- [Announcer] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(bright music) - Good evening.

You're watching "Montana Ag Live" originating today from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus at Montana State University and coming to you over your Montana public television system.

Hey, I'm Jack Riesselman, retired professor of plant pathology.

Happy to be your host tonight.

You know how this program works?

You provide the questions and we do our best to provide the answers.

As I mentioned in the past, we do also take comments.

We're going to have a very unique program tonight, and I'm going to start off by introducing our very special guest sitting at the end of the table, and that is Rant Ranya.

Ranya is a working dog.

It doesn't look like it right now.

It looks more like a pet, but she is a... I'm going to try to pronounce this, an Akbash.

Yes.

And I tell you what, what a beautiful dog.

It's a guard dog, and I'm sure she'll answer any questions that you have this evening.

(panelists laugh) Sitting next to Akbash is Brent Roeder.

Brent is the bee specialist here at MSU.

- Sheep specialist.

- No, sheep specialist.

(Brent chuckles) I'm still having more fun with the dogs.

But anyway, next to Brent is our special, real special guest tonight, Stefanie Leach.

Stefanie is head of the Wool Growers Association here, executive secretary.

We'll learn about the sheep and guard dogs tonight.

- Yes.

- Jane Mangold, we finally found Jane again.

We kind of lost her for a few weeks, but she's back.

And of course, she's our weed scientist.

And Abi Saeed, Abi is our extension horticulturalist.

Answering the phones tonight, and get those phones ringing are Nancy Blake and Carl Wetmore.

So, Brent, first of all, tell us a little bit about our really special guest.

And by the way, that's the best looking guest that we've had at the end of the table all fall.

And sorry, Yuda, but it's a beautiful animal.

So tell us a little bit about it.

- So Ranya's about a two-year-old Akbash.

She's mostly Akbash.

She is what we call a guard dog, a livestock guardian dog.

So this is really one of the first times other than going to the veterinary clinic that she's been indoors.

And so she's doing really well here.

She spends most of her life with the sheep.

She's bonded with the sheep starting at a very young age.

And so she's basically their protector now.

She lives with the sheep 24/7 and basically keeps them safe from some of the large predators that are out there.

- Okay.

We'll get into that tonight.

And in my lap here, we have another working dog and this dog is what we'd call a herding dog and its name is Benny.

And Benny is a retired Red Rocks.

- [Brent] Yep, he's from Red Bluff.

He's a retired Montana Ag Experiment Station dog.

- Okay.

Great animals.

So, folks, if you have questions tonight about dogs and what they do in farm and ranch operations, great opportunity to ask those questions.

So I hate to tell you this, but we're going to let the dogs get off the set.

They need a drink.

Yeah, this dog likes me.

(chuckles) (panelists laughs) Okay.

Don't tell my goldens this.

They won't speak to me now.

Stefanie, tell us a little bit about the Wool Growers Association and what you do for that and also about your operation.

- Yeah.

I am the executive secretary of the Montana Wool Growers Association and I've been with them for three years.

We are busy watching legislation and policy that would affect our sheep producers across the state, both on a state and national level all the time.

And my operation is in North Central Montana in a place called Ledger.

My husband and I raise both sheep and cattle there.

- [Jack] Okay.

How many sheep do you run?

- We run about 500 breeding ewes up there.

- [Jack] That's a bunch.

- Yeah.

- [Jack] So you have guard dogs too, I assume?

- We do, yes.

- How many does it take to guard that many sheep?

- We run on average about five guard dogs with our sheep at all times.

And then we have five border collies that we are usually using to herd them as well.

- You've got a big food bill.

- We do, yes.

- Okay.

With that, pick up a couple questions and I've got several coming back to you because we had many come in ahead of the program.

So we'll get back to you in a minute.

But first of all, from East Glacier, a caller has tried to grow lilacs for several years, but no luck.

Any idea why?

- It could depend.

Lilacs like full sun.

They like well draining soils.

So if it's really heavy clay soils and too much moisture sticks around, it can be tough for them.

And without full sun, it could be tough.

If you're getting your lilacs from somewhere that doesn't have hearty varieties that are better suited to Montana, those can also cause an issue.

So in terms of troubleshooting those, one good strategy could be to get a soil test to start off, to get to know what the soil conditions are like.

And if that specific plant is still alive, maybe reach out to your local extension resources or reach out to me and we can work through what some of those issues could be.

But getting locally grown hearty varieties or varieties that are hearty to your region and getting the idea of what your soil is like can really help.

- Okay.

Last week we did a program on the new combined ag building that has both Montana State University and Department of Ag people in it.

We did not get into the wool growers or the wool lab.

Stefanie, Brent, tell us a little bit about that we have here on campus.

- Okay.

So It is the previous wool lab was built in 1947.

Every land grant university in the United States at one point had a wool lab or most of them did.

It's one of only two university wool labs left in the United States.

And mostly what we focus on at that facility is running tests that help growers identify sheep genetics, specifically wool genetics that will increase the value of their wool.

So we have equipment at the lab that will tell them these particular sheep, the wool off them will be very good for this type of clothing, next to skin clothing or socks or other things.

