- [Announcer] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, (upbeat guitar music) MSU Extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery & Landscaping, and The Gallatin Gardeners Club.

(cheerful upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) - You are tuned to "Montana Ag Live," originating again this evening from studios at KUSM on the very dynamic campus here at Montana State University and coming to you over your Montana Public Television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, long retired professor of plant pathology, happy to be your host this evening.

A couple housekeeping things before we get into tonight's really interesting program.

First of all, I've had several questions about, "Where's Mary?"

Mary has left Montana, she's taken an administrative position at Virginia Tech.

Laurie Kerzicnik, who was our entomologist here for years, is now over in Missoula, I believe, with and Jane Mangold.

Where is Jane Mangold?

She's here in Bozeman.

She's on sabbatical.

She will be back full-time next year, but I do have her scheduled once this coming spring.

So anyway, that's where these people are.

Now, tonight's panel.

Way on my left, Eric Belasco.

Eric is an economist and boy, I tell you what, we can have more fun with the economist because they'll answer any questions you have, so make them tough.

And I love to kind of challenge this panel.

So if you had some really interesting economic questions tonight, Eric would take a stab at them.

Our special guest tonight, Brent Roeder.

Brent is our extension sheep specialist.

I've always been fascinated by that industry in the state.

First of all, I love lamb.

It's a wonderful meat.

We'll talk a little bit about that.

But Eric will bring us up.

Brent will bring us up to date on some of the issues and industry factors that we have here in the state of Montana.

Jessica Kansman.

Jessica is our new entomologist here at MSU.

This is her first time on the program, so if you really wanna be nasty, get some tough entomology questions in for Jessica.

We have a lot of fun doing that.

And of course, Mr.

Personality here, (panelists laugh cheerfully) Dave Baumbauer, he's our horticultural specialist tonight.

So we'll have all the bases covered if you have interesting questions.

This program is not any fun unless you provide the questions for this esteemed panel.

Answering the questions tonight is Candace Amori, I think I got it right, and Bruce Lobel.

Bruce is the old retired Chief Water Court judge here in the state of Montana.

So with that, Brent, tell us what you do here at MSU.

- Well, Jack, I'm the MSU Sheep and Wool Extension Specialist.

I work for MSU Extension, but I'm housed in the Department of Animal and Rain Sciences.

So I spend most of my time traveling the state, helping producers and wool pools and even goat producers now.

We've seen more goats coming into the state with general production problems.

They have a lot of questions, disease management, wool quality issues, things like that.

We do a lot of shear training in this state through the Wool Lab, trying to keep our young men and women in the shearing industry up to speed with the current standards that are out there.

And I'm also the supervisor at the Montana State University Wool Lab, or the Montana Wool Lab, one of only two University Wool Labs left in the United States.

The other one's down in San Angelo.

So we're getting pretty excited about building a new facility, a new research facility here on the campus of MSU.

But a lot of time on the road around the state talking to producers.

- Oh, that's great.

You know, you mentioned the goat industry and I've been told that Montana is one of the leading goat producing states.

And I've driven to Denver a couple times.

And if you look on the road between Harden and the Wyoming border, you see hundreds, if not thousands, of goats.

What are we doing with these animals?

- So a lot of those are being harvested for the ethnic holidays that are coming up right now.

They're using them for weed control.

That was where they came into.

I don't know that I wouldn't say Montana's kind of one of the leading states in the United States, but it's definitely a growing industry.

In Montana, the wool market's really struggling right now.

Goat market is, it's not near where the calf market is this spring, but it's doing pretty well.

And they mix well with cattle.

You can run easily one goat for every cow without reducing your stocking rate just because the preference, the grazing preference, is quite a bit different between goats and cattle.

So we do see increase in interest in Wanna bring the next generation back to an operation, add a second enterprise, as Eric would say.

It's a good way to get that next generation onto the operation and see if they can manage the goats before you turn them over on the cows.

So, yeah.

- I wasn't aware you could run them together like that.

That's interesting.

Economically, that's gotta be a benefit if you want.

- Yeah, I mean, diversify.

It sounds like you're lowering your costs with weed management perhaps.

- Yep.

- And yeah, looking for different markets that are unrelated.

- Weed control.

- Yep.

Yep.

- Are goats?

How hardy are they compared to sheep, or?

- They're fairly.

They acclimate well to this country, so yep.

They hair up fairly well.

So, yeah.

- We got a couple questions that have come in about the sheep in, but before we go there, I'm gonna run over to David because this is a question that came in last week that they didn't get to.

What is a good tomato variety for Montana that has good, quote, "Bite or acidity?"

Any answers to that?

- So, you know tomatoes, there's just, there's lots of varieties that you open up a seed catalogs.

So let's kind of concentrate on determinant variety.

So those that have a predetermined and they're more common in the garden as opposed to in a greenhouse or a high tunnel.

And so generally the red tomatoes have a than the yellow or the orange ones do.

A couple of varieties that do pretty well in Montana are a glacier early girl celebrity.

They're really common.

Those are hybrid varieties.

Some of the heirloom varieties have a higher acidity than the modern varieties.

'cause building a sweet tomato is one of the things that breeders were looking to.

So they're doing things to increase the sugar content.

So if you go with an older variety, like a brandy wine, prudence purple, something like that, some of those older varieties tend to have a little more blossom end rot issues and things like that.

