Students Participate in Sheep Improvement Project
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 22, 2003
Joe Wills
530-898-4143
Students Participate in Sheep Improvement Project
Through a generous donation by Superior Farms of Hermiston, Ore., with corporate offices in Dixon, Calif., students in the College of Agriculture will have an opportunity to work with a composite breed of sheep called Silverdales.
Animal science professors Wes Patton and Patrick Doyle, along with Dean Charles Crabb, traveled to Hermiston last August to inspect the flock. They selected 102 ewes and two rams for a research project targeting the development of a terminal sire to be used in the commercial sheep industry in California. The flock was codon-tested for scrapie resistance, and only those animals with the desired genetics were sent to Chico.
On Sept. 16, the truck from Hermiston unloaded the entire group of Silverdale sheep at the Agriculture Teaching and Research Center (commonly called the University Farm). The student sheep management team, livestock technician Christie Wenzel, a team of students studying sheep science, and additional faculty will join Patton and Doyle in initiating a three-year study to develop sheep that will meet the needs of the producer, the meat processing industry and the consumer.
“When Superior contacted me about the donation, I was very pleased because we have known for some time that the industry needed to be more sensitive to the needs of the processor and the consumer,” said Patton. “Since this group of sheep was being developed by Superior, it seems obvious that they would meet the processor’s specifications. It will be our job to identify those specifications and make the genetics available to the commercial producer to produce lambs that fit.”
Doyle and Patton are busy writing grant proposals to the Agricultural Research Initiative and the National Sheep Industry Improvement Center to match funds provided by Superior Farms and several other meat industry companies. Doyle and Patton agree that the project will benefit the sheep industry and the students in the College of Agriculture.
###