And so we're transitioning, trying to get the equipment put together to do more R&D type work for the growers that are out there.

And so yeah, it's been a labor of love probably over the last 12 years watching this process develop and can't say enough to Montana Ag Experiment Station, Montana State University, the legislature and Montana Wool Growers who really helped spearhead the fundraising effort for that lab.

Without them, we wouldn't have been able to build it.

- It's a beautiful facility, no doubt about it.

Stefanie, where do you market your wool?

I mean, if you got 500 breeding ewes, you get a lot of wool.

- We do.

- [Jack] Where do you go with it?

- My husband and I, we take our wool down to Billings to center of the nation, and they market it for us.

They call us when they have a bid.

We decide if we're ready to sell and they take care of the hard part.

- Is the wool market... I've been told that it's been weak the last few years.

Is it pretty good now or tell us a little bit about the market.

- The last two years the wool has really come up and actually I think we're at a 30-year high right now.

- Yeah, at least since 2019.

- Yeah, it is definitely.

The wool market was very good this year in 2026.

- That's good.

And how about the lamb market, the meat side of it?

That I know has improved.

- It has.

It has been a very good year for the lamb market as well in 2026.

We've seen record high prices in July and August of this year.

And even though we've had the influx of spring lambs coming into the fall, which is typical, the lamb prices come off a little bit, they really are holding.

- Okay.

I'm going to bring up some data and I've been around this a few years.

I once read that up until COVID, the average per capita consumption of lamb in the United States was 0.7 pounds, give or take a little bit.

After COVID, it's raised to a pound and a half, maybe a little bit more.

Are you seeing the market for spring lamb, the meat itself increase around the country?

- I think demand is definitely increasing around the country.

- Yep.

I think some of that, we have to give credit to our good mutual friend, Mr.

Dave McEwen, who's on the American Lamb Board.

And Dave's really been passionate and the American Lamb Board's been really passionate about social media advertising, especially during the COVID pandemic, getting people, this younger generation to go out and try lamb.

A lot of them didn't grow up in households that had ever tried lamb, but I think COVID with all the restaurants being shut down, I think people kind of needed to go out and experiment a little more.

And once they tried the lamb, they really liked it.

This is not the lamb that we raised 30 or 40 years ago.

It's a really high-quality product.

And so I think that's what's driven a lot of lamb consumption here the last couple of years.

- I love it myself, as you well know.

- I think the American Lamb Board has done a phenomenal job with their Lamb Jam events they have all over the country, as well as their grocery store events, getting our product in front of the consumer.

And once they try it, they love it.

- I agree entirely.

Jane, I love this question.

It came in from Joliet.

How do I kill morning glory, which is also known as field bindweed or creeping jenny.

They have it in a hedge.

Any suggestions?

- Yeah.

Well, that's challenging because anything you would use on the morning glory will also injure, if not kill the hedge.

So they could use, I mean, a couple different herbicidal products, but you'd have to wipe the herbicide on the leaves and not get it on anything else.

I mean, you could use like a glyphosate product.

There is a product, Roundup for Lawns, that has quinclorac in it, which is very effective on morning glory.

If it's fairly extensive through the hedge, I think I would probably try getting down to the base of the hedge and cutting the morning glory and then try treating what's growing back from the root system, if that makes sense.

- Sounds like an awful lot of work.

- I mean, it's going to be a lot of work, especially if it's very well established.

But yeah, I'd try to sever the plant where it's coming out of the ground and then start focusing on when it re-sprouts.

Morning glory has an extensive root system and it's going to re-sprout and try to climb again.

- Jane, would the- - Go ahead.

- Would bio control options be a possibility for situations?

In what situation could that be something to look into?

- Yeah.

I don't think we have any bio-control insects for morning.

Well, I take that back.

There is an insect that attacks, I was thinking field bindweed, same thing.

It hasn't been super effective in Montana.

And the other thing with bio-control is you typically want fairly large infestations, like at least an acre of infestation because the insects have to have enough of the target weed to really get their populations up.

- Do sheep like field bindweed?

- I'm not sure.

They probably would eat it.

- It will work out a little bit but not.

- It's not a good... - Yeah, it's- - Because of, like Jane said, the extensive root system, it's really difficult to control.

- It also tends to... I mean, it will climb on other vegetation like grasses, but I'm thinking a lot of times when I see field bindweed in a field, it's just growing along the ground and I would think it'd be kind of hard for livestock to get their mouths around that.

- Okay.

So guard dog program.

I'm sitting here looking at that beautiful dog and I'm thinking this dog would never chase a coyote or protect... How do these dogs actually protect sheep?

I mean, a demeanor like that, I think could rather have dinner than chase a coyote.

- This is not their typical demeanor.

I'm thrilled with the way that she's behaving.

She even knows, see?

Yeah.

You get her out in the field and she's going to change entirely.

They hear a coyote howl or they scent, they wind a coyote and they're going to take off in that direction at a dead run and they're going to bark.

And usually I would call it a deterrent.

The coyote or whatever predator is coming in hears that barking and they're going to leave.

They don't want to deal with that.

