SmartTranscript of House Agriculture – 2025-03-27 – 10:40AM

[Chair David Durfee]: David Durfee, Chastbury, Bennington County. Yeah. [Member John O'Brien]: John O'Brien, I represent Martha and Tunbridge. Yep. [Witness (unnamed)]: Sheep Farm. I had some sheep at Spear. I did know that. [Member John O'Brien]: Same same dutch of Romneys since nineteen sixty or so. [Member Michelle Bos-Lun]: I'm Michelle Boslin. I represent Northern Wyndham County Wyndham three, which is, Brookline, Westminster, and Rockingham. I guess so. I want to [Witness (unnamed)]: Yeah. But you're close to the best sheep cheese in my country, so that counts for Those [Member Michelle Bos-Lun]: are my constituents. [Witness (unnamed)]: I know that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Exactly. [Member Michelle Bos-Lun]: Vermont, Shepherd Farm. Dave [Witness (unnamed)]: David Major? [Chair David Durfee]: We're a small committee. Can we do have? We're missing several members of this. So this is it. I think somebody may pop in, but [Witness (unnamed)]: Wonderful. I appreciate the opportunity to get to speak with you today. I, probably first testified in front of this committee when Ruth Towne was sitting up at the top end of the table. So Art Manute and I used to spend a lot of time with, Ramoth Harbiero and and so I've done a little of this. And, in case anybody's curious, my brother's got the office downstairs. [Chair David Durfee]: Okay. You sound like him, and you look a lot like him. So [Witness (unnamed)]: And so I will correct you that I am the older brother, and he looks like me. [Chair David Durfee]: Oh, okay. [Witness (unnamed)]: We can look similar, but he looks like me because I look like this first. On a similar expression. So, yeah, it's in a little bit of my history. So I grew up on a Jersey dairy in Glover, as you're, you know, aware of what my brother said, went to UVM, got a degree in dairy food technology. Several of my professors are now in the UVM or not UVM, the Vermont Ag Hall of Fame, which is which is they were they were all well respected with that honor. I was on the dairy cattle judging team. We made a fly in trip to Wisconsin and back in Richard's Blazer. Faster back. Faster back. And then I when I graduated from UVM, I went to work for the American Jersey Cattle Club in Ohio and then worked in California, worked in Texas. When I was in California, I was an area representative, and my area was California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Texas. So for a Vermont boy, I had a pretty big area, but it gave me a nice opportunity to see how some of the rest of the world views agriculture. Came back to Vermont, went to work for the organic cow, made the first organic cheese in the state of Vermont, with Peter Flint and Tunbridge, and stayed there for a little while. And then in nineteen ninety three, I moved back to Glover, went to work with, Ted Young at Andersonville Dairy. We were nineteen ninety six Vermont Dairy Farmers of the Year. And then, in nineteen ninety nine, I was the outstanding young Holstein breeder in the country, so managed to do some innovative, creative things. And I was also the National Dairy Shrine progressive producer in nineteen ninety nine. I went to the former Soviet Union as an agricultural, dairy advisor to help set up co ops, which in that time, if you remember, the Soviet Union had just collapsed. And if you said cooperative, you had to really explain what you meant because co op and collective was very synonymous. But, we actually helped set up, milk receiving stations so that individual farmers could, sell their milk. And then I went to Germany as an agricultural ambassador on a McCloy fellowship. So, it's given me, you know, some background in international, ag and stuff like that. And I actually managed to be the UVM College of Agriculture and Life Science new achiever. And then, this last year was the twenty twenty four Vermont Fantastic Farmer. There'll be a video at some point if Sidonia wants to show it. Became very involved in Vermont agriculture, mostly dairies. I'm retired dairy farmer and I spent most of my life, dairy farming. I was president of Vermont DHIA. We merged with Lancaster, Pennsylvania DHIA. Became president of Lancaster DHIA. Was on the national DHIA board. I chaired the Dairy Records Management Service in North Carolina for five years. I was on the Council of Dairy Cattle Breeders Board of Directors and Secretary, which is that's the largest repository of genomic, cattle data information in the world where all dairy, genetic information is stored and calculated. So, then I retired from dairy farming and I said, sheep would be fun. Well, so I saw a picture of Dutch spotted sheep. They're a breed that originated in the Netherlands, and they're black and white. I mean, and what makes black and white exciting, I don't know, except that I can sell a black and white sheep hide for five