So you have to pay a little closer attention to the water.

And the other thing to think about is phosphorus.

While most of our soils aren't limited in phosphorus, phosphorus has a play on increasing the acidity of the tomato and getting that bite that the caller's looking for.

- I'm gonna follow that up just a little bit.

For years I didn't pay any attention to the determinant indeterminate varieties tomato.

Now I grow nothing but determinate varieties because in my mind they mature better in Montana.

- They do.

- And so when you're selecting your tomato variety, look for?

- Determinate.

- Thank you.

Okay.

That we have that settled now.

Jessica first question has come in, and this is one that we have every year.

- [Jessica] Okay.

- Box elder bugs.

- [Jessica] Right.

- Yeah.

Generally a problem in the fall, but this time of year you also see them.

Why is that?

- So you start seeing them, I feel like on those first warm spring days, they tend to aggregate on the outsides of buildings.

Sometimes they'll come into your house.

I think the big thing is they, although they're really numerous, they're not super problematic.

They're not going to damage your house, they're not gonna damage your plants, they have really specialized diets, but they just do this behavior where they're very noticeable.

- [Jack] And to get rid of them a good vacuum sweeper is about as good as anything.

- About as good as anything.

Again, like I have a pretty high tolerance for the amount of insects I see in my environment.

- [Jack] Etymologist at heart, yeah.

- So I don't usually do much to control them.

But yeah, if you are trying to get rid of them in your house, definitely vacuuming them or just getting them outside is great.

- Okay.

- Making sure your house is sealed up.

- Thank you.

Brent, from Haver.

This person is curious, "Is the sheep industry growing, stable, decreasing in the state?"

- In the US as a whole, it's slowly decreasing.

There are some states, Ohio, mostly in the Midwest, where you see numbers increasing.

But in Montana it tends to, it's decreasing a little bit more.

We're a long way from markets, transportation costs are getting high.

Cattle ranching right now is probably a little more profitable than even when you put it on an AUM basis.

If you've got the right genetics and production system, you can make more money with sheep than you can with cattle.

But we have a major predation issue in Montana.

It's just taken, especially Eastern Montana, they're really struggling with predation out there.

Coyote numbers are very high.

The guard dogs don't work quite as well 'cause they're running in larger extensive pastures.

But areas in the Midwest, especially the closer to the East Coast, where the markets are, they're actually increasing numbers there, so.

- Okay.

I have a follow up question here regarding lamb.

And they read that New Zealand lamb is generally considered to be more tender than lamb that's produced in the United States.

Is that true?

- I think it depends on the production system.

So it generally tends to be younger.

There's a big industry just like discussion, just like with the beef cattle industry, grass-fed versus grain-fed.

We produce both in the US.

Particularly in New Zealand, it's mostly a grass-fed young lamb.

They harvest those lambs at a lot younger age.

They're probably about 80 pounds versus here, the traditional system in the US was they would take those lambs off range, they would put them in a feedlot, and then they would harvest them at about 150 pounds.

And so they're almost, they're probably 10, 12, maybe even 14 months old versus an eight month old lamb coming outta New Zealand.

But since COVID, what we've really seen, COVID really reset the lamb industry, our supply chains, and it really brought forth what we in the industry call the ethnic market.

So it would be lamb that is consumed.

They're not interested in per se, in buying cuts, they would like to buy the whole carcass.

So a lot of that lamb now that we used to feed to 150 pounds in feed lots in Colorado and California, it's now being harvested at 80 to 90 pounds, which has really dropped our domestic production.

And that's why we kind of have a shortfall while we're importing so much lamb now is because so much of our lamb is being harvested at a younger age.

Yeah.

- I haven't followed the lamb industry that much.

Take a hundred pound lamb that goes to market, what's that worth in today's dollars?

- Oh, right now 80 pound lambs are selling over $2.50.

I think the fat market for those heavy, heavy lambs, they're about a buck and a half pound live weight, that was just in Texas two weeks ago.

Everybody's getting ready for the Easter market and there's some ethnic markets coming up.

And so those 80 pound, 90 pound lambs that have good condition on them, they're bringing 350 a pound.

Pretty similar to what light calves are bringing.

So, yeah.

- It can be pretty profitable then.

- Oh yeah.

Yeah.

It's difficult for us in Montana, obviously we have this thing called winter where they do a lot of fall lambing in the south and Southwest and on the East Coast to fill that market.

So if they get good rains in the fall, they've got a second growing season, they can grow those lambs out fairly cheaply on grass, get them grass-fat in time for the Easter market and the other holidays.

So, yep.

- So I happen to love lamb burger on ciabatta bread with a nice red onion and some tomato on it.

I mean that's quality dining.

Is that lamb burger coming from the 150 pound lamb, most likely?

- Probably.

It would depend.

But lamb burger's gotten to be a huge deal.

During COVID they couldn't keep enough of it on the shelf.

And so, but a lot of that is probably coming out of the heavier lambs that we're harvesting in Colorado and California and then Detroit.

Yeah.

- Has the drought really limited the US's ability to produce more?

I mean is that part of the reason why we're importing more product?

- Drought has been a big issue, especially in the Southwest.

I know a lot of places down there are still about half stocked.

30 years ago there was 2 1/2 million head of sheep in Texas.

they're down to about 750,000.

30 years ago, we were probably 400,000 in Montana.

We're sitting at about 180,000.