And typically they're deterring the predator that's coming in.

- [Jane] Do- - Oh, go ahead, Jane.

- Do they work together?

I think you mentioned like you have five guard dogs.

Do they kind of work together like a group of coyotes would?

- A pack?

- Or a pack.

- Yeah.

The word was escaping me.

(chuckles) - They do, yes.

They typically, you will see more than one take off in the direction of whatever way they need to go.

- I think we have a photo.

You brought some photos down of your operation and some of your dogs associated with the sheep.

Now if we can get the control panel back there to bring up a couple of those slides showing the sheep and the guard dogs kind of working together, I'd like the audience to see that because it's pretty impressive to have dogs that basically bond to sheep and they live with them.

So you want to tell us a little bit more how these dogs bond with sheep and basically they think they're family.

- [Stefanie] Yeah, go ahead.

- [Brent] So this is a picture of a young pup, probably six, seven months old.

And so a lot of these dogs, to get them bonded correctly, they're actually born really near the sheep and they're at a fairly young age.

As soon as you wean them, you obviously have to be very careful because you have to introduce them carefully.

They're very small and the ewes don't always like the dogs when they've got the baby lambs around.

And so a lot of people will bond them with say some bum lambs or something like that that are a little tamer.

At a certain age, they need to be moved in, probably five, six, seven months old in with some ewes and lambs so they learn to respect the sheep.

And so it's a real give and take because they go through a certain age like any dog that they want to play with the sheep.

And so you need kind of an enforcer type ewe in there that's going to remind them, be the mom and let them know, no, it's not okay to play rough with my baby and wrestle with it and things like that.

And so yeah, it takes a lot of time to develop that bonding correctly.

- Yeah.

It amazes me.

There's no doubt about it.

Talk breeds.

I didn't know this breed till you mentioned it.

Everything we hear about guard dogs is Great Pyrenees, which is I think first recognized as a breed in say in the '30s.

How old a breed is the Akbash?

- [Stefanie] Oh gosh.

I wouldn't know.

It's been around a long time.

Yeah.

- Long, long Time.

So the Akbash, a lot of these breeds came out of Turkey, Eurasia countries.

The Pyrenees actually came out of the Pyrenees mountains in Southern France is where they were developed.

And so for probably thousands of years or more, these dogs were raised with sheep in kind of that, what they call that transhumance system or herded system where they're basically moving from winter pasture to summer pasture and they basically grew up and live with the sheep their whole life.

- So I'll ask Stefanie.

I mean, these dogs live with the sheep.

How do you go about feeding them?

- Well, on our operation, our dogs are with our sheep obviously 24/7.

We have a number of guard dog houses that will hold up to 40 to 50 pounds of dog food on the backside.

So they self-feed and we typically fill those weekly.

And so then we check them on a daily basis, but they feed when they're ready to feed.

- And water, you have water tanks out there and everything?

- They water with the sheep, wherever the sheep water, yes.

- Amazing concept.

And I keep looking at that beautiful dog.

I just can't believe the demeanor.

So if a grizzly bear, the front range, if you had a dog like this on the front range, you say you need four or five of them.

If a grizzly bear were to decide it wanted spring lamb for dinner, how would these dogs react to that?

- I would think they would react anyway the same way they would with any predator.

They're going to charge, they're going to bark and try and deter that animal from coming into the flock.

I'm not going to say they're not going to make contact and have a confrontation.

I would hope they wouldn't with a grizzly because my dogs are going to be tore up at that point.

But you always hope that they're just... That's why we never run one dog.

We always have at least three dogs with our sheep, whatever group of sheep that is, but that they are going to deter that predator and the predator will leave.

- I've been told that the sheep industry would not exist in Montana without those type of animals.

Is that correct?

- That is absolutely correct.

We could not run our operation and we typically just have coyotes as a predator.

They would eat us out of house and home.

- Yeah.

Amazing.

Change the subject a little bit.

From Custer, this person has a fair amount of cheatgrass in their pasture.

They want to use Rejuvra, which is a herbicide that works well on cheatgrass.

They've heard that you can do it in the spring and May or June, or they've also heard fall application.

Which is best?

- Yeah.

Well, which is best, probably the May to June application.

So the way this product works, it's a pre-emergent herbicide.

So you put it on, the rain washes it into the top inch or so of soil.

And then when the cheatgrass seeds start germinating, September-ish, early September typically, it kills the seedlings.

So if you put it on in May and June, it's not going to have any effect on your cheatgrass that year or that growing season.

It's next year's crop of cheatgrass.

So I've done quite a bit of research with this, and when I put it on my plots, expecting control of cheatgrass the following year, probably about early August would be the latest I would put it on.

But you can put it on any time during the summer.

The trick is to put it on when you're going to get some precipitation to move it into the soil.

- Okay.

I have you up and Brenton is down there.

This came from Jefferson City.

Do weed seeds survive through the digestive system of goats and sheep?

- Yep, they can.

So we actually did a research project.

Dr.

Rachel Frost was in charge of this project and we were trying to control sulfur cinquefoil with sheep and goat grazing.

