Management Education Programs

Lamb and Wool Management:  Sheep Facility Tours

Sheep Facility Tour - June 2024

The Pipestone Sheep Facility Tour provides sheep producers at all levels of experience with real-world insights and applications of sheep facilities, including innovations in sheep buildings, low-labor lambing barns, handling systems, feeding systems, and facility design and flow. This year’s tour will focus on repurposing and reutilizing existing livestock facilities. The tour will be a full-day tour, visiting six outstanding Pipestone Lamb and Wool Program member operations. Each of the farm sites we will tour have designed their facilities and feeding systems to reduce labor, enabling them to increase their flock size with the same labor inputs. In addition, we will highlight the management philosophies of each of these outstanding sheep producers.

Tour Details

Location
Minnesota West Community & Technical College - Pipestone Campus
1314 North Hiawatha Avenue
Pipestone, MN 56164

June 2024
Location:  Minnesota West Community & Technical College, Pipestone Campus
1314 North Hiawatha Avenue
Pipestone, MN 56164

Tentative Tour Schedule: June 4, 2024
7:30 a.m. - Registration
7:45 a.m. - Bus leaves Minnesota West - Pipestone Campus

• Meshke Family Farm (repurposed poultry facilities)
• Aaron and Amber Case Farm (repurposed beef feeding facilities)
• Heath Houselog Farm (repurposed hog facilities)
• Dean Evers Farm (relocated and repurposed hog building)
• Gundermann Family Farm (repurposed hog facilities)
• Brian Winsel Farm (repurposed hog facilities)

6:45 p.m. - Arrive back at Minnesota West - Pipestone Campus

 Farm Tour Stops

Meshke Family Farm (Garden City, MN)
Blake and Brent Meshke are a father-son duo that manage a very productive flock of ~750 ewes and have been members of the Pipestone Lamb and Wool Program since 1995. In the past five years, they have invested and repurposed an old turkey production site on a property adjacent to their home farm. The turkey barns have been renovated with drive-through feeding alleys and automatic waterers. They wave lamb in groups of 240 ewes in two pens of their lambing barn. They hold triplet-rearing ewes in a small grouping pen for an extended period of time to ensure a ewe is able to raise their lambs. For lambs that are reared artificially, they use a Lac-Tek milk machine to reduce labor on these “bonus” lambs. They have also recently invested a centrally-located working system to more efficiently work and handle groups of sheep. Through the summer and fall, most ewes graze pasture land. Brent and his wife Leslie have two young daughters.

Aaron and Amber Case Farm (Garden City, MN)
Aaron and Amber Case joined the Pipestone Lamb and Wool Program in 2017 and have grown their flock to approximately 475 ewes. They have repurposed and remodeled existing cattle feeding facilities to meet the needs of their sheep operation. They have also added a pole shed and hoop barn to further invest in their farm site and make their facilities work for them. They utilize fence-line feeders in every pen, allowing them to feed silage-based rations. They have maximized their facility usage with accelerated lambing in the past. Their buildings are designed to help production flow. The ewes lamb in drop pens, are housed in lambing pens, are moved into a lean-to off their lambing barn in a small grouping pen, and are finally moved to a hoop barn or pole shed for large grouping pens. Aaron and Amber have invested in lambing barn cameras to help reduce night-checks and reduce animal stress in the lambing barn. Aaron and Amber have three sons.

Heath Houselog Farm (Ruthton, MN)
Heath is relatively a newcomer to the sheep industry, joining the Pipestone Lamb and Wool Program in 2018. Heath is very detail orientated and strives to increase the productivity of his sheep flock. Heath has recently expanded his sheep production by investing in a hog site, allowing him to grow his flock from 120 to 420 ewes in the past 2 years. Heath has also invested in Shearwell technology to better track sheep production records. In remodeling the hog barn, he combined two rooms and removed slats to make a drop area and lambing pens. He uses another room for artificial rearing, and the East wing as family housing and later lamb finishing. Heath has also invested in outdoor lots with a fence-line feeding system to reduce labor and manage multiple groups of ewes. This year, he installed a lambing barn camera to reduce the number of night checks. Heath and his wife Brittany have six kids.

Dean Evers Farm (Comfrey, MN)
Dean runs an extremely productive flock of approximately 200 ewes to help diversify his crop farming enterprise. Dean joined the Pipestone Lamb and Wool Program in 2000. Dean moved an old hog barn to his farm site and has repurposed it to become his lambing barn and help meet his sheep enterprise’s needs. He has been able to utilize the existing electrical and ventilation systems in this barn.

Dean uses low-labor feeding practices throughout the sheep production stages. In the lambing barn, a flex auger system delivers a soybean hull-based ration to the lambing pens and ewes in the dropping areas are fed along an outdoor fence-line feeder. Dean utilizes a hoop barn for both cold housing families and finishing lambs. In his hoop barn, he uses a repurposed Kewanee hay and grain elevator to convey a complete ration to ewes inside the hoop barn. Dean’s daughter Marlayna has recently bought into the sheep operation.

Gundermann Family Farm (Westbrook, MN)
Bruce & Karla Gundermann started their sheep business in 1996, with 25 ewes, after deciding to discontinue raising hogs and converting their facilities to sheep production. They joined the Pipestone Lamb and Wool Program in 1999 and, since then, grown their ewe flock to about 850 ewes. They have utilized existing buildings, built a new addition onto the lambing barn, and put up six hoop barns to improve labor efficiency and management of their various lambing groups. They employ several low-labor feeding systems such as self-feeding lactating ewes, fence-line feeding systems, and added a commodity shed. Bruce and Karla have a son Eli who helps with the operation and a daughter Kallie. Bruce and Karla were the recipient of the 2013 Pipestone Lamb and Wool Program Outstanding Producer.

Brian Winsel Farm (Holland, MN)
Brian Winsel joined the Pipestone Lamb and Wool Program in 2009 and has steadily grown his flock size to 1100 ewes. To accommodate this expansion, he has remodeled existing buildings to be a labor efficient lambing facility and has built additional cold housing with drive-through and in-pen feeding systems to reduce labor. Additionally, he has incorporated a working and shearing area into the same building and added another lambing area to the barn. He built four hoop barns for cold housing to accommodate flock expansion. Brian has also repurposed an outdated hog facility on a different site by removing slats and a cement pad to house lactating ewes and finishing lambs. Brian and his business partner Bryan Kruse were awarded the 2023 Pipestone Lamb and Wool Program Outstanding Producer.

Registration

Registration: To register, follow the link to the registration Registration Form form.
Cost: $185 per person
Minimum Enrollment: 30 people. Maximum Enrollment: 54 people.

Pipestone Campus information
Pipestone Lodging Information

North Dakota and Wisconsin residents will be charged a higher tuition cost unless a reciprocity form is completed. A copy of the completed reciprocity form must accompany the registration form. See reciprocity information for more details and the application form for your state. Follow the instructions on how to print and complete the form. Contact the Lamb and Wool program if you need help completing the reciprocity form. Reciprocity forms must be completed online.

South Dakota students should contact Minnesota West directly. South Dakota residents don’t need to send a form to their home state.