hundred dollars and I can only sell a white one for two hundred dollars So I said, well, I want some of those. Where can I get one? And the answer was, you can't. And I said, don't tell me you can't. Watch me. So the embryo business had been shut down, import from residual effects of mad cow disease, so we hadn't been able to import into the United States from the UK or Europe for a long time. Long story short, I did that and imported the very first Dutch spotted sheep into North America in twenty twenty three. The embryos were put in and I had the very first Dutch spotted sheep born in North America in Glover in May of of last year. And, they were they became sensationalized. Anson's got a picture holding one of my spotties that made it to the cover of the National State Departments of Agriculture monthly magazine or whatever. I mean, so it was it's been a lot of fun. So, I got involved with the Vermont Sheep and Goat Association, and unfortunately the origins of the VSGA are unknown. I mean there have been sheep in Vermont for two hundred and some years and the records have been lost buried somewhere. And that's one of the troubles sometimes in the volunteer organization. They just didn't get passed to someone or the box got lost. We have no idea where it started, who started it, how old it really is. We just say it's over one hundred because we're pretty sure, one, nobody can argue with us because there's no proof, and two, gotta be over one hundred years old. Most of you probably have heard or familiar at some point that about, the growth of sheep industry in Vermont back in the early 1800s when William Jarvis imported the very first merinos into the state in eighteen oh nine, and then followed up with establishing his flock in Weathersfield, and then the Vermont sheep industry just exploded, had one point seven million sheep in the or nearly one point seven million sheep in the in the country and in the state in eighteen forty. But then by nineteen forty, there's only seventeen thousand left. And that's been kind of the history of the sheep industry. It got really big and then nearly went away. And frankly, nobody knows how many sheep there are in the state today, but the estimate is approximately that same number, around seventeen thousand. But we're trying to to do some things, and and I'll speak to goats in a minute, because it is the Vermont sheep and goat, and we were accused when I took over. And and all due respect to Dave Martin, who was in here before and served as as president of the VSGA for eight years, he called me December or January, said, Mark, I'm seventy eight. I'm getting tired. I need to slow down. Will you step up and be president? I mean, I so I just I said yes, but, you know, there's still there's a lot of things we'd like to do. And, but the assumption was that the G and VSGA had been silent for a long time because there hadn't been any representation of the goat industry, which, if you look at the two industries in the state, the goat industry, the farm, there are fewer of them, but most of them are sustainable as individual enterprises, whereas David Major may have the only self sustaining sheep operation in the entire state. There's seventeen thousand sheep, and we all need a separate job to help sustain our bad habit. So, you know, that the goats have become, you know, infinitely integral in the small ruminant sector in in Vermont ag, which I think is is something, you know, we see the continued decline of of the dairy cow business. I was in the dairy cow business. Not every family makes millions of dollars of investments to stay in the dairy business. Stay in investments. But what we see and and if you look at some of the goat dairies, and I know you've you've met Brian, Jones, and Holly from Toss Crossing Farms. Our successful goat farmers are retired, reformed, former dairy cow enthusiast. And so that attention to detail and the knowledge that comes from that, and it also helps to backfill the the land and the facilities that were farmer dairies because nobody's ever gonna do anything again with what used to be a fifty cow dairy. But you can maybe milk two hundred goats there. And with, you know, Vermont Creamery doing what they're doing and the, you know, the the wonderful products they're making, and, incidentally, Alice Hooper was one of my professors in college. She's not. You know, so, you know, my involvement with with the processing end of it goes goes back a long ways and I'm and I'm very interested, you know, I've spent time at David's, I bought sheep from from David. So, you know, sheep and goats in Vermont have a special place and an important place, and I think it's, we hope that it's a growing, beneficial presence in Vermont and in the Northeast because just like anything agricultural, you know, we can do a lot more of it in Vermont and some of our neighbors in Southern New England. So, my wife and I have