And so she got a very exhilarating experience of feeding sheep and goats sulfur cinquefoil seeds and then collecting the excrement for up to seven days and then sifting through it, all of that stuff, to figure out how many viable seeds were left.

And it varies by how hard the seed coat is, things like that.

In that particular case, I think it was about 5% actually passed through on mature seeds.

And so yeah, there is a small percentage that can pass through.

And so anytime we're coming off of a prescription grazing, a weed type grazing project, we generally tell producers if they're going into a new area that doesn't have that particular weed, as a biosecurity measure, they need to feed hay or some other form of forage that is free of those seeds for five to seven days before they move to a new operation where that particular noxious weed isn't present.

- [Jack] Okay, good information.

- I have a follow-up question related to guard dogs.

So I've been on some public lands, like open spaces where sheep are being used to graze noxious weeds, and there have been guard dogs on the premise.

So I've seen signs like don't approach the dogs or be careful with the guard dogs.

And it kind of makes the guard dogs like I should be scared of them is kind of what some of the messaging.

- Is she scaring you?

(chuckles) - She's not scaring me at all.

So could you two speak to that?

What's the best way to kind of navigate through a situation like that?

- I would think if you're on public lands and you come upon a flock of sheep, if you're by yourself, you're just a human, you don't have any other dogs, I would just approach with caution.

The dog is going to come up and approach you, investigate you, and most likely meander right back to the sheep.

If it's during bird season and you have bird dogs with you, I would suggest you call your dogs back to you, leash your dog, and the same thing again.

Let the guard dog approach you, investigate you if the dog is slightly aggressive, maybe a sharp tone of get out of here and that dog is going to figure out what you are and they're going to go back to the sheep most likely.

- On that note, we had Benny in my lap and would Benny be welcomed by this dog if it hadn't known Benny before?

- No.

(chuckles) Not if you're just allowing them to run free.

I mean, she's going to perceive Benny as a threat.

It's another canine.

So that's why I would say that you need to call your dogs back to you and unleash them and keep them close to you.

- Interesting.

A comment from Park County caller has a comment.

"Grit Magazine," which I'm not familiar with, has an article about lamb in the July, August edition.

The article is entitled, Lamb Is Back, and we kind of know that.

And the other thing I was going to mention, a lot of people know of Wally McLean, and Wally is a writer who is kind of a historian, all kinds of things.

He lives in the Billings area.

He sent me an article about the legendary stock dog, and there's a lot of history with stock dogs in this state, and it's some of the cheapest labor that you can find on a farm.

There's no doubt about it.

You don't have to pay payroll taxes.

All they ask is for a good dinner and a good veterinarian to take care of them.

Pretty low cost, well, other than purchasing one.

I'll get to that in a minute, but if anybody wants to read this article, it was in the Western Ag Reporter, and it's November 6th issue of 2025.

I suspect you could find it online at any time.

I read it.

It's a great story.

It tells you how important stock dogs are to the livestock industry.

No doubt about that.

From Helena, the caller has an ornamental maple.

What is the best time to prune it?

And while we're at it, my wife and I had a disagreement about pruning lilacs.

So first of all, the maple, and then we'll get to the lilacs.

- Sounds good.

So the best time to prune most woody ornamentals, and I'm going to put most with an asterisk because I think we're going to get to Jack's comment shortly, but most of them is usually late winter, early spring before the buds begin to swell, and you want to aim for good weather.

So when temperatures are going to be above 40, you don't want to make a pruning cut when temperatures are really cold because that can cause injury to the vascular system of those trees and you'll have much more dieback.

So for most, and with that asterisk, we're going to get to Jack's point soon, would be late winter, early spring.

- Okay.

So the disagreement was, I've always been told you prune lilacs right after they bloom, which would probably be late June, mid to late June.

She wants to prune them now.

If you prune them now, what's going to happen?

- I think if the buds have already started to set, you're not going to have any blooms in the spring.

- I was right.

- Yes, you were right, Jack.

So yeah, the best time to prune those early spring flowering trees and shrubs is going to be right after they're done blooming.

So usually early summer, depending on the time that they bloom, and that's the exception to that winter and early spring pruning rule.

- Okay.

I'm going to quote you when she's not listening.

(Abi laughs) Alright.

Change the subject a little bit.

Well, this has to do with sheep, and this came in again from the Columbus area.

They want to know, can sheep be used to control noxious weed, and are there certain weed species they like more than others?

I'll start with Jane.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

The answer is yes and yes.

There's been some very successful sheep particularly on leafy spurge, including in the... I think you said that call came in from the Columbus area.

Stillwater County, I think, has had a long history of grazing leafy spurge with sheep.

We've tried it on Dalmatian toad flax, spotted knapweed, probably Canada Thistle.

I would think that you can.

- We have one project on Canada thistle, sulfur cinquefoil.

- Sulfur cinquefoil.

I mean, cheatgrass is a great species to graze with sheep or cattle actually, but yeah.

So yes, it will work and yes, there are certain species it works better on.

- Are there some noxious weeds that you absolutely can't graze with sheep?

- Good question.