So numbers just keep dropping both on the cattle and the sheep side.

So for a myriad of reasons, but.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

With that and talking about food, we're gonna shift over to Eric.

I love this question.

This person from Missoula says, "With commodity prices going down, corn, wheat, soybeans, why are food prices going up?"

- Yeah.

So I love these questions.

- [Panelist] It's a long question.

- Yeah, no, it's a good.

It's very insightful.

- [Jack] How much time do we have?

(laughs) - It's an insightful question too.

And COVID feels like the starting point for a lot of these cycles, you know?

But really you saw increases hit the commodity markets after the retail market.

So retail prices went up, commodity markets were lagged.

Really, you know, '22 is really when we saw really strong markets across the board for beef, wheat, all the commodity prices were really strong.

But then inflation has been slowing down a bit and some of those commodity prices have also been coming down.

So we hear the inflation rate is slowing, which means prices are still ticking up just kind of at a slower rate.

But commodity prices are coming down and they're kinda coming down to, I guess in a real term, meaning once you control for inflation, more of what we'd expect them to be.

So they're not quite as good as 2022, which was probably the best market since maybe 2014 where we saw some really good prices.

So, yeah, those prices are coming down.

As far as that spread, it comes down to all the stuff.

When Montana farmers and ranchers, when the wheat or the animals leave their land, what happens?

It's logistics, it's labor, it's all these things.

All those prices have gone up and that's what's driving those retail prices still.

- That makes sense.

Even for an economist.

- Even for an economist.

(panelists chuckle) - Okay.

Jessica, from Bozeman, this caller would like to know how to manage and control fungus gnats.

Well, first of all, what are fungus gnats?

Both you guys can jump in on that 'cause I know you have a major problem with those.

So have at it, guys.

- All right, well I'll kick this off and then maybe you can help follow up.

But yeah, fungus gnats are a type of fly.

They look a little kinda like a mosquito, almost really dainty-looking fly.

And you end up seeing them, especially if you overwater a potted plant or a house plant, all of a sudden you'll start to see them all coming out of the soil.

So one of the ways to help not have that happen is trying to control not overwatering.

Do you have other tips for fungus gnats?

- So they thrive in high organic potting mixes.

And you're right, overwatering is a big one.

But it's challenging also when a lot of people are probably starting their seedlings or thinking about starting their seedlings, and so you have to keep those fairly moist.

Be very careful if you're using sub-irrigation, 'cause that creates that issue also.

And then the related one, I have fungus gnats and I also have a lot of shore flies.

And so they look like a little house fly.

And so you don't really get them mixed up 'cause fungus are gnats are gnat-like, mosquito-like, and shore flies look like little house flies.

Doesn't really do a whole lot of good to try to treat the adults 'cause really, they are primarily a And they lay their eggs on the soil surface and then the eggs hatch out and the larvae and pupae are below the soil surface, typically in the top inch or so.

So in like house plants, if you can let that top inch dry out, that's gonna help quite a bit.

There are biological controls that work fairly well.

There's a predacious mite for that.

And there's also, is it hypoaspis?

It's a little beetle.

And then rove beetles also work pretty well.

So these are insects and mites that are pretty specific to living in and around the soil surface.

And so it's not like you're gonna deal with them in your house or you're not gonna be in the atmosphere per se.

- You know, they really don't do that much damage.

I don't worry about them.

- [Dave] They're annoying though.

- [Jessica] Yeah.

- You know what else is annoying?

- Me.

(panelists laugh) - You took my line.

(panelists laugh) - I know.

I just thought I'd beat you to the punch.

- That was pretty good.

Fruit flies.

Where do they come from and why are they prevalent?

I mean, they show up even in the middle of the winter.

- Yeah, 'cause you bring it in with the produce.

- Is that where it comes from?

- Yeah.

- [Jessica] Mm-hmm.

- Okay, so we learned a little bit here.

All right.

From Red Lodge, this caller has a red maple tree, would like to know how to protect the remaining ungirdled bark from deer trying to rub their velvet off the antlers.

That's a tough one.

- Fence.

- Fence?

- Fence them out.

- What if you just... Yeah.

And is it more of a problem in the spring or in the fall?

- Fall.

- Yeah.

Late summer, early fall.

- Okay.

- And if the deer don't get them, it seems like the voles get after them, so.

They're a toughie.

- Yeah, I agree.

From Bozeman.

This caller is wondering which sheep breed is primarily found in Montana now compared to historic populations?

Brent, you wanna try that one?

- Yeah.

The sheep breeds have changed a little bit due to economics.

So there's some old historic pictures in the Deer Lodge Valley trailing bands of Suffolk and Hamp type sheep, medium wool type sheep.

Traditionally though, Montana's is primarily been a Rambouillet type range ewe.

The Targhee, the Columbia breeds that were developed at the US Sheep Experiment Station just over the hill in Du Bois, Idaho.

So they have a strong foothold here.

But we're starting to see some influx now of South African Meat Marino, which is a breed that came outta South Africa probably 20 years ago.

People are mixing a little bit of that in along with regular Marinos.

But it's still primarily a Rambouillet.

I would say the vast majority of sheep that were run years ago were Rambouillet.

And then they would usually put a medium wool type sheep on it, like a Suffolk or a Hamp to produce a kind of a hybrid vigor feeder lamb that feeds out well.

The breeds haven't changed, I would say, a whole lot.

