Baa's and Bleat's - The AASRP Podcast
Baa's and Bleat's - The AASRP Podcast
Producer Spotlight: Heritage Sheep Breeds & On-Farm Research with Richard Marlar
This month we sit down with Richard Marlar, a physician and president of the Navajo-Churro Sheep Association to talk about heritage livestock breeds - specifically the Navajo-Churro - which have been integral to the settlement and development of the US. Richard also discusses Split Upper Eyelid Disorder (SUED), a developmental disorder that affects four-horned sheep such as the Navajo-Churro. Dr. Marlar explains how he and his wife worked with their veterinarian as well as human physicians to develop a hypothesis about the cause of this disease based on similar diseases that affect humans. This collaboration also helped the Marlars devise a prevention plan by improving their animals' nutrition, especially around breeding and during gestation which has eliminated the incidence of SUED in their flock. Richard provides unique insight for producers and veterinarians about collaborating across medical specialties to develop hypotheses and carryout their own mini-research trials to address challenges that they face within their operation and beyond. This episode highlights the importance of a One Health approach to veterinary challenges and the important role that a veterinarian can play in advocating for their clients through collaboration with university connections, extension programs, and human medical experts when novel challenges are identified.
Resources discussed in this episode:
American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners - Find a small ruminant veterinarian: https://aasrp.org/Main/Main/About/Find-A-Small-Ruminant-Veterinarian.aspx?hkey=e59ebdd0-6d57-493b-9ae2-e838323b9a38
The Livestock Conservancy: https://livestockconservancy.org/
Shave 'Em to Save 'Em: https://livestockconservancy.org/get-involved/shave-em-to-save-em/
Navajo-Churro Sheep Association: https://www.navajo-churrosheep.com/?doing_wp_cron=1757476384.7682878971099853515625
To access Dr. Marlar's article on his experiences with SUED email: rmarlar@salud.unm.edu
Welcome to another episode of Baas and Bleats, the American Association of Small Remnant Practitioners podcast. Today I'm joined by one of our producer guests, Dr. Richard Marlar, who is the proud owner of a flock of Navajo Churro sheep down in New Mexico. Welcome, Richard. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Richard:Well, thank you very much, Dr. Buckley. I want to thank you for the opportunity to share with your audience about the Navajo Chiro sheep. So I look forward to this discussion.
Michelle:Yeah, I'm really excited. I hope to bring some light to one of our more elusive heritage breeds out there. So to get us started, could you give us a little bit of background about yourself and your operation, what you got going on down there?
Richard:Sure. Well, to begin with, we have a small ranch, and I mean small, it's not large. It's located in Los Lunes, New Mexico, which is about 20 miles south of Albuquerque. It's in the Rio Granley. It has pretty good pasture areas around it, but it's still high desert, and we'll talk about that in a bit. We have about 40 to 50 Navajo Churro sheep. Each year we breed about 20 to 30 ewes. Besides the sheep, we also have some heritage ducks and turkeys and chickens. So we're not a big operation, but it's kind of a side project for us. The majority of the ewes we sell to other breeders, or usually every year we donate about 10 to 20 of our ewes back to the Navajo reservation so that new people can start flocks or increase or improve their flocks as well. The Rams, of course, are sold mostly for meat. My wife is retired. I'm semi-retired. I'm a professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. So I deal with human medicine, not veterinarian medicine. I specialize and have specialized all my career in directing clinical laboratories. I concentrate or have concentrated on coagulation testing and molecular testing. Besides that, I spent about 35 years of my career doing basic science research and clinical science research as well at the various universities that I've worked at. So I think I understand human medicine pretty well, which has helped a lot trying to apply it back to the sheep. But I certainly am not know much about veterinarian medicine. So that's basically my career and our operation.
