Final report for GNC23-372
Project Information
Title: Characterizing husbandry practices on dairy sheep farms in the North Central Region
Though sheep are primarily raised for lamb and wool, dairy breeds offer added value for the industry, with the United States being the world’s largest importer of sheep milk products (Pulina et al., 2018). Dairy sheep farmers in the North Central Region have recently gained traction in the U.S. artisan cheese industry as consumer demand for specialty cheeses continues to grow. However, research is lacking for producers to make informed management decisions that are needed to support the industry’s growth. To address these knowledge gaps and provide a crucial first step in furthering dairy sheep research to support producers, we will conduct a mixed-methods survey comprising 120 quantitative and qualitative questions. The objective of this survey is to describe current husbandry practices and concerns on dairy sheep farms in the North Central Region, enabling further research to target areas where most impact can be made. Before distribution, our survey will be reviewed by dairy sheep farmers and qualified and experienced individuals in the sheep dairy industry. The survey will be distributed to 40 dairies, including all licensed sheep dairies in the North Central Region (n = 17), as well as 23 unlicensed dairies. We will recruit participants through personal connections with farmers, as well as social media pages, listservs, and events hosted by the Sheep Dairy Association of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Sheep Breeder’s Cooperative, and the Dairy Sheep Association of North America. Our learning outcomes include providing producers, researchers, veterinarians, and policymakers with knowledge and awareness of common husbandry, milking, and management practices and the common health and welfare concerns held by farmers in the North Central Region. Information on current farming practices will facilitate targeted research and extension programming to inform producer decision making and support dairy sheep farmers’ needs in the North Central Region.
The objective of this survey is to describe current husbandry practices and concerns on dairy sheep farms in the North Central Region, enabling further research to target areas where most impact can be made. This research is urgently needed as there is little evidence available to support farmers in improving dairy sheep health, welfare, and production. We expect the following outcomes to arise from this survey:
Learning Outcomes
- Farmers will gain knowledge and awareness of common husbandry, milking, and management practices used and the common health and welfare concerns held by farmers in the North Central Region.
- Researchers will gain knowledge and awareness of common practices and prioritized areas of research needed to support farmers in the sheep dairy industry.
- Veterinarians will gain knowledge and awareness of current health and welfare practices and concerns, informing veterinary care of dairy sheep in the North Central region.
- Policymakers in the North Central Region will gain insight into priority research areas in the sheep dairy industry, promoting relevant state program development to support local producers.
Action Outcomes
- Researchers and extensionists will produce more targeted programs to support dairy sheep farmers in flock management and industry growth.
- Farmers will use results of subsequent research and extension programming to inform management decisions, potentially improving dairy sheep welfare, health, and production.
Cooperators
- (Researcher)
Research
This project was approved by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institutional Review Board (# 2023-1567)
Research team
The survey was designed by PhD candidate GP and primary advisor SA, in collaboration with JV, extension specialist in animal welfare and behavior with stakeholder survey experience. We aimed to collect information about current mastitis husbandry and management practices, identify priority issues, and assess mastitis perceptions of sheep dairy producers across the United States. The survey was reviewed by a team of producers (Persephone Allen, Full Fleeced sheep dairy; Mariana Marques de Almeida, Ms. J and Co sheep dairy) and industry members (Karen Nielsen, organizational manager of Sheep Dairy Association of Wisconsin; Todd Taylor, producer and sheep research coordinator at UW Madison).
Survey population and distribution
In the fall of 2024, the survey was distributed via email with Qualtrics software (citation) to a purposive convenience sample of sheep dairy producers in the United States. To take the survey, producers had to be at least 18 years of age and responsible for making managerial decisions on their farm. To create a comprehensive list of sheep dairy producers across the country, each state’s agricultural department agency was contacted for a list of active sheep dairies (and their emails) in the state. Additionally, a Google search was also conducted for each state with the search terms, “sheep dairy State.” A second google search was used to find sheep dairy associations for contact with the search terms, “sheep dairy association State.”
Through our direct contact networks with the Sheep Dairy Association of Wisconsin and the Dairy Sheep Association of North America, all members were also contacted by one of the associations’ board members. Excluding the emails sent through the associations, we directly emailed the survey to a total of 137 sheep dairy producers. Two follow up emails were also sent. To contact producers, we sent an email describing the objective of the study, the duration of the survey, and the compensation which was a $20 e-gift card. In addition to participating, the email encouraged producers to distribute the survey link to their community dairy shepherds. Data collection occurred between October and December of 2024.
Survey design
Our exploratory, quantitative online survey aims to address five objectives:
- Characterize current mastitis management practices in U.S. sheep dairy farmers
- Profile mastitis risk perceptions in U.S. sheep dairy farmers.
- Profile animal welfare perceptions about mastitis in U.S. sheep dairy farmers.
- Investigate the relationship between these perceptions.
- Investigate how these perceptions translate into mastitis management behaviors on farm.
The survey contained a total of 54 questions and took approximately 40 minutes to complete. The survey consisted of 20 multiple choice, 17 text entry, 12 matrix table, 2 rank order, and 1 drill down question. Two questions were CAPTCHA questions to prevent bots. The questions fell into five overarching sections: Participant and farm demographics, general management and disease priorities, questions about on-farm behaviors pertaining to mastitis management, animal welfare perceptions, mastitis risk perception.