St John's-wort because of the photosynthetic, you have a reaction with them.

They don't do well on tansy.

They don't do well on Canada thistle just because of the root system and the spines.

We tried that in a cropping system research project.

They do really well.

Spurge is probably what they're best known for.

Within three years of... The prescription for that is, depending on where you're at, it's going to be sometime late May or June.

We call it taking the yellow off.

So basically what they're going to eat is those yellow florets and they may eat down a little bit, but basically you put them in a pasture, take the yellow off, take them out or move them to a different patch of spurge, take the yellow out.

You can do a rotation there.

What we found after a lot of years of research, Dr.

Jeff Mosley spearhead a lot of this.

Our range specialist was on knapweed.

The ideal prescription is start on spurge, and then about the 4th of July when all your native grasses and forbsiness or mature, that's when knapweed becomes really edible for sheep and goats both.

I think we had better luck on Dalmatian toad flax with goats.

They had a little easier time dealing because Dalmatian toadflax has a really waxy cuticle that makes it hard to use chemical on, and I don't think the sheep liked that as much, and so the goats probably did a little better job on Dalmatian toad flax.

When you do enough research with them, you start tasting them.

Obviously we don't taste spurge because of the latex.

Spotted knapweed is really bitter.

I could tell you some funny stories about it, and it stays on your hands.

So if you've been out clipping spotted knapweed all morning and to go eat lunch and a sandwich, your sandwich is going to have a really bitter taste to it.

It's funny that Dalmatian toad flax tastes like uncooked green beans is what it tastes like.

Once you get past that heavy cuticle waxy layer on it, it's not too bad to eat, so.

- You mentioned tansy.

What's that beautiful ugly weed that you have?

- Oh yeah.

I brought common tansy for my show and tell.

So it's at the end of the growing season, of course.

This will have bright yellow button-like flowers earlier in the summer and this very kind of a fern-like leaf.

It smells really good too.

There's a great picture of the, you can see those yellow button-like flowers.

It's a late bloomer seasonally.

It's usually like August is when you start seeing these flowers.

Has an extensive root system.

One of the reasons I brought common tansy for my show and tell is because it's October, so it's Halloween season.

And this plant has an interesting story.

So in colonial America, it was used to preserve things like meat and other perishable items that you'd pack perishable items in common tansy.

Well, it was also commonly used like in funeral shrouds and coffins.

And actually the story is the first president of Harvard was buried with a common tansy wreath in a common tansy lined coffin.

And when his, I guess his grave was moved 200 years after the fact, and the tansy had still retained its form and its smell.

- [Stefanie] Interesting.

- So there you go, a little morbid Halloween story.

- Yeah.

- You don't get a lot of good stories about noxious weeds, right?

But that's a good one.

- Okay.

Yeah, I'll remember that one for about 20 seconds.

Okay.

Caller from Billings.

I appreciate this.

Caller has a comment to tonight's program is delightful and she wants to compliment everybody and say thank you.

So that's great.

I have another one that came in.

There seems to be a lot of emphasis on precision ag, and this caller would like to know is MSU or anybody doing research on how precision ag would fit into the sheep industry?

And they also like to know is anybody doing research on really mellow guard dogs?

(panelists laugh) - Well, Stef can speak some personal experience on the precision ag.

I mean, we don't think about it as precision ag, but it's basically GPS tracking.

- Oh, yeah- - So I'll let her speak a little bit about what they've been using for their guard dogs and.

- All of our guard dogs have GPS collars.

So I could grab my phone right now and I could look and see where they all are.

Tells me A, if they're behaving and B, if there's something in the area that's got them wandering.

So we use that when we're at home and very seldom are both of us away from the ranch, but it is a good peace of mind when we are that we can take a look and know that if they're where they're supposed to be, the sheep are where they're supposed to be.

So that is one thing that we're using at the ranch.

- But MSU at the Montana Ag Experiment Station and in the Animal and Range Sciences department, we kind of have a tech hub where they are doing real live demonstrations with some of these new products trying to help companies in a startup phase test those products in a real world.

We test everything out at the Red Bluff Experiment Station in Norris.

And so there is quite a bit of research going on right now with GPS collars, virtual fence.

There is some technology out there right now.

Everybody's probably familiar more with the yard virtual fence that runs off of a Wi-Fi system.

At the experiment station, we use several different components.

One is simply a GPS tracker that could run off a satellite or cell phone.

The other one we use is a virtual fence satellite uplink for guard dogs.

So it not only gives us the GPS location of the dog, but it also acts as a virtual fence, but it uses satellite uplink instead of still Wi-Fi.

So there is a lot of R&D going on worldwide for that right now.

- We had an Ollie class on campus talking about sustainable ag and a young man that MSU just hired, Yuri Manalid, was talking about using collars on goats and sheep and using them to control weeds and mainly orchards, but a lot of other things.

The issue is they tried goats, but the goats, after they eat a little bit of the weeds, they start eating the bark.

Sheep don't do that.

So there's a lot of technology out there that we can use.

- There is a lot of prescription between the two species and with age class and season of use.

And so the American Sheep Industry Association just put out a targeted grazing handbook that really runs through a lot of those research based prescriptions.