Michelle:Great. Well, I was really excited when you told me about your flock and the topics that we're going to discuss. And I think that your background professionally plays a big role in how you have approached some of the questions that you've had with your sheep. So I think it's really important for our listeners to have that in the back of their mind and the fact that you have a very solid understanding of scientific method and carrying out good research. So for all your listeners out there, pay attention. Can you tell us a little bit more about what got you interested in the Navajo Chiro breed and what your goals are and have been for your flock as you've developed your flock over these years?
Richard:We came about raising sheep kind of a roundabout way. My wife's interest initially for many, many years had been really Native American history and the archaeology of the Southwest. That included basically, you know, collecting and appreciating Native American art. And the one I appreciated the most was the Navajo and Hispanic weavings, which of course use wool as their base for the weavings. So we spent a lot of time doing that and collecting those. We had friends who were Navajos that did weaving as well as having Navajo flocks. And eventually my wife and I decided when we retired out here that it's like, well, why not raise sheep, you know, to help make sure that the wool goes to the appropriate groups for weaving? And hence we started that with a small flock. I have to say I've had no experience raising anything more than dogs or cats, maybe a chicken or a duck. So it was all brand new to us in a very steep learning curve. So we acquired the four pregnant ewes they had for their babies, and we ended up with ten new ewes. And then we've proceeded from there to expand our flock. So that's how we kind of got into it, kind of a roundabout way.
Michelle:So are you selecting for like wool quality traits? Or could you tell us a little more about that?
Richard:We are looking to improve the wool for weaving. One of the issues because of the history of the sheep and how it was almost lost, and it was cross, I guess I'm going to use the word cross-contaminated with other breeds. It lost in the late 1800s, early 1900s, it lost a lot of its ability to be fine weaving from the Navajo Hispanic perspective. So we're breeding to make a better wool. We also breed for colors because the Navajo sheep not only has white, but it has black and brown and multicolors in between. And there are weavings that only use naturally colored wool to do their weavings with. Brown, black, grays, tans. So we're breeding for both of those. Meat is something we also do. It's certainly got a different flavor than commercial lamb. So just a little bit about the Navajo Churro sheep itself. It's a heritage breed, as you mentioned. It's actually a land race breed as well. It's considered critically endangered. There's probably less than four or five thousand in the world. The Livestock Conservancy classified it as critically endangered. So we're looking to bring it back and keep it rather than having it die out. Because if it does die out, then you know Native American artistry dies out as well as Hispanic artistry can die out as well. It's actually the first sheep to come into the New World and into the United States. It's originally from Spain, and it came over from Spain into the New World in Columbus's second voyage at the end of 1492. So it's been in the New World since 1492. So that's almost 500 years ago. Wow. And so basically it was dropped off on some of the islands and it didn't do well in that sort of environment. But as soon as it got to Mexico and started moving north in Mexico, it flourished because it adapted really well to it. And then basically in the 1500s, the late 1500s, it was colonized up into New Mexico. So it's been around since the end of the 1500s on that. In the 1600s, 1700s, and early 1800s, there were millions of these Navajo Churo sheep in New Mexico. It was the most prominent sheep at that time, probably the only type of sheep here at that time. And just as a side note, the New Mexicans who owned these sheep drove them not only south to the mines in Mexico, but also drove them to the California Gold Rush. So thousands were taken there. The people that took the risk made millions of dollars and today's money selling sheep to the gold miners. Unfortunately, in the late 1800s, early 1900s, the breed essentially disappeared. There were a few pockets of Navajo reservation sheep. It wasn't until the 1970s that this breed was actually recognized and saved. We're trying to increase the numbers. But as I said, it's only at about four to five thousand right now in the US or actually worldwide. Just a little bit about the sheep. As I said, it's different than the commercial breeds that you see, the rambolets and others. It has a coarser wool than the fine wool sheep that we see. It is actually a dual-coated fleece that has an inner coat, which is what's used for weaving, and an outer coat, which is kind of