NMSU Range Ram Test Underway
Date: Oct. 23, 1997
Editor: D'Lyn Ford (505) 646-6528, dlford@nmsu.edu
LAS CRUCES -- It was out with the old and in with the new -- rams that is -- at New Mexico State University's Corona Range and Livestock Research Center earlier this month.
Producers taking part in the New Mexico Range Ram Test, a joint effort of NMSU's Cooperative Extension Service and Agricultural Experiment Station, picked up their rams following a year of study and dropped off a new set of test subjects Oct. 10. The research center is located about 12 miles northeast of Corona.
Chaves, Lincoln and McKinley counties are the top sheep producers in the state. Sheep and lamb production was valued at $9.2 million in 1995, while the value of wool production was $3.5 million, according to New Mexico's Agricultural Statistics Service.
Sheep producers enter about five to 10 of their highest quality ram lambs in the NMSU test each year to track the genetic quality of their flocks, explained Tim Ross, sheep scientist with the Experiment Station.
"This test gives producers a benchmark for where their sheep flocks are in terms of growth and wool production and quality. It also helps them identify genetically superior rams for selection purposes," he said. Sheep ranchers are looking for rams that grow the biggest and produce the most and best quality wool.
Every 45 days throughout the test year, the rams are gathered from the range. Measurements are taken to keep track of weight gain and wool production and quality.
"This really is a unique performance test that very few other places in the world do," said Bobby Rankin, NMSU animal and range sciences department head.
Pam and Tom Runyan, who run 2,500 head of sheep near Piñon, are pleased with the way the test mimics the range conditions on which they raise their sheep. However, the Runyans decided not to enter their best sheep in the test.
"We're trying to find out where we're going with our range rams," Pam Runyan said. "We didn't pick the biggest or the finest, because we already knew they had t he qualities we wanted. We picked representatives of the rams we're putting out in the pasture."
This year, the day to pick up the older rams and drop off the new ones coincided with the research center's field day.
"We had the rams from the past test and rams for the new test on display, so producers could see the contrast and what happens over a year's time at the research center," said Ron Parker, extension animal sciences department head.
The field day also gave area producers a chance to find out about other research projects at the 28,000-acre research center, which was established eight years ago.
"The Corona Range and Livestock Research Center is devoted to research of beef cattle and sheep," Rankin said. "It's located in an area where most of the ranches have both cattle and sheep. The area is adapted to that kind of production system, so we are doing research on the same kind of system."
Much of the work at the research center focuses on optimizing supplemental feeding of range cattle and sheep. "We have faculty and graduate students from campus who do some rather extensive studies of supplementing both yearling and two-year-old cattle to affect their reproductive rates," Rankin said.
He added that producers in the area are concerned about supplemental feeding because it is one of the major costs to both cattle and sheep operations in the state.
Not all of the scientists who frequently make the 180-mile trek to do studies at the Corona research center are animal scientists. Other projects deal with range management and brush and mule deer control. All of this work was featured at the field day, which drew a crowd of about 170.