So if you have a lot of woody species, say if you want to remove multi-floor rows or you have too much willow down in your riparian area, goats are obviously a better management tool for that.

If you want to preserve that woody species along the riparian area, then maybe you look at a sheep for a grazing project.

And so there are a lot of different ways you can change season of use, lots of different ways to get around some of those issues.

- Okay, here's a good question.

I like this one.

- [Brent] I'm going to give it to Ranya.

(Jack laughs) - You got to wake her up first.

- Got to wake her up, yeah.

- They'd like everybody on the panel to indicate how they like lamb best prepared.

- [Stefanie] Oh man.

- [Jane] Oh wow.

- Ooh.

I don't know if... - I could go (claps) first.

I can go first.

Lamb is probably my second favorite meat after goat, but grew up eating a lot of both.

And my favorite is a lamb.

It's a type of Pakistani Indian South Asian dish.

It's called lamb saag or palak gosht, which is like a spinach and lamb curry.

It's absolutely delicious.

We should have had a lamb cook off the- - We can do that sometimes.

- Yeah, we should do that.

But that's palak gosht, their lamb saag is my absolute favorite way to eat lamb.

- I haven't eaten very much.

I've eaten it mostly at Jack's house, and however Jack prepares it is my favorite way of eating it.

It's been delicious.

- That's a good way to bail out.

(panelists laugh) - Gosh, I don't know if I could put my finger on just one way.

I am a sucker for just a simple lamb chop on a grill, a smoked shoulder or a good meatball.

Just a lamb meatball on the grill is excellent as well.

And then we have our smoker extraordinaire here.

- Well, other than Jack's ossobuco, which is really hard to beat.

Like Stef, I actually really enjoy a good barbecued square cut lamb shoulder.

So like most people would do brisket with an offset smoker or even a pellet grill would work.

I do think one of the things that really increased lamb consumption during COVID was a lot of people went out and bought a pellet smoker.

So there's no direct flame.

Lamb fat is about as flammable as jet fuel.

(panelists laugh) And so when you put it too close to a grill, a propane grill flame, you end up with a lot of flaring and the pellet smoker or an offset type smoker really does a phenomenal job of giving that lamb a good smoke flavor without overdoing it.

- On that note, and by the way, I like a good lamb burger about as well.

Maybe elk a little bit better, but a lamb burger is right up there.

And I'm sorry beef producers, but I like lamb burger better than I do a beef burger.

I said that, I'm not taking it back.

Okay.

(panelists laugh) Out of curiosity, where are we getting our lamb today in the United States or in Bozeman specifically?

Is it local lamb that we get?

- I think in Bozeman you have a lot of options for local lamb.

I can think of at least two or three producers that sell locally right here in town.

I'm sure there's options for imported lamb as well.

There always is, but I think you have great options in town for local lamb.

- Yeah, I think Bozeman's pretty well served.

The Scott family out of Whitehall used to provide a lot of that lamb.

I think the Noyes family out of Whitehall are providing a lot of that lamb now.

Also the Keys family in Livingston provide quite a bit of that lamb.

And then as you move east, the Hollenbeck family in the Billings, they have their own harvest facility in Forsyth.

And so there's a lot of lamb there.

Meats of Montana and Big Timber has a good lamb program quite a bit of the year.

And so local lamb, the state and the federal government have invested a lot of money in local processing trying to keep meat more local and that's kind of paying dividends anymore.

And even beef, lamb, chicken, pork, locally produced is a lot more available than it was say pre-COVID.

But the biggest problem though the industry's facing right now, there's a lot of discussion on a national and state level is the beef industry, there's been a lot of news articles lately about the current administration allowing quite a bit of beef in, especially lean grind that is going to be tariff free.

In the lamb industry we've been dealing at for quite a while as our lamb population has decreased and as our lamb consumption has increased, that's kind of opened the door.

We're now importing about 70% of the lamb we consume in the United States now.

And so there's a lot of discussion on a how to address that or how to cope with it.

- So can I ask a follow up question, Jack?

So if you went to one of the major grocery chains and bought lamb, where would that be coming from?

- The major wholesale retailers like the big box stores, most of that lamb is going to come either from Australia or New Zealand.

And some of that, honestly, when you dig into that, it has to do with how they structure their contracts.

Those are 12 month contracts.

So the company has to provide a set amount of lamb, a lot of lamb.

It has to be at the same price, the exact same specs for 12 months.

They don't get paid until that 12 month contract is full.

And a lot of our domestic producers, that's really difficult for them to do, to carry the note for 12 months all the way through.

And so I think some of that, I think price is an issue, but also that 12 month contract before you get paid is a big impediment to some of our domestic producers.

- [Jane] Sure.

- We did have a comment from Corvallis and they want to know if we are going to be getting more locally produced lamb in Montana specifically.

- I think it's become a lot more available since, at least since COVID started.

So I used to get that question a lot and now if you do any kind of social media search or anything, you're going to be able to find locally sourced lamb just about anywhere.

- Okay.

Sounds good.

Thank you.