medullated fibers, that actually sheds the debris of the desert that it lives in. Sheds the dirt and the water. So it has a purpose. Because it's a land race here in New Mexico, it has very little lanolin or what is referred to as grease in it, because here we have no water to wash out that to process. Many spinners and weavers actually spin from the grease, spin it right from the fleece rather than process it, cart it, get into rovings, because it has such a small amount of lanolin in it. These sheep have very low kemp levels and very little or no crimp. The physical characteristics, they have clean faces, clean legs, clean bellies usually, because they're not on grass per se. They're on sagebrush and other brush that are maybe a foot high, foot and a half high. They're extremely good mothers, very little complications with lambing, and they're bred to handle the harsh environment of southwest high desert that we have here. They can handle low temperatures below freezing. We've had our lambs born at night when it was less than 32 degrees, and they did fine. The moms didn't bring them into the warm barn. So they they do that pretty well. The high temperatures here in the hundreds, it's not uncommon. They love it out here. They need very little water, travel well from water source to water source. They can go days without it. They get their water from what they eat. They're very, very good about it. Usually they're horn, the ewes can be pulled, but most of the time they have some sort of horns with them. They can be eight inches long to just a nub on their skull. But one of the unique aspects of the Navo Chiro is the fact that it's four-horned, which means it has two sets of horn buds. The first set, the ones that are higher up on the head, essentially goes straight out like a goat's does. The second set of horns usually grow down, and they're not as big usually as the spiraled horns of the single set. But unfortunately, with four horns, that creates a unique problem.
Michelle:Absolutely. There's a lot of cultural ties to this breed of sheep that make it really relevant and important, especially in the American Southwest. I think a lot of our listeners that are producers that raise livestock and sheep, especially, can relate to your story of, you know, starting out with just a few animals and suddenly it turns into, you know, ten times the number of animals that you started with. And that can happen pretty quickly with our small ruminants. They multiply fast. It does.
Richard:And we have to keep it down number wise, otherwise we end up with hundreds because we don't ever want to get rid of them. We happen to like them very much. So yes.
Michelle:Absolutely. Love it. I think a lot of producers care a lot about their animals, even though they do have a production value as well. So I'm glad you found them good homes with other producers that care about them. So yeah, if you're if our listeners are unfamiliar with heritage breeds and the classifications that Richard mentioned, I will put a link in the show notes to the livestock conservancy's website. They're an amazing resource for listing all of the heritage breeds that we work with here in the U.S. And there's also a program that they run called the Shave Em to Save Em Program that's specifically for breeds that produce fiber, like sheep. So if you are a fiber artist and you're interested in getting fiber from a heritage breed animal, you can get connected with them. So can you tell us a little bit more about some of the challenges that you faced with your flock, and maybe you can dig a little more into the problem specifically that you noticed with those downward placing horns?
Richard:Certainly, the biggest overall challenge that we had was learning how to raise sheep. We knew nothing about it. It was a steep learning curve. We had fortunately a couple of mentors, the gentleman that sold us the original sheep, plus our sheep and some of the Navajo shepherds that had their own flocks that helped us with that. Sheepherder, I think any aspect of rearing sheep, learning how to do it. You know, I never even considered docking tails as an example of how to do that, you know, or dealing with parasites or the occasional issue of bloat. Those were the overall general problems that I think any new sheepherder has in dealing with this. But unique to, well, I shouldn't say unique, it's unique to four-horned animals, but it's present in the Navajo Churro sheep is the four-horned aspect. They are beautiful animals, they're iconic with their four horns, and I think everybody really loves them. But unfortunately, they have a problem that's associated with it. Not every time they had four horns, but occasionally. So it can be very small to very big. And also the eyelashes can be turned in and rub up against the eyeball itself. And all of that, with getting dirt in those notches, can create irritation to the eyeball, infections, loss of the eye, and ultimately having to put down the animal on it. So it's something that we don't like to see or don't want in our flock, but