The 61st Spooner Sheep Day will be held at the Spooner Agricultural Research Station on Saturday, August 17, 2013. The Spooner Sheep Day has a long tradition of providing useful information to the state’s sheep producers and is the longest-running agricultural field day of the many held each year by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

Registration will begin at the station headquarters at 9:00 a.m. with the program ending at approximately 2:30 p.m. This year’s program will present some exciting new information on a commercial genetic test for susceptibility to the disease of Ovine Progressive Pneumonia and the results of the value of this test in one of the university’s research flocks. A new breed of sheep, Awassi, has been introduced into the U.S. by Larry Meisegeier on his farm near Bruce, WI, and he will talk about his experiences regarding this importation. In addition, short presentations of other current research projects from the UW-Madison sheep research program will be presented. The complete program can be viewed at the UW-Madison Small Ruminant web site: http://fyi.uwex.edu/wisheepandgoat/.

A delicious lamb lunch will be served at noon at a cost of $8.00 per adult, $5.00 for children ages 5 to 11, and free for children under 5. Advanced reservations are not required. For more information, contact Lorraine Toman at the Spooner Agricultural Research Station (715-635-3735, lltoman@wisc.edu) or Dave Thomas on the UW-Madison campus (608-263-4306, dlthomas@wisc.edu).

The Spooner Sheep Day is sponsored by the Department of Animal Sciences and the Agricultural Research Stations of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, and Cooperative Extension of the University of Wisconsin-Extension.