Caller from Bozeman there, hollyhocks, which is one of my favorite flowers, has a lot of holes in the leave.

They're curious what's causing that.

And you've got some of that here.

- I do.

So here are hollyhocks, also one of my favorite, really beautiful flowers and very drought tolerant plants in general.

But one of the issues, one of the multiple issues that we see commonly on hollyhocks other than the rust, which we've talked about in the show before, is you might see a lot of holes on the leaves or holes on the seed heads.

And those are caused by the hollyhock weevil.

And this is a type of insect pest that has a really long snout and they usually don't do enough harm to really kill the plants.

So if you see a lot of these holes and the plants are otherwise healthy, I wouldn't worry If you want to reduce the populations, I recommend some sanitation or cultural controls.

So if you see kind of a lot of the seeds with holes on them, the seed pods with holes on them, clean up the litter area around the base of the flowers and dispose of it.

So fewer populations will over winter.

Although you can use insecticides, you usually don't need to.

They produce a lot of seedheads.

So usually it's not too much of an issue, but they pretty much go hand in hand with hollyhocks.

- [Jane] They flower for a long time.

- They do.

So mine have been flowering for months now, yeah.

- So those weevils are like on the flowers that are now seedheads.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

I mean, you don't really want to strip those off or cut them because they're still flowering.

- Absolutely.

- Just let it do its thing and focus on- - Let it do its thing.

- [Jane] The litter on the ground.

- Exactly.

Focus on the cleanup.

And so you could see near the base of these, those seedheads have the little holes from the weevils.

And then near the top, they're still going to produce seeds.

And they don't go into every single seed in that seed pot either.

So there will be plenty of seeds for your hollyhocks to continue to grow.

- Okay.

Thank you.

I love this question.

And I'm going to let Stefanie and Brent handle this one.

The caller is from Great Falls.

The caller is wondering if the working dogs also have a human connection and that's kind of obvious or do they just work?

And the question is, do they get belly rubs and such?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I feel that it is extremely important to have your guard dogs and your, obviously your border collies get a little bit more, but your guard dogs need to be socialized.

You need to be able to handle them so that if you have to take them to the vet, if you have to give them their annual shots, anything that happens, you can get them on a leash, get them in your pickup and go.

So at our operation, every morning Jess or I or both of us go check our sheep.

Every guard dog greets us.

Every guard dog gets a belly scratch, their ears scratched and then off they go.

So that's very important.

- This dog before the program met everybody and I think they wore her out, but everybody in the studio got to pet this dog and the dog was just eating it up.

There's no doubt about it.

- Yeah.

- There's a real fine line, Jack, though.

- There is.

- When they're young, you can over socialize them and then they become bonded to humans and they'll ignore the sheep and goats.

And so it's a real fine line between getting them socialized to people but still keeping them bonded to whatever species you want to bond them to.

- You can make them a pet very easily.

Yes.

And it was very difficult when we have two daughters when they were younger and we would bring guard dog puppies home and you have this fluffy little marshmallow for them to not just scoop them up and love them to death.

- So that was one of my questions before time.

I mean, dogs like this one have a demeanor that would make a great family dog.

- Absolutely.

- Is there a problem with the breed becoming more of a family pet than being a working dog?

That's happened with a lot of retrievers.

The labs, the goldens have ended up being more pets in many times than actual working dogs.

Do you worry about that with a breed like this?

- I think there are a lot more families that are purchasing these dogs to protect their family, especially in rural America if they live close to say the Rocky Mountain front and they're dealing with grizzly bears or other predators that are in the area.

And the problem that I see with that is then they have an accidental litter and they go to sell those puppies on Facebook Marketplace as guard dog puppies, but they weren't raised with livestock.

Then you have an issue.

That dog needs to be raised with livestock in order for it to be a livestock protection dog.

So yes, there are issues with that.

- Yeah.

Good point.

This came in last year, a couple years ago.

Brent, you weren't on the program that night, but from Fromberg, is there a difference in the meat between wool sheep and hair sheep?

And what is the difference between those two?

(chuckles) - I can't tell the difference and I've eaten both, so I'm just going to lay that out there, but go ahead.

- Well, I don't think there is.

A lot of it has to do, honestly, the age of the animal when they're harvested, what they've been fed prior to harvest, if they're a grass-fed animal, if they're an older animal.

Everybody has a different taste for lamb.

Every culture definitely has different tastes for lamb.

And so if you had a hair lamb... So when we talk about hair sheep, those were sheep that were... The todden breed was developed in the US up in Maine, but when we talk about hair sheep, most of the people are thinking the Dorper breeds, maybe Australian white is coming in now, but the Dorper breed was introduced out of South Africa in the mid '90s.

And really what they were trying to do was to find an alternative sheep that didn't produce wool because the wool market was in kind of the doldrums.

But a lot of the country still needed a small ruminate, either a goat or a sheep to control brush, to control weedy species.

They would run those in conjunction with And so the hair sheep really took off.

Once you get kind of south, I'd say of Colorado, and especially on the East Coast, you're primarily going to see hair sheep.

They breed out a season, probably have a little better parasite resistance.