it is a problem, and it only really occurs, as far as I know, in the four-horned sheep. Not in the two-horned, even the two-horned Navajo sheep, but the four-horned animals. So suet occurs in four-horned rams and ewes. It can vary in its severity from a simple notch into a severe notch and eyelash deformity. To talk about this disorder, we really have to start with the genetics. Two horns are controlled by a structural gene, of which two horn buds are put during development into the skull, the bone material on it. And those with the four-horned actually have a separate gene that is not a structural gene, it's a regulatory gene. And it is a recessive gene, meaning that it's usually turned off in the homozygote dominance and the heterozygotes, which means there's not four horns. But in the recessive, if it's double recessive, you have four horns or developing a second set of horn buds. And what happens is these horn buds are placed in front of or more ventral to the original horn buds, anywhere from about a half a centimeter from the original horn buds down to maybe two centimeters on the animal towards the eye socket of the skull. So it's not a structural gene, it's a regulatory gene on that. And so what happens is that as the ectoderm or the skin covering, the skin tissues underneath or just on top of the skull, are growing. They grow from the dorsal side down towards the ventral side. And they grow around the horn bud and then come back together, just like water going around a rock. It goes around it and then comes back together and then moves on down the stream. This is what happens is that the tissue grows around the horn bud, grows back together, and grows down in a two-horned animal, grows all the way down to the eyelid, and forms a straight eyelid across. In the four-horned or the ones with two horn bud sets, the ectoderm grows around the first set, comes back together, grows around the second one, and then it comes back together and grows into the eyelid. If there's not enough distance or time of growth to allow the ectoderm to form a straight line across where the eyelid is going to be, there will be a notch where the two tissues grow back together on that. So as the second set of horns are present, the tissue grows around that second set and it goes around and comes back together and then grows towards the eyelid. If there's not enough distance or time, the tissue does not form a straight line across that eyelid, but leaves a notch. And that notch can be a small one or a large one. And so that is what suid is, and that's the mechanism by which suid works. As I said, it's not genetics, it's developmental.
Michelle:I appreciate you breaking that down so succinctly for our listeners. And I really liked your analogy of water going down a stream and running into rocks. I think we all get a good visual of what that looks like. So I understand there's some connections to human developmental disorders as well. And Suid, can you talk a little bit about how you can draw some parallels there?
Richard:I'm happy to do that. So, you know, our hypothesis was basically it's not genetic, it's a developmental process. And what we thought was that usually developmental disorders are done because something is missing in the process. Usually either proteins, amino acids, other building blocks, or cofactors, vitamins, minerals, things like that. So what we felt was that once it goes around that second horn bud, there was not enough energy and nutrients for the tissues to grow rapidly around it and seal off and make a normal eyelid on that. So our hypothesis, as I said, was based on the fact that it's developmental. After discussions with veterinarians about horn bud formation, and I have to say, and I not a knock on them, that there's not a lot of information about horn buds. I went back and looked at the literature and found out about how horns are formed on that. I realized that it was a process that was similar to human development. I mean, in reality, all you know, animals basically develop the same way on that. So humans develop the same way that it is in dogs and cats and sheep. At least the basics are that way: the biochemistry, the physiology, the growth of tissues in and around other structures and stuff like that. So using human medicine is a guide because when you look at the amount of money and effort that the world puts on solving problems with medicine, with humans and animals, 99% basically, all that money, all that effort goes to humans. Very little goes to animals, unfortunately. But I think that since we know a lot about humans, we can apply some of that to animals. Now, we can't apply all of it. The gastrointestinal system of the human is certainly different than the sheep, but I think developmentally basically everything is the same. So doing reading and talking to pediatricians at my work as well as medical geneticists, we concluded that it was a developmental process very similar to human diseases. And maybe if we look at what eliminates or reduces human developmental disorders, we