Julie Thelen, Michigan State University Extension - March 15, 2017
First article in series featuring tips and tricks as you prepare for and select your 4-H market lamb.
As spring weather approaches, many youth across Michigan begin looking for their 4-H market lamb. Caring for a lamb requires forward thinking and creating a plan designed to see your project through to the end. In addition to the requirement of selecting the animal, there is also the financial burden of caring for an animal throughout the duration of your project. This three-part series from Michigan State University Extension will review important sheep project content and address three main topics: preparations for your market lamb, estimating costs of care and lamb selection. These tips and tricks will help you be more prepared for your 4-H sheep project experience.
Let’s start at the beginning: preparations. As you make plans to raise and care for a lamb, think through all of the needs of your project. These details will help make the process of caring for lambs easier. Here are a few examples of the needs for your project:
Although there are many challenges to raising and caring for animals, it can also be very rewarding to raise sheep. Resources like the 4-H Sheep Project Snapshot can help provide recommendations for content learning and discovery of new opportunities.
This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. For more information, visit https://extension.msu.edu. To have a digest of information delivered straight to your email inbox, visit https://extension.msu.edu/newsletters. To contact an expert in your area, visit https://extension.msu.edu/experts, or call 888-MSUE4MI (888-678-3464).
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