a, basically, it's a farm to table business where we raise lamb, we raise pork, we raise chickens, we raise turkeys, we raise rabbits, and we we sell beef that we contract somebody else. To make we've got customers all over New England. But some of my lamb customers are formally from Australia, the UK, Serbia, Croatia, the country of Georgia, Lithuania, where lamb is a much bigger part of their diet. Average American consumes one point three pounds of lamb. But there's a big opportunity, and especially and not just with the ethnic market that we that we see, you know, from from folks that have immigrated into the United States, but, you know, well raised lamb. And frankly, and I'll be honest, I never ate lamb of any kind until I raised it and said, I probably ought to try some. But it's something that we need to get more people to try, to experience, to eat. And I know, you know, this Vermonters feeding Vermonters thing. I mean, not to diminish it by calling it a thing. [Member Michelle Bos-Lun]: That's the answer. [Witness (unnamed)]: Yes. And and I heard you say that, and I was I was very happy to hear it. You know, that's the type of thing that my wife and I have have desired to do. I mean, we raise food. We started raising it for ourselves and for our family, and then it just grew. And we're raising sixty or eighty lambs a year and twenty pigs and hundreds of chickens and, you know, several dozen turkeys. And and, you know, the the but the problem with the industry right now is now we can't find a place to have our our lambs processed. Yeah. Northeast Kingdom processing told Dave. They didn't tell me because I quit having them processed, they're not gonna process any lambs in October and November next year. Well, that's when you know, if you're a pasture based operation, that's when you wanna harvest your your product. So without having some of the slaughterhouses available to and some of them just flat out won't do a lamb because they say they can't push enough lambs through their facility to pay their help. So we need to make sure that we continue to have access to on farm slaughter custom processing because without it, most small ruminant farmers couldn't couldn't survive. And frankly, it's it's for the best for the animals. We process an animal at home, we have a pen of them, put a halter on them, bring them outside the door. Mary Lake, who, bless her heart, I mean, hits them with a captive bolt. You know, I'm holding them. They don't know that anything's different. So, you know, we guarantee the animal an exceptionally good life and as short, unpleasant final moment as can possibly done. Representative Nelson. [Member Richard Nelson]: So you're able to do this on premise longer and custom meet your lot of your stuff's going to custom, but you can't sell it in a store yet Right. When it's done that way. Right. Is Phil doing a lot of your processing? [Witness (unnamed)]: Phil's meat yes. He does all my pork. He does all my beef, but his meat cutter won't do lamb. [Member Richard Nelson]: He won't do lamb. [Witness (unnamed)]: And Phil is the one that told me that he can't push enough lambs through his facility to pay his health. [Member Richard Nelson]: Have you contacted we have a new processor in town. Ryan Chompany. [Member John O'Brien]: Yep. [Member Richard Nelson]: Have you know who it is. Have you reached out to him? [Witness (unnamed)]: Not yet because I haven't needed to. I've I've been able to. [Member Richard Nelson]: You've been able okay. Great. [Witness (unnamed)]: But not everybody has. [Member Richard Nelson]: Yeah. And and not that I want you to take away my business, I wanna do with them because those slots are near and dear. [Witness (unnamed)]: Yeah. [Member Richard Nelson]: You know, we we learned in this committee a while ago about Myers programs. And if you ever get to the scale that you wanna reach out and expand your market through a licensed, they they have the vehicle, I really believe, to help expand Mhmm. [Witness (unnamed)]: From on agriculture into the southern market. Yep. My wife would shoot me. I have promised her that we're cutting down. So we increase lambs. We increase pigs. We increase turkeys, but we're doing less broilers. So now I can tell her, yes. We're cutting back. [Member Richard Nelson]: Are you doing laying hens? [Witness (unnamed)]: No. Well, she has a few, but not not not commercial. So our goal is is to do better, and we like to maintain that personal contact with our customers. When our customers come to our house and pick up their meat, they know where it is. I mean, we we offer no one no one does it, but we say, if you wanna come up and pick out and say, I want that lamb, you know, we'll we'll do that for you. But most people can't look dinner in the eye and and and eat it later. And that's perfectly fine. And because we tell people, that's okay. We'll do it for you. We guarantee the animal a phenomenal