They obviously don't need to be shorn, and so they're kind of a niche for a certain part of the country.

We do see growing numbers of them here in Montana, but Montana still is one of the epicenters of fine wool production in the United States.

And so there's some people that don't like to see the hair sheep coming in, but really I think the industry needs to accept them because they are still sheep.

They do provide infrastructure or support for our infrastructure for trucking, for the auction barn system, for the harvest systems.

But in terms of taste, I don't think there's really a lot of difference in taste.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Quick one.

When should you stop watering lawns?

- So usually after about Labor Day is when you start tapering because the lawn's getting ready for winter dormancy, but in general, if it's still warm and dry enough, continue watering and you don't... If you're seeing it dry enough, usually when the ground freezes, that's when you stop.

So if it's still dry and warm where you are, like today, we had an 81 degree day in Livingston, and if your lawn's looking a little parched, do give it a little bit of a watering.

- On that note, if you want to control dandelions and other broadleaf weeds, this might be your last week to get that done because next week we're supposed to get down in the 20s and 30s.

So get that sprayer working, get out there with your 24D or whatever you use and take care of those lawn weeds.

Interesting.

Jane, Great Falls, comment.

Ranchers in Ovando have good control of milkweed with sheep.

Why are we controlling milkweed?

I mean, the monarch butterflies love it.

- And this is in Ovando?

- [Jack] Ovando.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm not sure.

I don't know if it's milkweed.

I mean, milkweed, there's multiple species of milkweed.

I think Montana has like 12 native milkweeds.

They do have some toxicity.

So yeah, it's one of those species that I sometimes wish it had a different name that didn't include weed at the end of it because it does have that toxicity, but it's not a species that really increases and invades and it's what monarch butterflies live on.

- Okay.

Thank you.

For Stefanie, this person would like to know what Montana wool is used for and can you give us an example of where our wool might be used?

- Montana wool is used for many different things.

We have lots of different types of wool in Montana.

I think as Brent touched on earlier, we are still the fine wool capital or the Western side of the United States is the fine wool capital of the world.

So most of it is next to skin.

That's what we're looking at.

That would be your undergarments, your Duckworth is right here in Montana.

They're making lots of different garments that we would be wearing next to skin.

I'm sure some of us are probably wearing those here in the studio today.

- They just can't show it to you.

- Exactly.

That's what I was thinking when I said that.

- You mentioned you take your wool to Billings.

Where does it go from there?

- Somebody purchases it, purchases it, and then from there it gets shipped usually to the East Coast to charge yours.

They're going to wash it, then it's going to come back to somewhere out here and it's going to be spun into top.

And then it just goes through the process until it gets into a fine yarn and creates a garment.

- Okay.

- And the US military still uses quite a bit of wool in their uniforms and other things.

And so a lot of our producers are veterans and they really are proud of the fact that they're growing a product that is going to go into that supply chain to keep future generations of our men and women that are serving this country warm, in a cold environment.

And even in a warm environment.

I mean, wool is... We tend to think of it just as a winter wear, but yeah, it does a phenomenal job of thermo regulating even in the summer.

- Okay.

Thank you.

While we're on that subject, a caller from Helena is wondering why local producers don't produce more lamb to offset the 70% that is imported.

That's a good question.

- [Stefanie] Well- - How much time do you have?

- Yeah.

(Brent chuckles) - We're down to a couple minutes.

- I think lamb can be labor intensive, so we don't have as many young producers that are coming back to the ranch that are willing to do that when it's a little bit easier to raise cattle or they're more into the farming.

I call it legalized gambling.

Those prices aren't always there.

So we're not seeing as many young producers as we used to return to the ranch, although we have seen a lot more interest in the last few years.

- 4-H have anything to do with that?

- Oh, I think the 4-H is alive and well.

I see a few 4-Hers that I've guided through the years that are in this room right now, but I don't know what happens after they graduate.

- Could there be improvements to the infrastructure that helps lamb?

I mean- - Only so much.

- Oh, okay.

- It still is a hands-on human intervention type thing.

- Okay.

Curious.

This question came in from Butte.

They want to know, do you have any black sheep?

- Not at the moment.

I have in the past.

(chuckles) - Okay.

Tell us why people have black sheep.

- You mean a whole black sheep or a blackface sheep?

I guess there's a difference there.

No, a black sheep that- - A black sheep.

Usually we will have a black sheep.

It happens even though we raise white sheep.

It's a recessive gene and we'll keep them as a marker.

And then if we have three sheep that are black throughout the year in my mob of 500 and I see those three black sheep, then I know the majority of my sheep are there.

- Okay.

On that note, the last time I was in New Zealand and I saw plenty of sheep, I did not see one black sheep over there and I don't know why that difference.

But anyway, folks, we're getting down to the wire.

I want to thank Brent, Stefanie for coming in.

Of course, you guys are here all the time, but we appreciate you showing up.

It was a fun program tonight.

I enjoyed the dog.

I mean, it's just a lot of fun.

Next week we're going to talk about the Grailing Project and ranchers over in the big hole region.

Join us.

I think you'll find out a lot about conservation.

Good night.

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