Yeah.

- So a little bit, I like a little bit of agricultural Way back in the early 1900s, there was over 6 and almost 6 1/2 million sheep in the state.

- [Brent] Yep.

- The same varieties back then?

- Yeah.

A lot of what's probably changed the most I would say is the production.

So pre-homestead era, there was probably still a lot more what we call weather bans.

I was just talking to a young man yesterday.

Most people don't realize that everybody knows about the big cow drives that came up from Texas into Eastern Montana, late 1800s after the Civil War.

There used to be big sheep drives that started in Northern California.

- [Jack] And Oregon.

- Yep.

And they would come across Northern Nevada, come up to Snake River, Idaho.

They'd cross one of the passes down by Monida and they would winter them either in Lake Basin or the Prickly Pear Valley.

Prickly Pear Valley grew up to be the Helena Valley and Lake Basin grew up to be Molt.

- Yes.

- And then that was why there was a big shearing barn.

If you know anything about the history of Ingomar, if you ever stop at the Jersey, literally for a bowl of beans there, there was a huge shearing shed there and they were basically shearing all of those 2-year-old lambs that had come out California, wintered in Lake Basin.

They sheared them at Ingomar and then after they were shorn, they trailed them across Eastern Montana and they were going to hit the railroad that was coming through the Dakotas, so.

- [Jack] A lot of history in sheep production in this state.

- There is.

- [Jack] And cattle too.

- Yep!

- The Wool Growers Association happens to be the oldest association in the state by two years, I believe.

- I think a year.

Yep.

1883.

I think Stock Growers started in '84.

- [Jack] Four?

Okay.

- Yep.

- From Hamilton.

Eric, this caller is asking what percent of agricultural products in Montana are exported and how is that related to the prices that we get?

That's kind of an interesting question.

- [Eric] Yeah!

- I mean, it's multifaceted.

- I mean, I don't have the percentage, but I can, it depends on the commodities you're producing.

I mean, a lot of the beef that we see in Montana is gonna be interstate.

It's leaving.

And sheep, I would assume might be the same where they're kind of leaving the state to get processed and fed.

- [Brent] Yep.

Yeah.

- Just to kinda capture some of those economies of scale, you know, hit like where there's more availability of feed, corn, things like that.

Bigger processing facilities.

So a lot of the beef, some of it does head out west to the Port of Portland, Port of Seattle, and head to Asia.

Japan, South Korea are really big markets.

But still, you're talking about 10% of total US production is going to exports.

Now with wheat it's totally different.

I mean, almost everything we produce is going overseas.

So you know, it's getting on those trains and heading to Portland and then heading over to our big trading partners over in Japan and kinda the Asia Pacific area.

- Okay.

While I have you up, another question.

Why are farms getting bigger in Montana?

Pretty simple answer I think.

- Yeah.

Well, it's been a long-run trend.

Like we were talking about sheep trends, this has kind of been a long trend as well.

And there was the Ag census just came out recently and kind of confirmed further movement here.

And, yeah, it is a little complex, I guess.

'Cause it is true that farms are getting larger, but it's kind of, where are they coming from is a little bit different.

It seems like there's kind of two growing segments in agriculture.

One is large operations and then the other one is kind of our smaller operations.

- [Panelist] Right.

- So both of those seem to be growing at the same time.

Kind of the middle seems to be a tough spot to be in agriculture.

A lot of those operations are moving to kind of a larger operation right now.

The big economic reasons are just we call it economies of scale.

- Yeah.

- But you have high fixed costs.

You know, the price of land is getting more expensive.

So if you wanna get into agriculture, And how do you pay off the machinery and everything else that you need?

Well, you need large numbers to kinda pay off all that.

Small margins.

You know, high volume is kinda how you get past those.

So we get, yeah, large operations.

- Okay.

Thank you.

This is for Jessica.

It's kind of an interesting question.

It's from Miles City.

This caller would like to know how to control aphids that are appearing on her tomato and pepper plants, which are just starting to grow in her sunroom.

And that kinda leans into your pets, so.

- Leans into my pets.

(panelists laugh) - [Jack] So if you wanna show your pets and answer that question.

- Sure!

- [Jack] Let's do it.

- Sure.

So for aphids, outside of my pets, another thing that you can do is manually crushing them off of plants, if it's a small enough area you're trying to treat.

Or you can spray the plants with water some way to get the aphids off the plants.

Because if the aphid had its way, it would stay on that one plant and feed in that one spot for the rest of its life.

So any amount that you can disturb it is going to help reduce your aphid populations.

Another ally we have are natural enemies, we call them, so predators and parasites of these aphids.

So I have here some lady beetles from my research.

So these are actually the multicolored Asian lady beetle, which is something that most folks are familiar with because you end up seeing them in your house.

But they are, there's a lot of misconceptions about them too, because folks that they're not ladybugs that they're something else.

But all ladybugs are lady beetles.

So this is just the same.

They come in a lot of different colors and different spot formations.

But these are beneficial.

They still eat a lot of aphids, an impressive number.

They just also have some annoying quirks like they like to aggregate and come into your house.

But they're not dangerous, you know?

The only thing that is maybe a little unpleasant is if you interact with them in any way, like I am right now, it's doing this thing where it reflex bleeds is what we call it.

It creates this stinky substance from its blood essentially on you.

So dogs and things won't want to eat it as much because it has this kind of stinky component to it.