life. And we had a lot of people I had four people in the in the barn yesterday, patent lamps. We do that. We offer that opportunity because we want that connection with people. And so that's one of the things that the Vermont Sheep and Goat Association, you know, encourages is trying to get the public more in tune with what we're doing. We also do a lot of workshops to help new and young entrepreneurs get into the business in a more knowledgeable fashion. You know, we'll have the Dave runs a lambing clinic at Shelburne Farms in April, and it's booked. It's full. There's twenty slots, twenty slots are full. We've done wool classing. They did a it wasn't us, but we were involved with the halal meat slaughtering last year because there's a lot to do with you know, proper processing of animals right from the lambing. So I've sent Dave some you know, a lot of people will will castrate a lamb with a rubber band. Well, you can buy our plain old castrator band for a nickel. For two bucks, you can buy one that's impregnated with lidocaine, which is an animal well-being. And they've done research on dairy calves where the calves on the control were three pounds smaller than the calves that were castrated with the lidocaine infused band because it offers pain relief at a point in time where the animal needs it. So Dave has never used one. I have, and I've sent him the stuff, but that's what we're going to this year's lambing clinic is going to encourage people to use a more humane method of castration. It's a fundamental management technique that is going to be used and the more that we can do to, you know, improve welfare, the better. [Member Richard Nelson]: Get that [Witness (unnamed)]: information to employees. Yep. Yep. I've got I've there's actually a link to a to a website, to an article that was just done that but yeah. So, you know, that's that's part of what we're trying to do. And the other part is trying to establish some value for wool. I mean, that's what made the sheep boom so big two hundred years ago. But now we've got how many different breeds of sheep, how many different crossbred types of sheep, and all sheep wool is different. And if you're a manufacturer or a spinner or a processor of any kind, it needs to be all the same. You can't make wine out of one type of grapes today and the next type tomorrow and sell it all in the same bottle. And the same is true with with wool. So we've had discussions with, Perron Desitel at Johnson Woolen Mill. They have to buy their wool in North Carolina. They'd love to buy Vermont wool. They have reached out to buy Vermont wool, and, you know, what our answer is? We don't know how to accumulate a volume and quality necessary to supply you. And as president of ESGA, I'm I'm gonna try to do a survey. We're gonna try to begin to do some things. Part of it is management. Part of it is breeding. Part of it is genetics. But I don't know how to meet that need. And we need to I mean, it's important because right now, wool is considered a waste product in most sheep operations. Fortunately, there's a new process to make wool pellets that might add some value to substandard or poor quality or even the belly wool. They say sometimes even the more manure that's in it, the better makes pellet. But there's there's some value there as a soil amendment. But the machine, you can buy a thirty or forty thousand dollar pellet mill for the last three years and be worn out. Pelletizing anything is it's it's rough on equipment. But a good machine's a million bucks. You know how many wool pellets you've got to sell to recoup a million bucks? I mean, so I don't know what the I don't know what the reality of having one of those in Vermont is, but we're trying. We've got a wonderful business in Manchester Center, Vermont Natural Tannery. They do the best job ever to tan a hide. And if you've ever seen a hide tan, you haven't seen one as good as as they can do. But they only do six a day. They've got a backup of a year. That's not sustain I mean, we can't go ahead. [Member Richard Nelson]: Thank you. They have moved. They have to follow words in China. They can let it go down Yangtze River. So that's probably Well, [Witness (unnamed)]: it's an entirely different process. So it's chrome chromium and heavy metals used. I mean, I can I I can bring them to Quakertown, Pennsylvania and have them done commercially with with toxins and everything? And they smell toxic when you get them back, open the bag. The ones from Vermont Natural Cannery, they smell like a clean sheep, which is a rare thing. But you can smell the lanolin, you can feel it. If you send a sheep in that's got some different colors to it, they'll come back in the hide where if you send them to one of these chemically treated places, it's all bleached out. Do you have a question, [Chair David Durfee]: representative? I do. [Witness (unnamed)]: Yeah. Whatever [Chair David Durfee]: happened to the wool pool? Because we're all out. [Member John O'Brien]: Right? Yep. What we didn't sell, we could always take the wool pool. It wasn't a great price, but it was I think it was all New England. It was. Went to Maine. [Witness (unnamed)]: Yeah. They there are no buyers. [Chair David Durfee]: Who funded it then? Was it a government thing? [Witness (unnamed)]: It wasn't a government, but there were there were there were buyers that that would commit to buying a hundred thousand pounds of wool at a time, which is what you needed to do. I actually tried to write a grant through Working Lands for the Vermont Sheep and Goat Association, and there was ten thousand dollars in that to establish a wool pool. I didn't get we didn't get the grant, but that is one of our functions because we have to develop some value for for wool because every almost all of the seventeen thousand sheep in there make five to eight pounds of wool. But most of it is going into a compost pile right now because you can't find somebody to to spin it or do anything. And we've got some nice new, Aurora Spinnery and Junction Fiber Mill and Green Mountain Spinnery and King Kingdom Fiber Works. They're all doing all they can. I give all of my wool to to individuals to see what they can do. And I said, Just experiment. Just let's see what we can make with it. Just trying. You know, and my background is as a dairy farmer. So, I've only got a few years of experience with sheep. I've got some common sense, and I know that things can be done even when you're told you can't. You can if you try hard enough and know know the right places and the right strings to pull. And that's part of what I see my my role as president of VSGA right now is to try to strengthen the industry for both sheep and goat for however long I I do this because it's important to me. Vermont agriculture is important to me. And and like I said, I think sheep we're gonna see sheep and goats in places that we saw cows before or where we haven't seen anything because sheep graze, goats browse. I mean, it's they're gonna they can take care of roadsides. And something that I found out in when I went to, Phoenix, to the American Sheep Industry Association meeting, a lot of these solar farms they're putting in, there are some states that require ruminant vegetation removal. Petroleum based vegetation removal is not allowed. So in places like Oklahoma, where they're building these huge things, they have to plan with animal welfare people. These sites. They're drilling wells for water supply for these animals. And I I think in Massachusetts, there's a there's a regulation that a lot of the vegetation removal has to be done by ruminant. And it's sheep. You don't want a cow because they're going to wreck things and a goat's going to climb on top of it. So the only thing that your equipment is safe with is with sheep. So I think there's some potential there for sheep. So while we're trying to develop some extra value for the meat that we're already making and try to encourage more people to get into the milk and the cheese business and to try to create some value for the wool, from Muriel's of Vermont making two hundred dollars sweaters to sell in bags of wool pellets. But there's so much that has to go on between where we are today and where we need to go. And frankly, I'm not asking for any solutions, and I'm sorry to be here offering so many problems as they might be perceived, their challenges, their issues. I wanted to and I'd have been here earlier in the year. I'd intended to. And I told Dave, you know, when I saw him, the thing up at the cafeteria, I wanted to make an appointment come in, but I had a detached retina, and that set me back for six weeks. So I'm just getting to where I can operate. [Member Richard Nelson]: Representative Nelson? Yep. The Vermont finters really like sheep. [Witness (unnamed)]: Yep. [Member Richard Nelson]: And they're great. [Witness (unnamed)]: So one of my other jobs, because I like jobs, is I do contract auditing for a nonprofit company called A Greener World. And they do certifications for animal welfare approved, certified non GMO, certified grass fed, and certified regenerative. And I've actually done some certifications for vineyards in California, where that's how they control the low vegetation on the vines, and they'll use a winter cover crop between the rows. And they'll have fifteen or sixteen thousand fifteen or sixteen hundred sheep come in and they just raise it. I did the, the largest olive ranch in the United States, California Olive Ranch. You can see their stuff at Shaw's or anywhere. So, the four thousand six hundred acres of olives are all certified regenerative now. And that's how they manage all of their vegetation is with sheep. So, it's something that, you know, as an industry, we've got something in sheep that, you know, cattle don't have, goats don't have. And, you