How to Pick a Show Sheep Sire — Breeder Mindset vs. Chasing the Next Hot Buck

Jul 22

Before Logan Newsom ever bred a sheep, his granddad, Milton Marrow, taught him a rule that still shapes how Logan picks a sire today.

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Logan grew up around the show pig world, where his grandfather was a serious, successful breeder. As a kid, Logan would flip through the semen catalogs of the day — the boar-world equivalent of today's Instagram hype — and ask about whatever boar was on top that month. Milton's answer was always the same question: "Have you seen him?"

How to Reduce Stress During Flushing and AI

If you're in the middle of AI season right now, you already know the drill: watch the calendar, trust your CIDR protocol, and try not to think too hard about how much money is riding on the next 24 hours.

On Episode 8 of Drench Line, recorded live in Corpus Christi during the Texas Ag Teachers Conference, Sam Silvers and Logan Newsom broke down where they're both at in their own AI and flush programs this year — and the numbers are worth paying attention to.

If there's one thing that quietly derails more first-year show livestock projects than anything else, it's cocci. Not because it's impossible to manage — but because most new owners don't realize what they're dealing with until it's already a problem.

The single biggest mistake new families make is skipping the basics to get straight to the "real" stuff. Before you run any protocol, before you think about halter breaking or leg work, your animal needs three things: feed, water, and hay — and it needs to find all three on its own.

These animals just got weaned, transported, and dropped into a new pen with new dirt, new smells, and no familiar faces. That stress load is real, and Logan makes the point that it's probably the starting point for most of the problems that show up in week one. An animal that's eating and drinking is already ahead of one that isn't, no matter what else you do.

You walk into a pen of lambs. Twenty of them are bunched up in the corner, looking at you. You've got a budget, a kid counting on you, and a major show on the calendar. Where do you start?

You found the sale. You've got a kid who wants to show. You pull up the online catalog, start marking lots, and then realize you have no idea what you're actually looking for or what's going to happen when bidding opens. That's exactly where this blog post comes in.

You walk into a pen of lambs. Twenty of them are bunched up in the corner, looking at you. You've got a budget, a kid counting on you, and a major show on the calendar. Where do you start?