can apply that to sheep. So there are basically two that we looked at that are human disorders, and we attempted to apply them to the sheep. The first developmental disorder that we looked at was what's called neurotube defects. And those are where the neural tube in the first month of gestation in humans does not completely close and form the tissues coming together. Very similar to suet. If that happens in a human, we end up with a disease called spina bifida. The second one we looked at was cleft palate or cleft lip, which is, I think, more well known to the public. And it again is failure to close along that ventral surface on the skull, leaving an opening between the two tissues that did not grow together, that forms a defect or a V in the lip, or even deeper or bigger in some patients. So okay, we have those, they're similar. How do we treat the human diseases? Well, we treat neural tube defects by adding folic acid, which is vitamin B9, and actually the US government adds folic acid to all grain products in the United States, and many other developed countries do the same thing. So when you eat your cereal or your bread or your donuts, all of that has folic acid in it, which has essentially eliminated neural tube defects in the human population in the United States. The second one is cleft palate. It's not so clear-cut, but we have found that we've reduced the incidences of cleft palate and cleft lip by giving good nutrition to expectant mothers as well as prenatal vitamins. And so making sure they get enough energy and enough building block products as well as vitamins and minerals, we've reduced the incidence of cleft palate and cleft lip. So using those two solutions to these developmental problems in humans, we applied it to suid on that. So we took those and developed a protocol talking with veterinarians and to attempt to try to work it out with our sheep. Now I have to say the reason this came up is that our first breeding, we bought a very beautiful four-horned sheep, and we had eight ewes initially that were unknown genetics as to whether they were two-horned or four-horned. They turned out to be heterozygote for it. And so we bred them. In our first year, we had five four-horned animals. This was before we started this. This is what got us into this. We had five four-horned animals. Four of them had varying degrees of suet, from one that had a small notch to some that had very pretty severe notches in them. And they had to be butchered sooner than later, unfortunately. So that's put it down, put us down that path. That set of four suet cases out of five really kind of devastated us. So we decided to look into it the next year using the same RAM and the same eight U's, but we added a protocol of which we feel helped, I guess. And the second year we had eight U's again in the same four-horn ram, and we had seven four-horned lambs, and we had zero suet. We did it again the next year, and then finally, our fourth year, we had eight out of the same eight ewes and same ram, we had zero. So once we started this protocol, we have not had suet. And since then, we've had over probably 120 lambs born, not all four-horned, but we have not seen suet in our flock since then on that. So using this protocol, we feel we've at least reduced the incidence. In our case, we've been lucky and not had any, but we feel that it reduced it down. I'm not going to say it eliminates it because I honestly believe is if it they don't get enough on their own, or you don't get it out there in time, that it might happen. Exactly when during gestation this occurs, I'm not really sure, you know, what what month it is and gestation, but it's something we need to do.
Michelle:What experts did you work with to come up with this protocol? I think we're going to keep the audience in suspense a little while to go over the actual protocol, but I know you said you worked with human medical experts. It sounded like you had a veterinarian in there as well. Was there a nutritionist that you worked with?
Richard:To come up with our theory, I went to the pediatricians at the University of New Mexico and talked to them, just in general. I did not talk to a human nutritionist on that, but we did look at the literature and what was found as well. We discussed this with the human geneticist as to how the mechanism of horn development came. These were human geneticists, so they had to learn a lot as well on that. So the veterinarians were one veterinarian that we worked with that was a practicing veterinarian, she actually owns uh Navajo Churo sheep. She recommended what to feed them, and the others really came up with you know, you need to give vitamins, and it was us looking at, you know, what products are out there that we can buy easily and not very expensively to supplement our minerals and food source.
Michelle:Sure. So it sounds like quite the team, and you guys definitely did a lot of legwork there.
Richard:Yes.
Michelle:Can you tell us what the specific nutrient was that you narrowed it down to using this team of experts?
