Listening First: How Producer Feedback Shaped a Newborn Lamb and Kid Care Extension Curriculum
Animal Science
Jacci Smith
Extension Educator ANR/4-H
Ohio State University
Delaware
Abstract
Improving newborn lamb and kid survival is a priority issue for sheep and goat producers, particularly as producers face variable labor availability, management experience, and environmental stressors during the lambing and kidding season. To ensure Extension programming addressed producer-identified needs, a needs assessment was conducted to guide the development of a practical, applied newborn care curriculum for small ruminant producers. A total of 171 producers, representing 10,993 ewes and does, responded to the survey, providing valuable insight into current management practices, observed challenges, and educational gaps. Survey results indicated considerable variation in newborn care practices, including that 15.6% of respondents were not using lambing or kidding pens and that the timing of newborn processing differed widely among operations. Producers identified offspring vigor and nursing behavior as the most critical observations during the neonatal period, while reported first-week mortality was generally low, with 65% of respondents indicating losses of less than 1%. Despite low reported mortality, producers cited a wide range of causes of death, including inadequate nutrition and temperature stress, highlighting opportunities for management improvement through timely intervention. Producers further identified high-priority educational needs related to immediate and emergency newborn nutritional care, management of weak or chilled offspring, maternal nutrition, tube feeding techniques, vaccination timing, nursing behavior, processing timing, and lambing and kidding pen management. Using these findings, Extension educators developed a comprehensive newborn care curriculum that includes an educational presentation, a producer-focused instructional video demonstrating tube feeding techniques for lambs and kids, and hands-on learning opportunities using tube feeding realistic replicas to build confidence and skills. This presentation will describe the needs assessment process, summarize key findings, and demonstrate how producer feedback was translated into targeted Extension education designed to improve on-farm decision making, increase producer confidence, and reduce preventable newborn losses, as well as sharing the development of the hands-on tube feeding replicas. Given the widespread nature of sheep and goat production across the United States, this curriculum and development process offer a replicable model for Extension professionals seeking to deliver producer-driven education with measurable farm-level impact.
Authors: Jacci Smith, Rob Leeds
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Jacci Smith Extension Educator ANR/4-H, OSU Extension , Ohio, 43015-1707
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Rob Leeds Assistant Professor, Extension Educator ANR, OSU Extension , Ohio, 43015-9001