know, there's a lot of evidence to where, you know, the rotational grazing of sheep improves the soil, it improves carbon sequestration. You can run sheep on lands that might be characterized as wetlands that you can't run a cow on. And so, there's a lot of opportunity. So, I am going to mention the word opportunity to go over the word challenges every once in a while. We know there is some good things that sheep are doing and can do. [Chair David Durfee]: Representative O'Brien. [Witness (unnamed)]: Mark, why why is [Member John O'Brien]: David Major the only sheep dairy? I mean, it's just interesting how you know, there's so many similarities between, say, Vermont and parts of France or Belgium or in Switzerland where both goat and sheep dairies are successful. They make great cheeses. We make great cheeses, and, yeah, we have Yeah. [Witness (unnamed)]: One sheep dairy. Yeah. So I have a lot of my sheep factors. My entire sheep flock, not the spotties, but the the rest of them that I was growing, the texel based ones, all came from a former sheep milk dairy and craftspury. Neil Urie. He milked two hundred and fifty sheep, same as David, made as good a cheese as David. But he got started at a time where you could have a pretty haphazard cheese house, and he didn't wanna make the investment when the new HACCP rules came about. And I think that's what forced everybody but David. At one time, there were nine sheep milk dairies in the state. And I think that's it just it's a lot of work. And there was a lot of I don't know if it wasn't enough support or encouragement or, you know, farmers get tired and don't wanna make that extra that leap. But I know for one, my neighbor, that is exactly why he didn't continue. He wasn't gonna make the investment in a new cheese house. It was gonna be a quarter million dollars. [Member John O'Brien]: Well, probably breed too, and they're not you can't just go out and buy five hundred sheep, period. Right. [Member Richard Nelson]: Same same with the goats. They'd say their biggest impediment is genetics. [Chair David Durfee]: Yeah. [Member Richard Nelson]: And and with the goats sitting on probably with the sheep. But this you know, what happened to Neil is the same thing that happened to our grandfather's friends when they were fired all time. [Witness (unnamed)]: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yep. Yeah. But that's that's the way of the world. I mean, it's it's really, you know, it was an improvement, I think. But, you know, you've got a you've got a role with with the times, with technology, and, you know, not not everything is is as welcome as as the other. But, you know, we've we struggle to to continue to make things better. And and Anson Tebets has been all over me. He's he's hoping that I can convince some of the Amish because I've I've big Amish community up where we are. In fact, I had a couple Amish guys install some cabinets for my wife yesterday. But, you know, because and all the Amish have sheet Nearly all the Amish have sheep. And he's hoping he can get we can get one of them started with a sheep milk berry. I'm hoping to get one, little processed sheep hides naturally. Fact is all on the way to my house yesterday, I just, these are cabinetmakers, but I spent the whole trip trying to convince someone in their community to start canning hides naturally. And I sent them home with an article about it, you know. But, you know, these are the things, you know, I think, you know, if if we could have three more tanneries like Vermont Natural, I mean, the products that they put out, there's only one other tannery in the United States that does it, and they're in Wisconsin. You know, it's but that's something that if if somebody want and it's all natural and it's working with the three guys at Vermont Natural are vegans. I mean, and so, you know, you know that the process that they're employing to to make these hides, you know, and they feel connected with each one. I mean, it's a it's just [Chair David Durfee]: Do you know I don't know the business in Manchester, Vermont Natural, but are they how does act two fifty affect an expansion, say, of a business like that? [Witness (unnamed)]: They don't wanna get a bigger reach their company. [Chair David Durfee]: They did with with I don't I don't know. The the agricultural definition of, you know, [Witness (unnamed)]: processing. Yeah. So I I asked him about it's Derek Anderson. And so I asked Derek. I said, well, can you set up a a satellite facility somewhere in the middle of the state or something? And he and his answer was no. We're a boutique. So, I mean, so they are and like I said, God bless them. They do a fabulous job, but they've got nine hundred hides in their attic, and they're only turning out six a day. And they're not the solution for Vermont sheep producers that want that quality product. There's room for that. And I don't know how to