But these are pretty great allies that we have.

So this is the beetle is the one that we're most familiar with.

But when it's a larvae, we see these a lot in gardens in the summer or even in houses and things.

They look very different from the beetles.

And this is a question I get all the time of like, "What is this little alligator that I found on my plants?"

But these are lady beetle larvae, so they're really great to have in your garden because they can't fly away.

So if you have lady beetle larvae, you could place them potentially on a plant and they could help get rid of your aphids.

- So I wanna follow up on that.

I am one of the rare breed that loves Brussels sprouts.

- [Jessica] Ah-huh.

- And they do grow very well here on the state of Montana, if you start them from plants and not seeds.

But aphids love them.

- [Jessica] Yes.

- And it's very difficult because of the structure to use an insecticide on a Brussel sprout.

Could you buy larvae lady beetle, lady bug, larvae and turn them loose on your Brussel sprouts and hope not to have any aphids?

- You could try.

Usually when you buy them you get them as adults.

And so the problem that we have is ladybugs will have their fill and then they might fly away.

So you could buy a bunch of them and they might not stay.

The goal would be having them able to reproduce so you get a lot of the larvae on your plants.

- Are there plants I could put in my garden that would be attractive to a lot of beneficial insects?

We have, anecdotally, at the hort farm had great luck with alyssum, white alyssum, and I wanna say it's attracting hover flies.

- Yeah.

So sweet allysum or those types of flowers tend to attract hover flies and parasitic wasps to gardens.

I'm not sure of any specific plants that attracts lady beetles.

They're mostly looking for their food.

But there are some plants that people are growing kind of as a companion plant, we call it, near their crop plant, to try to attract in these beneficial insects.

Some research that I'm doing is trying to replicate the odor of this insect to use as a repellent potentially in a garden space.

So you don't have to go around trying to buy it.

- [Jack] I like that idea.

Yeah.

Okay.

Sounds great.

Thank you.

- Yeah.

- Brent, you've got a bag of what looks like rabbit pellets there.

(panelists laugh) You wanna explain what that is?

I assume it's something to do with wool.

- Yeah.

So, yeah, you're correct, Jack.

So the wool industry right now, anybody that's in it, as Eric was saying, it seemed like everything goes back to COVID.

The last time we had a really good wool market was 2018.

We were selling a lot of our top wool in the state for over $3 a pound.

Right now we're about half that.

But the problem is, is a lot of our colored wool, so wool, it comes off medium wool sheep that has black fiber contamination, our coarser end of our white face wool, our kind of crutchings, bellies and tags like that.

There's literally no market for that.

I mean, there's hundreds of millions of pounds of this stuff sitting in storage around the world.

And so everybody's trying to come up with a way, how can we process this wool that's not going into carpet or clothing or upholstery that used to?

Is there a system where we can make some beneficial use of that wool instead of hauling it to the dump?

'Cause wool has some very great natural attributes.

It's naturally biodegradable.

We've been harvesting it off of sheep sustainably for 10,000 years now and using it for clothing.

And so one of the ideas that came up, it was a process that was actually patented by a multi-generational sheep operation down in Utah.

And we have a multi-generational sheep producer in Whitehall that has started producing these.

So these are a wool pellet.

They run them through a press mill and they're a fairly soft pellet.

There's some early research out there to indicate that if you replace about 5% of your potting soil mix with a wool pellet, you get a very good benefit in terms of plant growth.

And so, we ordered some.

We're gonna do some actually field scale trials out at Fort Ellis this spring with Dr. Hayes Goosey and just see on a field scale if they have any benefit or not.

We're pretty sure they're working on in But yeah.

- Moisture retention, or?

- Moisture retention.

The actual NPK, so the fertilizer component of this, doesn't give them the response that it should.

And so there's some thought that it's either the lanolin component, which is the grease or the oil and wool that kind of kick starts that seedling, or it's some, maybe some residual microbial.

The one thing about pelleting it is when they run it through a press mill, it will keep the pellet up to at least 150 degrees, up to 180 degrees.

So it naturally is a sea weed, sea free rather than using just raw wool.

But we do have a lot of people that are taking that raw wool now and using it when they do their conservation nursery tree seeding and putting just basically raw wool that doesn't have any demand right now in our commercial market, and putting it in the bottom of a hole and putting a tree seeding seedling in and having pretty good luck with that, so.

- You know, speaking of wool quality and stuff, we have some major issues in the state with noxious weeds, like hound's tongue.

Does that affect the marketability of?

- Oh, yeah!

Yep, Burdock's probably the worst.

You get out East, you run into more of the common cocklebur, which gets to be a big issue up north and maybe some in this country.

You'll see more of it up north, wild licorice burr.

And the major economics.

So what we would say high vegetation matter wool, wool that has 2% or more of its weight in vegetable matters.

So that could be hay, straw, burrs, things of that nature.

That wool traditionally all was shipped to China for processing because the way they process it uses an acid basically to digest out the vegetable matter.

Nobody in the US does that anymore.

All that wool gets exported to China.

The big problem we ran into about five years ago, if you remember, we had a big fight over steel imports and steel tariffs.

So as a retaliatory tariff, China put a 25% tariff on all American wool coming into China.

And so we are basically shipping very little wool to China for processing.

And that's kind of led to, part of what's led to, the situation we're dealing with.

- [Jack] So those tariffs are still in place?

