Eastern Kentucky has a wealth of reclaimed mine land acreage suitable for grazing livestock.  Although many land owners have taken advantage of this for grazing beef cattle, many small landowners are now seeing an opportunity to get involved in sheep production, on a small scale with much lower input cost than beef cattle.  Also, with a regained interest in lamb as a choice for meat on the dinner table and in restaurants, we have seen an increase raising lambs across Kentucky.  The Southeast Kentucky Sheep Producers Association has overwhelming growth in their organization over the last few years with over 400 members.

With so much interest, the Knott County and Perry County ANR Agents worked with SEKSPA to offer an educational small ruminant workshop on March 11^th at the Knott County Extension office.  With over 80 in attendance, the day included a lamb lunch and a full day of classes. Including several topics ranging from small ruminant production and management, farming on hillside pasture for small ruminants, and marketing.  Also an open panel discuss from several agriculture agencies discussed resources available for farms from grants to educational opportunities. Several youth attended the day as well, as SEKSPA has been working with 4-H programs in the area to offer sheep to youth to start their own flock. Those who attended greatly appreciated such an educational day with so many great resources to help them become more successful with their farming operations.   With interest and demand growing in our region, extension looks forward to work with SEKSPA to offer more educational programs, resources and hands on assistance and advice to our farmers to help them be more successful and profitable.