encourage somebody to do it or instill, but I'm I'm I'm telling everybody I can. There's gotta be there's gotta be a place for it. [Chair David Durfee]: You mentioned that we don't know how many sheep. We don't know exactly how many sheep there are in the state. Do you how you know how many members you have who are raising sheep and goats? [Witness (unnamed)]: Well, that's a funny question too because you can be a member if you just like cheap. And we don't actually ask. So we have members that had cheap twenty years ago. It's not a requirement, and it's not a field of data that's that's in the membership application. So I can sit here and honestly tell you there's nobody in the state that has a clue Anson included has a clue as to how many sheep there are in the state. So we've talked about it with the Agency of Agriculture, with the Vermont Sheep and Goat Association, and with UVM Extension to try to conduct a survey. Sheep census. Well, they used to when they had a poll tax. I mean, that's why there's such accurate numbers up to a certain point in time in our history because they were all taxed by the head. But we don't know that anymore. And goats. We have a better idea on goats because the goats are dairy, typically, and the dairies are all licensed. So, we have a little better handle on the goats as a state, as a as a number of the in the industry. [Chair David Durfee]: What was the organization that for a while, they [Member John O'Brien]: they would sort of co op sheep carcasses and take them down to fancy restaurants in New York. I know I know it wasn't the association, but it was No. [Witness (unnamed)]: It wasn't. They're not sheep [Member John O'Brien]: growers or something like that, and then they used to get a pretty good price for it. [Witness (unnamed)]: Yep. And and I know that predates me. I heard about it, but I but I I don't know. [Member John O'Brien]: Well, we didn't see [Witness (unnamed)]: And and see, that's that's the other thing is with Vermont sheep producers, most of us so I've got a big flock. I've got a hundred. Well, if you're going to supply a restaurant, they want five a week or ten a week. I grew all my lambs to butcher in October. You know? And and so in order to supply a restaurant in Boston or New York City or someplace else or a group of them, you've got to be killing twenty sheep a week. That's a lot of sheep. And then they've got to be uniform. You can't have so and that's one of the reasons I went with the Dutch spotted is because they grow really fast. My ram, at ninety one days old, weighed a hundred and ten pounds. We weaned him at ninety one days old, and he weighed a hundred and ten pounds. And they've got a big meat to bone ratio. But you got a lot of people that are raising Icelandics or Shetlands or something. You know, in a year and a half, they've dressed thirty five pounds. You know, my guy dressed fifty five pounds at three months old. And so uniformity, it gets back to the same thing I said about wool. Management breeds I mean, we don't have uniformity in this industry to get where we need to go. And I'm not saying anybody's wrong. I don't have I'm not disparaging Icelandics or Shetlands or or anything else. But we need some we need some uniformity. The wool people need to go this way. The meat people need to go this way. We need to find some milk people to go this way. And then and then do what comes naturally. So [Member Richard Nelson]: Are you able to grow your spotted herd? Or I mean, you you still [Member John O'Brien]: Yep. [Member Richard Nelson]: Doing the embryos so you can diversify your genetics a little bit? [Witness (unnamed)]: Yeah. I have to. So Yeah. I've got the only there's a there's a herd, a flock in Kentucky that just implanted nineteen embryos. I don't know how many they got. So I implanted forty four embryos in December. Unfortunately, this year I only got twenty, pregnancies. [Member Richard Nelson]: Are you doing all right? [Witness (unnamed)]: Well, that was that should have We looked for sixty percent. [Member Richard Nelson]: I understand. [Witness (unnamed)]: But I spent so I spent I spent fifty five thousand dollars implanting embryos. I've got twenty pregnancies. I have twenty simple math says I have twenty five hundred bucks a head in these cute little spotted sheep. It's gonna be pretty tough for me to convince if you had a flock of sheep and you wanted one of my rams, and I and I well, that's why I pointed at it. Alright. I need five grand for my ram because I really do. But, you know, I I need to be able to justify the the the cost benefit to you. If you can get an average increase in carcass weight at Butcher of six pounds, and you're marketing a hundred head a year, that's six hundred extra pounds of meat that should have a value of six bucks a pound or something. And so we can begin to do that. But those of us that are jumping off the deep end to get those genetics