- Yep, they are.

Yep.

- [Jack] Okay.

- So as an outdoor enthusiast, I've noticed that it seems like the preponderance of base layers, long underwear.

- Yep.

- It has really moved to wool.

- Yep.

- Marino wool.

- Yep!

- And throw it in the washer.

You throw it in the dryer.

- [Brent] Yep.

- I mean, it's hard to find polypropylene underwear anymore.

- [Brent] Yep.

- It's all wool.

It's kind of a fascinating thing to see this in relatively short amount of time.

- Yeah.

The COVID pandemic really changed that because it changed that.

We have a company here in Montana that fortunately was up and running and really I think captured that COVID pandemic lockdown when people wanted to get out and explore.

They wanted a more natural product.

Wool has a lot of natural attributes.

It's naturally flame-retardant, it'll keep you, it can absorb 40% percent of its weight in water and keep you warm still.

And so, it wicks moisture off your body.

Most people don't think about wearing wool in hot, humid environments.

But if you go to Hawaii, there's some really light base layer T-shirts that are phenomenal in hot, humid weather because it wicks the moisture off your body, keeps you cool, keeps you dry.

And so we're starting to see a lot of that.

You'll see a lot of American made wool socks and the reason they don't use Australian wool is the Australian sheep producers.

So if you look at a raw wool clip, it has a lot of waves in it or crimp waviness, we call crimp.

And so what they did in Australia was they bred all the crimp out of their wool, made it a straight laying fiber.

And what that does is it allows them to spin a real high-end luxury suit.

And the crimp that we left in our American fiber, our wool provides a lot of loft and compression resistance, and so that makes a phenomenal athletic sock.

And so it's interesting to see what decisions were made 50 years ago by producers and that now have an impact on the marketing on a worldwide basis for products.

- I won't show you, but I got my smart wools on as we speak.

So I have a whole drawer of those.

(panelists laugh) - I won't mention the price.

- You know, they last a long time.

You have to look at things, you know?

- Okay.

- The time value of money, right?

If something lasts a long time.

- Good point.

We have a photo here of Tim sent in a picture of his lawn that we'll go to in a minute.

It's snow mold.

We've had several questions every spring about snow mold.

This year was one of those years where we did have snow mold.

So we bring that picture up and as soon as we get through this one, I'm gonna go back to you Eric, 'cause I have an interesting question for you.

Snow mold on turf is not a big issue.

There's two types.

One is a Fusarium, the other is Typh, you know?

Those are fungus names.

They really doesn't hurt the yard.

Golf courses, that's a different story.

If you rake it, the grass will come back faster.

Or if you mow your yard short in the spring so the leaves blow off to your neighbor's, you won't have as much snow mold.

Don't worry about it.

Now to Eric.

- [Eric] Hope you're not gonna ask you about snow mold.

(panelists laugh) - That'd be good.

This person from Havre wants to know is when the new farm bill's gonna be out.

- Okay.

- But number two.

- Wow, that's amazing.

- Is there anything detrimental that you know of in the bill that will affect Montana producers?

- Yeah.

So I taught an ag policy class at MSU last fall, so fall 2023.

And in that class I asked them, "What day will the farm bill be signed?"

And offered extra credit if they got it right.

Obviously it hasn't been signed up, there's no extra credit.

And I think they started to realize that kinda later in the semester.

You know, some things have to fall into place first.

I mean the budget was certainly a big hurdle in order to get to the farm bill.

So once you get past the budget, gosh, I don't know.

It always seems to be like three months from now is kind of when people are looking, but that's been for like the last year.

Is there anything in there detrimental?

You know, I think that's the frustrating thing is a lot of it seems to be kind of a status quo farm bill.

Really the only thing that I see in there being debated right now is whether there are a couple programs that are kind of safety net programs that use a reference price and there's a bit of discussion of, well, given that prices have gone up and inflation has gone up, should those reference prices be increased?

And which might sound like a very reasonable argument.

You know, on the other hand, if you're going to increase expenditures in one program, you've gotta find another program to cut and nobody's volunteering for that obviously.

So that's kind of where the debate is now.

But I think, yeah, once it gets to the Ag committees, I think it would be pretty quick to get the farm bill going.

So I'm not gonna give you a date.

- I didn't figure you would, but they're always late.

There's no doubt about it.

- They're always late.

That's right.

There's a history.

I mean the latest was I guess in 2014, when it was supposed to be the 2012 and it ended up being the 2014 farm bill.

And that was really when you had divided government where you had a legislative branch and an executive branch that are in different parties.

And that's certainly what we have now.

So, yeah, you'd expect for it to take a little bit longer.

- Okay.

Here's one that I'm fascinated with because I've never heard these terms.

From Bozeman.

Brent, this caller wonders what the difference is between a hogg, H-O-G-G, sheep and a gimmer sheep.

- Oh my goodness.

(panelists laugh) - Very specific.

- I don't know if I know what a gimmer is.

So a hogg generally is a term used in England.

We kind of have a bit of a, you will call a 2-year-old sheep a hogget.

But it's not, those aren't terms that we use in the US on a regular basis, yeah, so.

- [Jack] I'd never heard them myself.

- Yeah, I've heard them, but I don't wanna make an educated guess Yeah.

- Well, I have you up.

A Great Falls caller asked if the wool pellets discussed can be worked in the garden soil as fertilizer.