Richard:Well, we think it's the vitamins that were really necessary, but I also believe that when you look at the period of time from when it grows to the second horn bud down to the eyelid is now much shorter distance-wise than if you only have a single horn bud set and it has more time to seal across. So we felt that two things were necessary, probably nutrition. So they needed more building blocks, amino acids, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, but also they needed vitamins, and we didn't know which one, so we kind of used a general mixture of a source that has many vitamins in it. Our protocol for what we use for the third and fourth years, and what we have used subsequently, basically is for the breeding period and the gestation period for the animals. 14 days before to seven days after we start breeding, we flush with one cup of rolled corn per animal. We do monitor for bloat, but we have not had that yet. But that's something we always worry about. Two to ten days before breeding, we shear trim hooves, vaccinate for clostridium. This was something new we added was we give oral vitamin B12 by dosing syringe. And then during breeding and gestation, we provide obviously unlimited water and unlimited sheep mineral. We use granular rather than a block, and to that sheep mineral, we add brewer's yeast. We add five cups per 50-pound bag of sheep mineral, mix it in and add it to the salt, and that they have free access to the salt. Finally, we feed alfalfa twice daily to our animals. So that's our protocol. It seems to work.
Michelle:This would be a great project for a grad student. I think there's some nutritionists and even some veterinary anatomists who I think would be very intrigued by this as far as how it affects development.
Richard:We agree, but I, you know, I mean, our problem was to find a solution. And yes, we shotgunned it, I guess, is the way to put it. And so we don't know exactly what it is. Now, as an example for neurotube defect, we know it's vitamin B9, folic acid that is necessary, and it's not the other vitamins. I mean, they need to be present, but you know, usually it's the lack of folic acid that causes neurotube defect. So, yes, it would be really interesting to know if we could get down and just do B9, B6, B12, whatever.
Michelle:But this is a very realistic scenario that I think a lot of our producers and veterinarians can relate to, where we don't have the luxury of doing clinical research as meticulously as maybe we would if we were in an academic setting where we would love to parse out which exact vitamin it is. But then at the same time, would we be able to just supplement that vitamin? No, you're gonna go to the feed store and just buy a mineral supplement. So I think this is a really real-world approach with real world outcomes. That is something that I think a lot of our listeners will be able to relate to and hopefully implement within the herds that they work with and the flocks that they work with.
Richard:Yes, and no, I agree with that. And I think that you know, one of the components we put into this was a better food source rather than just mixed grasses or pasture. You know, we actually fed them alfalfa, which was a suggestion to the veterinarian, to give them more energy, more building blocks, if you will, to that. So, you know, maybe it's that and maybe it's the vitamins that are necessary. I don't know.
Michelle:Maybe we'll save that part of it for a researcher that needs some more work to do.
Richard:Yes.
Michelle:Did you have any issues with bloat or acidosis? Uh no, we have not.
Richard:We watched that very carefully after the first time that uh one of our sheep got into a corn bin and did get bloat and caused us a lot of concern.
Michelle:They're really good at stressing their owners out with the gorging themselves. So, what do these results mean for Navajo Churro breeders in general and the veterinarians who work with them?
Richard:I think this is a way to reduce the incidence. As I said, I do not believe it eliminates it, but it does reduce it. So, what I believe if this can be followed, and if it does prove out with other breeders, that it's a way to make sure that the four-horned animal stays, which you know is the iconic picture of the Navajo Churro sheep. When you look at the Navajo Churro Sheep Association website, there's the fourhorn. You know, that's the logo, is the fourhorn. I know that you know, in the United States, the Jacob sheep is another four-horned animal, and I know that it is a problem with that. And reading the literature, there were at least one breed in the United Kingdom that also has four horns, and they do have suet with that group as well. So potentially it's a way that we may be able to keep those sheep around and bring back the iconic animals that we have been trying to, in some cases, breed out because we don't like the outcomes in the development of the animal.
Michelle:Yeah, this is really amazing. And like you say, this this does have impacts far beyond the Navajo Chiro breed itself. But for a breed that has had such a significant impact on the American West, I think it would be really amazing if this could be part of what keeps it around and helps it to thrive now that we've kind of unlocked this. So that's amazing. Thank you so much for doing this really important work.
Richard:Thank you.