here [Member Richard Nelson]: Thanks for catching all the arrows, Mark. [Witness (unnamed)]: And, you know, and fighting with regulations. So I had a shipment of sixty that was supposed to come from the UK. And it's a six month process with quarantine and health testing and everything else. The last test, one of the donors tested positive to Smalenberg, and it canceled the shipment. So I had sixty one embryos. So I'm keeping a whole flock of sheep open, you know, all set up for embryos, and then the embryos didn't come. You know? So I just ended up breeding them with my spotty ram, but that wasn't what I intended. It wasn't part of the the program. And so with with any farming program, you you roll in it, and and that's what I've done. But I'm doing this with the spotties to to try to add some value and integrity to to genetics in Vermont because we can increase the the gain and the carcass value of of all sheep in the state with with crossing some genetics? [Member Richard Nelson]: You know, two times a year breed, you you stick with the one one time? [Witness (unnamed)]: Because we wanna be pasture based. We want to be, utilizing what the environment is giving us in the most sustainable method practicable. [Member Richard Nelson]: Right. You you feed your sheep all winter long. Hey. Yep. And hay grown on the farm. [Witness (unnamed)]: Yep. [Member Richard Nelson]: So you don't see value in getting another crop of lambs. [Witness (unnamed)]: Told you my wife would shoot me. [Member Richard Nelson]: But there there is value. [Witness (unnamed)]: There there is value. And so but and so The process There's there's credibility to that thought because if we're gonna provide those restaurants with sheep all year round, we have to be lambing all year round, and there are certain breeds that will do that. [Member Richard Nelson]: I want on your list. I want one to put in my freezer. K. I'm serious. Sorry. [Witness (unnamed)]: You can come pick it out. [Chair David Durfee]: Representative Martin, what kind of acreage do you need to do what you're doing? [Witness (unnamed)]: So right now, we've we own seventy five acres, but only fifteen of it is open. I've got fifteen acres across the road. So So that is all rotational grazing. There's two acres for the pigs. There's about an acre for the chickens. And, actually, you know, we've we follow the chickens with the sheep because, you know, chicken manure makes the grass grow really fast. And when you've got those movable chicken houses, the grass is so tall. You can't get it back on them unless we turn the sheep in. So we've got about twenty five acres. I use the FAP program through the agency of ag. I get thirty bucks an acre, you know, for using the rotational grazing program. So for me right now, I can I can run a hundred sheep on twenty five acres, [Member Richard Nelson]: but my hay land is somewhere else? So you you can get four sheep per acre? [Witness (unnamed)]: With intensive intensive grazing. [Member Richard Nelson]: Intensive grazing. [Witness (unnamed)]: Yeah. I move my I move my sheep every day. [Member Richard Nelson]: Fred Murphy would be proud. [Witness (unnamed)]: Yes. He would. I did learn a couple things in coffee. [Chair David Durfee]: We're we're about at time. So thank you for making the time this morning. [Witness (unnamed)]: Yep. [Chair David Durfee]: And I I think it was helpful just to get this high level intro. And at at some point, if you need to get back into the discussion, we'll let you know. Yep. And there Some of the members too. Yeah. [Witness (unnamed)]: And there's there's some other areas. Like I said, with the work that I do with a greener world, I'm actually a certified I'm a poultry welfare officer. I took a class. So Sure thing, go. Well, you know that for proper slaughter of an animal animal in the state of Vermont, they need to be stunned before they're exsanguinated. It's not true with poultry. You can just cut their head off. I actually own a chicken stung up. Because in my poultry class, I found out that the average chicken has seventeen seconds of brainwave activity after it's decapitated. So, at some point, I'd like to come in and talk about things like that that have totally nothing to do with sheep, but I do have interest in some other areas. Thank you so much for your time this morning. I really appreciate it. Good to see you. I'm going to see my brother. I made an appointment. My brother's so freaking important. I gotta make an appointment to see you now. [Member John O'Brien]: He'll buy you lunch. [Chair David Durfee]: Alright. Thank you. [Witness (unnamed)]: Thank you very much. Yeah. [Chair David Durfee]: And there are just the committee, there are a couple of, links on the web page that we didn't get a chance at the couple of videos that [Witness (unnamed)]: Yep. Mentioned. Apparently, my articles Thank you.

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