And if so, where can they be purchased?

Probably a little early to do that.

- Yeah, you can do a Google search.

There are some places they can be purchased online.

There actually is a place in Great Falls that carries, it's Honey and Yarn I think.

But there is a local store in Great Falls if you just do a Google search and search wool pellets, Montana, something will come up.

Yeah.

If not, they can give me a call.

- [Jack] I wouldn't invest a lot of money until it's proven.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It'll be interesting to see when you sit down and do the math on it, the recommendation for this is 100 pounds per acre.

Well, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but there's 2 1/2 million pounds of top soil in the top six inches of a...

So when you sit down and figure out you're putting 100 pounds per acre.

- [Panelist] Sounds like fairy dust.

- [Brent] Yeah.

Yeah.

And so we're just gonna see if it does any good on a large scale.

You know, in the horticultural setting, the results they got, they were replacing 5% of their potting soil with it, which is a lot higher percentage, so.

- [Jack] That's true.

- [Brent] Yep.

- [Jack] Well, that'll be interesting.

We'll find out.

- [Brent] Yep.

- Next year you'll give us a report.

- [Brent] We will.

- Okay.

I have a question here from two different locations.

One in the eastern part of the state and one over at Helena.

And they want to know, "When do bees become active?"

And you two can get into that.

And what triggers their activity?

- So bees and a lot of insects that are currently in diapause, we call it, it's kind of like hibernation, are waiting for a certain number of days where it's a certain temperature or certain light conditions as a signal to come out and start trying to forage because it's springtime.

So the concern is with these super warm days we've been having in these weeks, are we gonna start to see things prematurely coming out when there aren't flowers to feed on yet?

So those are the signals that they're looking for.

- [Jack] Okay.

So in honeybees, so they're out?

- Yeah.

- If it was above- - [Jack] Well, what are they feeding on?

- Nothing.

- [Jack] They're hungry?

- Well, let's back that up because there are some trees blooming now.

Willows are blooming.

- [Jack] True.

- Maybe some of those maples.

There are a few early sources of pollen out there, but they're pretty few and far between.

And so this is a concern for now honeybees a whole different thing, right?

'Cause they don't really diapause, right?

They're just hanging out and they're keeping the queen warm all winter long.

So they're consuming their stored honey.

So if that runs out and they become far more active and it's warm, I think it's largely temperature dependent and somewhat for the period.

- Yeah.

Largely temperature.

- The queen's laying eggs, now there's more mouths to feed.

So they call it, is it like march dwindling or so this is the time when you kind of lose colonies because they run out of food and there's young bees to feed.

And so beekeepers need to be paying attention that this is potentially when you need to put supplemental feed on your honeybee colonies because increased activity with the longer days and it also depends on the variety of bees.

So Italian bees are typically have more bees than the Carniolan does.

I know that you're digging all this stuff.

- I am.

But I have a question for you as soon as you get done.

- Okay, I'm done.

- The African honeybee that was so much in the press a few years ago, what's the status of that now?

- You wanna do it?

- I don't have much of an update on the Africanized bees.

- So our winters are potentially what's gonna limit the spread into a state like Montana because they don't tend to put the stores up that a European honeybee does.

They don't make as much surplus honey and they also tend to swarm more frequently so they don't have as large a colony.

So they're in Southern Utah, I think that's about as close as they are.

They're prevalent throughout parts of Texas.

- Yep.

- Arizona, New Mexico, Southern California.

I think the big issue, or one of the big questions, is like, how come they haven't moved further north and into California?

And so, and since they readily, I mean they're hybrids, the Africanized bees, these are hybridized honeybees.

And that's one of those things it's like, I guess entomologists in California, apiary scientists keep thinking they're gonna see them further north in Northern California haven't shown up yet.

- Okay.

Interesting.

Person does not want their name given.

But somebody with Montana, Fish Wildlife and Parks would like Brent to talk a little bit about the research projects you have with bighorn sheep and domestic sheep.

So you want to delve into that a little bit?

- Yeah, we certainly can.

So there's a lot of research and a lot of history with domestic and bighorn conflicts just on the disease side, just like there is with cattle and elk and Brucellosis.

We know that diseases can go both ways.

So there's not been a lot of in-depth research on the subject on a landscape scale.

So a lot of pen studies, a lot of lab studies.

So actually it was the Montana Wild Sheep Foundation that really pushed for this project.

It involves Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the Montana Wild Sheep Foundation, Montana State University, the University of Montana, and Montana Wool Growers were all involved in this.

So in essence, what we're doing is a fish and game biologist or GPS collaring a bunch of, we selected about seven different herds of big, or they did, we let them select them.

So they picked about seven different herds of big horns across Montana.

Most, a lot of them are in Southwest Montana and a few in Western Montana, and GPS collared.

Traditionally what a lot of what they've done is they put the collars on the ewes because they're interested in lamb mortality.

And so this time they put a bunch of collars on rams as well as ewes.

And then once they picked those wild sheep herds, we were in charge of collaring.

I think we're gonna collar about 500 domestic sheep that are within about 10 miles of those bighorn herds.

And so the basic premise behind this research project is to look at how much contact does occur, how often does it occur, how long does it last?

And then to try to identify some management tools because you can talk all all about the diseases that you want going one way or going the other.

You know, we're gonna end up eventually, hopefully not, but with something like foot and mouth disease coming in, which then it gets really imperative that we try and maintain separation between wildlife and domestic livestock.