Michelle:And you know, it's not the Navajo Trio breed isn't gonna probably draw a lot of research attention, but this is still a really important problem to preserving the heritage of a culture, several cultures of our country. And so I really hope that what people who listen to this episode take away from this episode, not only that they develop an interest in Navajo Trio sheep, but also that they can apply these principles to their own herds and flocks. And if they have a problem that they're noticing, consistently working with their veterinarian and potentially other experts too, branching out into the human medical field to identify some key factors and then kind of running their own small research trial is something that is done pretty commonly, I think, on a lot of operations and can go a long way towards solving some problems. So, what kind of pointers do you have for our listeners who might be looking to develop a scientifically sound approach to looking into digging into on-farm problems or questions that they have with their specific operation?
Richard:Yeah, I've spent many years, many decades dealing with human medicine. And it wasn't until I, you know, I've had dogs all my life and cats, and you know, I never thought about it that you know, can we take what some aspects of human medicine and attempt to apply them more than we do now, I think, to sheep. And this was to me a good example of actually looking at human diseases and human solutions to solve a veterinarian problem, or at least we hope it solves the problem, or at least reduces it. But my belief is that you know, if we see a problem in an animal or in a group of animals, that we should be looking at equivalency in humans.
Michelle:You're kind of a special case because number one, you have a pretty advanced education, and also you have very close access to human physicians and researchers that a lot of our listeners probably don't have, especially the producers out there. But I think that this is another place that veterinarians can get involved and extension veterinarians and universities as well, when producers reach out and say, Hey, you know, I'm having this problem, I'm not really sure what to do about it, but I know that it's similar to, you know, this other problem that maybe we see in people, or maybe we see it in another species of animal. I need some help figuring out where I can turn for more information. And so I think this is a space that veterinarians can step up, and this is really a one-health issue. And so we're trained to treat everything except humans, and we are humans, so we're kind of familiar with those critters too. But also, again, reaching out to universities, land grant schools, especially that have extension component, vet schools that have, you know, I know our anatomists down the hall here at Texas Tech would be very intrigued by the comparative anatomy and embryology that you mentioned with this problem. So I think there's a lot of opportunities for collaboration here. But I think that you in your professional life and your personal life just kind of brought a lot of those things together in yourself and kind of highlighted all of the different parts that are sometimes necessary to address these issues.
Richard:I definitely agree with that. And as an example, most veterinary schools and human medicine schools are not in the same campus. You know, they're separate universities for the most part. And I don't see communication, but I honestly believe that there should be more collaboration. Among the two types of academic groups that would help very much increase the health and safety of our animals.
Michelle:Absolutely. I totally agree. I think some interprofessional education would benefit everyone and just open the lines of communication further. So I know there are some schools, like my alma mater Western University, that are doing some of that already. And I really hope that some other schools do that as well. And even we can expand it to continuing education for folks that are already out in practice. So I hope that we can find some opportunities for that in the future. But Richard, I've taken a lot of your time already and your patience with our internet connectivity issues has been saintly. So I do want to highlight that you publish this study in a producer newsletter. So if listeners are interested in finding that write up, can you give them the information on where that was published?
Richard:Certainly. It was published in the official newsletter of the Navo Churo Sheep Association.
Michelle:I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
Richard:And also you can, you know, if people want a copy of it, I'm happy to send them a copy. They can email me. That's fine. The other thing is I'm going to attempt to try to put a have our webmaster put just a copy of it in the website so that people can download it just directly and not have to get the whole newsletter out on that. So hopefully it'll be available. And I'm certainly more than willing to share it with anybody.
Michelle:Well, Richard, thank you so much for your time and for sharing your unique insight and your approach to this really important issue in several of our heritage sheep breeds. It's been really fun chatting with you, and I'm so glad that we could highlight not only the Navajo Churro breed, but also a scientific approach to real world problems and how we can kind of mesh academia and our on-farm issues and hopefully come up with solutions that are going to help all of our animals.
Richard:I hope so too. And I want to thank you for inviting me to allow me to talk about the Navajo Churro sheep. They've been around for you know 450 years here in the United States. So we want to keep them around for another 400 plus years. So I do appreciate your allowing me to talk about our work.
Michelle:Absolutely. They're a beautiful breed. I hope we see them for many years to come. Thank you so much, Richard.
