The focus this year is on grazing management for sheep & goats. Visit the Cornel Solar Farm and Cornell Forage Plots and attend workshops on pasture establishment and maintenance. Saturday afternoon tracks include info on solar grazing with sheep and on using goats and sheep for vegetative management. Visit with grazing experts during our free trade show.
The 2022 Cornell Sheep & Goat Symposium will start out with pasture walks at the Cornell Solar Farm to observe the sheep grazing and forage management there and at the Cornell Forage Plots in Ithaca, NY on Friday, Sept. 16th at 4:30 pm. Most of Saturday’s activities will take place from 8 am to 4 pm at Frank Morrison Hall, Dept. of Animal Science, 507 Tower Rd., Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14886. However, people who missed one or both pasture walks on Friday afternoon will have the opportunity to go on them on Saturday afternoon when activities end at Frank Morrison Hall.
Saturday activities at Frank Morrison Hall include workshops for both beginner and experienced goat and sheep producers on forages (Dr. Julie Hansen, Cornell Univ. Forage Breeding Project) and starting pastures (Karen Hoffman, Sheep/Goat Farmer & Livestock & Grazing Management Specialist, USDA NRCS), solving problem spots in your pastures (Dr. Kitty O’Neil, Agronomist CCE Northern NY Regional Ag Team) and making wise grazing management decisions to keep your animals and plants thriving (Rich Toebe, Sheep Farmer & Livestock Specialist, CCE Delaware County Watershed Ag Program. Registrants are welcome to request a free trade show table to display information about their livestock enterprise or their grazing or pasture equipment business. We will also have a panel on livestock guardian animals. In the afternoon, you’ll have to choose between finding out about the business and forage/livestock management side of doing contract solar grazing or of doing vegetative/landscape management or silvopasturing with goats or sheep. Grazing specialists from the USDA National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) as well as experienced farmers will be available at the trade show to address your pasture questions. During lunch break, a few “expert fencers” will show us how they each put up Electronet and we’ll have the opportunity to compare their methods and rate their performance!
The Program Schedule and Additional Information on speakers, workshop descriptions, lodging and parking are on the web at both the Cornell Goat Program Website https://blogs.cornell.edu/goats/ and the Cornell Sheep Program Website https://blogs.cornell.edu/newsheep/ .
Registration Forms are also available there. Completed registration forms and checks must be mailed back by Sept 9th (postmarked) c/o Barbara Jones, 2022 Cornell Sheep &Goat Symposium, 121 Frank Morrison Hall, 507 Tower Rd., Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Please contact Barbara Jones at 607-255-7712 with further registration questions.
The mission of the Cornell Sheep & Goat Program is to improve the sustainability of goat and sheep farms in the Northeastern United States by providing educational resources and communication outlets to producers.