And so, the ultimate goal is just, is can we document some seasonal stuff or some management practices.

We know from producers that livestock guardian dogs do a very good job of keeping especially bighorn rams out of our domestic ewes in the fall.

But we haven't been able to document that.

And because Fish, Wildlife and Parks is mandated by law to use only science-based recommendations for their management plan, we just need to document that, put it into a scientific paper so that they can implement some of those management practices in their big horn management plans.

So that's the goal for now.

- It sounds like a nice project.

- [Brent] Yeah, yeah.

It's a big one.

- It sounds like.

- [Panelist] How prevalent are those guard dogs?

- Pretty much everybody has them now.

- Really?

- Yeah.

They offer 24 hour security.

They bring their own.

I tell everybody that's new to the guard dog deal, it's like having a 3-year-old around all the time because, you know, they're curious, they get into everything.

They're all a little different personality.

Some of them will wander, some of them will just stay with the sheep.

But for the most part, we would not be in the sheep business in Montana if we did not have them, so.

- And the primary predator are coyotes?

- Predator deterrent.

So a non-lethal, mostly non-lethal method, of keeping predators out of our sheep.

Yeah.

- Great Pyrenees for the most part?

- Most people have moved with the advent of the increase in wolf numbers.

The Pyrenees do a very good job on coyotes and some on mountain lion.

But if you get into areas which there's a lot of that country now where you either have grizzly bear or wolf populations, you're gonna end up with a different breed.

Probably something like a Akbash, Maremmano, you know?

Just, there's a lot of mixed breeds.

They brought a bunch of different breeds in, Kangals and things like that, here lately.

- My question, how expensive is it to get these guard dogs?

- To buy a mature, well, to buy a pup anymore, you're probably a well raised pup because most people don't realize that they have to be bonded to the sheep and goats.

So they have to be trained.

You can train these dogs to bond to anything and protect it.

It's a really interesting concept when you get into it.

So in Southern...

It's either in Southern Australia or they have an endangered penguin that a native fox species was killing all these endangered penguins.

And they actually trained a livestock guardian dog to protect the penguins.

And that's basically what its job is, is to protect the penguins from the native foxes.

So it's pretty interesting what you can train them to.

There's quite a bit of early work trying to get them trained to cattle.

It's a little different situation because the cattle disperse across the landscape.

They really are more effective under a herded or small fence system where the sheep can stay in one group so they can patrol them.

Yep.

- Okay.

We're running a little short of time.

We're gonna try to get a few quick answers in here.

This is a Facebook question from a Mr. Mike Thompson.

Appreciate that.

"Is there any control over imports for lamb and wool in this country?"

- No.

That's a very good question.

It's a current topic in the industry.

So we're currently importing about 70% of the lamb that we consume in the US, so we try to look at everything from a negative and a positive.

One of the reasons we're importing so much lamb, as we were discussing prior to the show, is that during the COVID lockdown, a lot of millennials of the younger generation that had never tried lamb, lamb got really cheap and they decided to try it and decided that they liked it.

And so our per capita consumption of lamb pre-COVID was about 6/10 of a pound per capita.

At the height of COVID, we went up to about a pound and a half per capita consumption.

Still pretty small potatoes in the big grand scheme of things.

One of the things I was talking to Eric with about is that if we eliminated all imports of lamb and we just had to rely on domestic production, we're producing about 140 million pounds of lamb and we're consuming about 500 million pounds of lamb.

One of the things that bothers some industry leaders is that we're gonna lose our retail shelf space for lamb.

And so it's not gonna be in the supermarket, the big box stores.

And so lamb is an interesting concept and it's the only one of the few commodities I know of, especially from Australia, there are no tariffs and no quotas on imports of lamb.

And so it has been a major issue.

It got to be a real big issue in 2000 when the dollar went up to about a buck 27 against the world currency.

We were really flooded with lamb.

We did a 201 trade fight with the WTO, spent a lot of money and honestly never got anywhere with it.

And so, it's gonna continue to be a big issue.

- Well, it sounds like it.

We're down to just a minute or so.

I got one more question from Miles City.

This person markets about 18 lambs every year, not a big operation.

Basically she says they get nothing for them.

What could they do?

Quickly.

- Oh man, I can't believe they don't get any.

- [Jack] She can get ahold of you.

- Yeah, I can't believe they don't get anything for them.

It could be an issue of what they're trying to sell because it's just like on the wool side, if what you're selling is what the buyers want or wheat or anything.

So we do have a lot of off breed sheep in Montana.

A lot of them are used for fiber artists.

They make some really phenomenal stuff out of the wool.

It's colored wool or has certain properties, but the lambs from a commercial feeding standpoint on the meat side just don't have a very good market.

And that could be part of the situation.

- [Jack] Part of the situation too is we don't have a lot of processors.

- Yep, will process lamb.

That's correct.

- Yeah, exactly.

So that makes a big difference too.

Folks, we're down with a very few seconds remaining.

I wanna thank the panel.

Eric, it's always a pleasure to have you.

It's fun to have an economist because I can beat on them and give them some tough questions.

Brent, again, thank you for being here.

Jessica, first time, good job.

You'll be back, no doubt about it.

And I'll coerce you into coming again sometime.

Not on next week, the following week, Waded Cruzado, President of the University will be our guest.

Have a good week, good night.

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