Sheep, Goat Producers: Management Skills Workshop to be Held Oct. 14 in Wooster

WOOSTER, Ohio -- Sheep and goat producers who are certified organic, in transition to becoming organic, or just interested in small ruminants and organic methods won't want to miss the Management Skills for Organic Small Ruminants Workshop, to be held Oct. 14 from 1-5 p.m. at Ohio State University's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) in Wooster.
 
Sponsored by OARDC's Organic Food and Farming Education and Research (OFFER) Program and the Small Farm Institute, the workshop costs $15 per person. To register, contact Kathy Bielek at bielek.4@osu.edu or 330 202-3528.
 
The session will be held at the Research Service Building, room 130. OARDC is located at 1680 Madison Ave, Wooster. Directions are available at http://go.osu.edu/E5r.
           
Speakers include Joan Burke, a research animal scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service based at the Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Center in Arkansas. Burke has done extensive work on small ruminant parasite management and organic practices for small ruminants. 
 
Also speaking will be Francis Fluharty, a ruminant nutritionist with OARDC.  He will share the importance of nutrition on animal growth, as well as animal welfare concerns in an organic system. 
 
Finally, Rose Smith from the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA) will discuss the process of becoming certified organic, recordkeeping, and the new National Organic Program (NOP) pasture rule.
 
OARDC is the research arm of Ohio State's College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.
 
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