In the participant and farm demographics, participants were asked for their age, gender, their highest level of agricultural education, the number of ewes in their dairy flock, the size and location of the farm, rearing operation (intensive, extensive, mixed), how the ewes are milked, where they received agricultural advice, and their rolling bulk tank somatic cell count. Under management priorities, farmers were asked to rank 10 general management priorities and 10 disease priorities. Within the behavior section, farmers were asked about their mastitis management practices including how often employees wear gloves during milking, udder/teat preparation, how mastitis is diagnosed on farm, under which conditions producers submit a milk sample for bacterial culture, if general treatment plans are used for clinical and subclinical mastitis, what actions are taken when ewes are identified as infected, and what reasons drive the decision to cull ewes with mastitis. Within the animal welfare section, producers were asked to indicate how painful they perceived common procedures and conditions to be for dairy sheep and whether or not analgesics are used in mastitis management/treatment and why. Lastly, farmers were asked three questions about risk perception of mastitis on their farms, including how likely producers believed a serious mastitis outbreak would occur on farm, how much of a negative impact that serious outbreak would have on farm, which negative impacts would be concerning, and how difficult they perceived mastitis to be controlled.
We have complete data collection and are now preparing our data for analysis. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, online bots have slowed down this process. So far, we have been able to retrieve data from 18 producers that were verified to not be bots. Below we highlight some preliminary results from a subset of the survey questions.
Preliminary data shows that on a pain scale of 0 - 10, producers ranked clinical mastitis as the most painful condition at a 8.22 ± 1.48 (mean ± SD; range = 6-10), followed by difficult lambing (7.88 ± 1.58; 5,10), severe lameness (8.05 ± 1.43; 5, 10), ovine progressive pneumonia (5.18 ± 2.64; 0-10), pregnancy toxemia (5.67 ± 3.02; 0-10), respiratory disease (4.87 ± 2.26; 0-9), castration (5.06 ± 2.67; 2-9), tail docking (4.13 ± 2.36; 2-8), and moderate lameness (4.61 ± 1.79; 2-8). Subclinical mastitis was not considered particularly painful (2.94 ± 2,77; 0-8), surpassing only ear tagging (2.83 ± 2.46; 1-10).
We also asked about mastitis risk perception on farm. The first question asked “How likely is a serious mastitis outbreak to occur?”. The options were “very unlikely, unlikely, neither unlikely or likely, likely, very likely”, which were converted into numeric values 1-5 respectively. On average, producers found a serious mastitis outbreak to be unlikely on their farms (2.33 ± 0.84; 1-4) (mean score ± SD; range).
The second question asked producers “If it did, how big of a negative impact would it have on your farm?”. The answer choices were, “no impact, very small negative impact, small negative impact, moderate negative impact, big negative impact, and very big negative impact.” The responses were coded into numeric values from 1-6, respectively. On average, producers thought that a serious mastitis outbreak would have a big negative impact on their farm (4.94 ± 0.94; 3-6).
The third question was, “If a serious mastitis were to occur on your farm, how hard do you think it would be to control it?”, with answer choices of “very difficult, difficult, neither easy nor hard, easy, very easy.” The answers were coded into numeric values from 1-5, respectively. On average, producers indicated that a serious mastitis outbreak would be difficult to control (2.56 ± 0.98; 1-5).
Farmers perceived the risk of mastitis occurrence to be relatively low (unlikely), but, if it did occur, to have a large negative impact and to be difficult to control. Our study will evaluate how these perceptions of risk will translate to prevention behaviors on farm. We seek to answer if farmer perceptions of risk translate to using specific prevention strategies and decisions about treating versus culling ewes to manage mastitis on farms.
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
We are currently reviewing the survey data to identify and remove responses generated by bots, which will allow us to finalize the total number of legitimate producer responses
The outputs of our research will include one peer-reviewed article that will be published open access in the Journal of Dairy Science. Our survey results will be anonymized and sent to each participating farmer in our survey. We will publish 2 extension articles in one dairy-focused (e.g., Progressive Dairy) and one sheep-focused magazine (e.g., the Wisconsin Shepherd) summarizing our findings. We are scheduled to present results from this project as part of the Producer Education event at the Sheep and Wool Festival in September 2025. We also plan to present our findings at the American Dairy Science Association conference in 2026. These events will allow us to share results with a range of stakeholders, from producers to researchers and veterinarians.
Project Outcomes
Although data analyses are still underway, we seek to add helpful information for producers when making mastitis management decisions on farm. Healthier animals reduce the need for culling and replacement, making farms more sustainable in the long term. Our aim with this survey is to provide data-driven insights to improve mastitis management by identifying producer knowledge gaps, risk perceptions, and current management strategies. Our results will also inform future research and outreach by highlighting specific areas where evidence-based recommendations and producer education are most needed. In particular, understanding how producer risk perceptions influence management behavior can help shape future social science research and socially-informed extension activities to develop disease control solutions - leading to improved outcomes in both animal welfare and farm sustainability.
During this project, my advisor and I gained a clearer understanding of the challenges facing sheep dairy producers in the United States—particularly the limited availability of centralized, up-to-date information about sheep dairy operations. In the process of collecting data for this project, most state departments rarely had a comprehensive list of active sheep dairies, let alone contact information for those dairies. Instead, producer associations were the most useful for distribution of the survey because they formed a network of engagement for sheep dairy producers, and in turn, had updated contact information compared to state agencies. This realization reinforced our original motivation for the project, which was the need for accessible, producer-informed data on husbandry practices to guide future research, extension, and on-farm decision-making.