite a lot of pet dog attacks on our sheep. After reading up and doing our research we decided that we would get a Šarplaninac dog to protect our sheep. Luckily for us this dog was a natural and we had no issues with her at all. After her, we got a Central Asian Ovcharka. This was a totally different dog and presented us with every challenge a guardian dog could throw at you. At nine years old, we gave up the battle of trying to rehabilitate him. He must have killed over 30 sheep and goats in his life. After that we went back to the Šarplaninac breed to do our sheep guardian duties. Despite the fact that our company was doing very well, Eric and I did not want to live in the Netherlands much longer. We wanted a new challenge and wanted to live in a less populated country with lots of nature, our choice was Alberta, Canada. When I visa was finalized we moved to Alberta at the end of august 2008. We have bought our ranch of 480 acres, near to High Prairie, Alberta. We rent another 8 quarter sections for hay and pasture. We run about 600 commercial ewes, have a small feedlot, and have some cows and horses. We use about 9 guardian dogs on our ranch and border collies to do our herding work. Our ranch is bordered on three sides by heavy bush, national park and forestry. We have a resident pack of coyotes on the ranch, bears, wolves and the odd cougar wondering through. We do not own a gun, do not trap, poison or utilize any means of lethal control for the predators. We like to call our ranching practice “Predator Friendly…” On this ranch we will now concentrate on establishing a good commercial sheep ranch, raising and training our border collies and Šarplaninac livestock guardian dogs and of course raising our two wonderful children to love and respect nature and animals in general. In my spare time I write freelance for a number of (Dutch) dog magazines and a small local agricultural newspaper in the Peace Country. Tony was raised on a farm north west of Calgary, Alberta. He has a BA degree from the University of Calgary and is a Certified Management Consultant. In 1999 Tony and his wife, Toby Williams, purchased 50 ewes which grew to a flock of over 200 ewes and 450 lambs before they sold in 2005. Tony was the General Manager of the Alberta Sheep and Wool Commission (now Alberta Lamb Producers) from the summer of 1998 to August 2001, at which point he began his own consulting business specializing in rural economic development and agriculture. Tony is currently a member of the Alberta Lamb Traceability Pilot Project (LTP) team working as project and anlysis coordinator and analysis coordinator, exploring sheep enterprise costs of production as well as the costs and benefits of RFID management and traceability systems. Karen Bannow-"Finding Those Empty Ewes" Greg McKinnon-"Trapping Coyotes, the Keys to Success" ____________________________________________________________________________________
Louise Liebenberg-"Raising Guardian Dogs to Last"
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I was born and raised in South Africa, my love and interest in all animals and nature was nurtured there. I had German Shepherd Dog when I was sixteen which I trained up to police dog standard, soon a border collie; Ace was added to my menagerie of birds, reptiles, horses and other animals. I was quite dedicated about training my dogs.
After my university study (BSc), majoring in psychology, I traveled to Europe with my border collie. While travelling, I worked on various sheep farms in the Netherlands and Scotland. In the Netherlands I met Eric Verstappen and we continued on together. We were active in training and raising border collies and went trialing all over Europe. My best trialing achievements were twice 4 th on the Continental Sheepdog Championships and was Dutch Practical Sheepdog champion.
In 1992 we started a grazing company “The Grazerie” and were hired with our flock of sheep, at times comprising of 1200 ewes, to graze nature areas, dykes, military grounds, parks, golf courses, heather regions and grass lands. We built up an extensive organic grazing company and advised in many other projects of this kind. We had three full time shepherds employed and we marketed our own lamb directly to butchery shops. We were also raising cutting and reining bred American Quarter horses.
What we do use to prevent predation is; a pack of guardian dogs, good fencing, grazing rotations and good management practices.
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Tony Stoltz-"LTP- More Than Traceability"
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Susan Hosford- "LTP- More Than Traceability"
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Susan has worked with Alberta Agriculture since 2002. She is currently sheep industry development specialist and manages sheep industry projects including: Precision Flock Management (2011/‘13), SheepBytes Ration Balancer, Lamb Traceability Pilot project (’07 / ‘10); SheepCentral; Lakeland Carcass Sire project (’05 / ’08); Lacombe Sensory Trial (’06); Building Better Lambs Initiative (’02 / ‘08); Sunterra Premium Pricing Grid; Biting into Profits (‘04).
Susan grew up on a dairy farm near Edmonton and graduated from the University of Alberta. She farmed mixed crops, roaster chickens, commercial crossbred and purebred Suffolk flocks near Camrose until 2002. She was involved in the Alberta Ram Test Station, Western Suffolk Reference Sire Program and managed out-of-season breeding/lambing system trials, forage and extended season grazing systems trials as well as lambing, breeding and grazing workshops.
Susan has worked on with numerous sheep industry boards and committees. (i.e. Canadian Sheep Identification Working Group; Industry-Government Advisory Committee; Livestock Inspection Services e Manifest Advisory; SheepCentral WG; National and Provincial BSE program development; On-Farm Food Safety National Advisory; Provincial On-Farm Food Safety Pilot manager; Western Canadian Flock Health Program Advisory; Western Suffolk Sire Reference Program; BC Forestry Grazing Provincial Vet Certification; Ovigene Canada Advisory; Alberta Sheep Breeders; Alberta Ram Test Station; National R.O.P Advisory; Battle River Research Group Director; Alberta Health Laboratories Sheep Committee; Olds College & Lakeland College Academic Advisory Committees; Animal Industry Advisory Committee; Alberta Agriculture Research Institute Pork, Poultry, Sheep Committee)
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