Dear Dorper Breeders,

Well the election did not go the way many of us thought it should and after all the hype, news stories, advertisements, and calls asking for money I'm glad its over. I am in political detox! I have had to cut out the News and Radio for a while and just enjoy nature and be at peace with my thoughts.

As a producer you produce something. You have a factory and manufacture a good that then enters the marketplace. We produce Dorper market lambs and breeding stock. If we were in Australia each sheep sale we make would be taxable. Unthinkable to us in the good ole USA right? Unfortunately the unthinkable will soon be the norm if the current administration gets its way. Thats right take from the producers to pay the non producers! This is what our nation just voted for. Our US sheep industry is holding on by a string and predators, taxes, and many other perils are about to take us out. The liberals would like to take away our predator control tools as they have done in many states. Folks I don't know about you but I work my tail off to care for my sheep and I have lost over $70,000 worth of sheep this year to predators. If our Wildlife Services budget is cut and our predator control tools such as the M44 are taken away I'm afraid to say we may be out of business or have to drastically cut back our flock. I don't want to have a sheep hobby its a great business if your lambs live and you manage well.

Lets just hope that some common sense will trickle down from real Americans to our center of power Washington D.C. Be active in your sheep organizations at both the state and federal level. This is our only voice in these matters.

Now its time to kick back and enjoy the holidays with family and friends. I always enjoy the fall and winter and Thanksgiving and Christmas. I suppose I'm just a kid at heart!

Dorper Regards,

Philip Glass

Another trip downunder! What a great time visiting sheep farmers and working with awesome Dorper and White Dorper sheep. I left out of San Angelo on a short flight to Dallas and then had the good fortune to have a direct flight to Brisbane which is on the East Coast of Australia. Brisbane is only a few hours drive from Bellevue farms which was my first destination. After arriving at Bellevue I quickly changed clothes and headed for the sheep pens and shearing barn. This is where I found my friend from Namibia Pieter and his Aussie partner David. Sorting the "show team" and making all the final selections for the National Dorper Show and Sale. After three long days of working, washing, shearing, and loading sheep we were off to Dubbo. An 8 hour drive was ahead of us and some great scenery along the way. We even passed a little town nicknamed the Windmill City which is what my hometown of Sterling City has always been known as. Arriving in Dubbo we found everyone else had arrived simultaneously and a long line to unload and weigh show and sale sheep was ahead of us. No time to waste I headed in the barn and found John and Marion Dell along with their Aussie partners Jean, Moozie, & Andrea van Niekerk. This was my second visit to Dubbo and third trip down under and I had made many friends so I felt quite at home here. Getting over 40 head of sheep unloaded, lambs weighed for their classes, sale rams weighed, paint branded and evaluated, and then everything fed and watered was quite a chore. Lucky for us we had plenty of helping hands including a young fellow named Josh from New Zealand that has been working at Bellevue this year. All the people I've met down under seem to be so nice and happy! Show day arrives and it is only ewes the first day and a long day it was. A three judge panel did the judging independently and then scores mathmatically tabulated. The first ewe lamb class was at 8:30AM and we ended the day at 8:00PM! An exhausting day to say the least. The ram show was similar but did not take quite as long but still a full day in the show ring began at 9:00AM and ended at 6:00PM. That evening was the formal awards ceremony where Bellevue took top honors with most points in Dorpers and White Dorpers. They received so many awards they insisted the "Texan" go up and receive a couple of them. What an honor. Did I mention these people are kind? David, owner of Bellevue, took the microphone as top winner of the event and went out of his way to thank me for my hard work in the show ring. He stated that it was a miracle that I could get his sheep to stand still since they had not been handled and has nicknamed me the "Sheep Whisperer". What a laugh we had that night.

The final day was sale day and a large crowd slowly amassed in the sale barn. Many top rams and ewes sold and a few over $10,000. These sheep were going all over Australia and some to China and Brazil. With sale day over and people beginning to leave we had a quiet night at our hostess Lynn's home with dinner, drinks, and good conversation. The next morning it was off to the Dubbo airport which is similar to San Angelo in size and only 1 hour to Sydney and then 14 hours direct to Dallas. These long trips are tiring but the experience is well worth it. I hope someday you can travel to Australia and meet these wonderful people and see their country.

Dorper Regards,

Philip Glass

The M44 is a highly selective predator control device that we have been able to use to control canine predators for many years now. It can only be activated by a very strong pull that only a canine with their powerful jaws can activate to eject the toxicant. Therefore nontarget kills are nonexistant. They have been very valuable to livestock producers in keeping the increasing predator problem in check.

Now the EPA run by Obama and his animal rights and environmental wackos are trying to put all of animal agriculture out of business. You see this is their wish to have everyone eat corn and soy products. Their other aim and mission is for all private land to be so regulated it is basically federal land. Our country's founders never envisioned a day where private land ownership would be regulated in this way. We have a constitutional right to utilize our land in the manner in which we desire. We also have the right to keep these predators that the federal governtment claims ownership of out of our sheep and goat flocks. In fact I believe since they claim ownership of all wildlife they should have to pay 100% of all damage they do to livestock and crops.

EPA now seeks to punitively enforce the nearly 30 regulations regarding M44's and have the person who is using them pay steep fines for little fine print rules that are unimportant. With the threat of these fines no one is going to place an M44 and risk the wrath of Obama's EPA. These fines could be nearly half a months salary to a trapper. So they have effectively banned one of our last remaining legal tools to fight coyotes.

Even if you have never had to use the M44 on your operation we all need to contact our representatives and both the state and federal level and tell them to get the EPA off our ranches and out of our lives.

Sustainability is one of those trendy buzzwords that are thrown around all the time as it relates to our "environmentalness" or the supposed lack thereof. I once was in a meeting where a greenie sheep farmer from the Austin area was chirping about her sustainable operation when a friend of mine sounded off. He said how about 120 years on the same ranch doing the same thing is that sustainable? I laughed and never forgot that statement because I too have family ranch land being operated for that period of time as well.

I suppose I am really not sure what the greenie people mean by sustainable. Even when we are talking about row crops here in the US I don't believe they are an unsustainable farming practice. I mean we grow the seeds, plant the seeds, fertilize the seeds with fertilizer created by our own abundant natural gas, and harvest the crop to feed the world! I understand the need for soil conservation and have had that drilled in my head my entire life. Sheep and Cattle here in the US are certainly a sustainable operation if ever there was one because we utilize land that has no farming value. This is where the moron greenies get totally lost in their arguements. They think cattle are raised on corn their entire lives and that is not the case, not by a long shot. And hey don't get me started on the grass fed thing. If you want to do that go ahead help yourself as for me and my house we shall have a well marbled steak from a grain fed steer!

Now for my final point on sustainability and it relates to trophy hunting. As a Texas game rancher I am also in the hunting business. We along with a few thousand others raise some common and some rare and endangered animals. We raise them because we love them and want to preserve them and only hunt the old trophy males which is where the income is derived to make this sustainable for us and the animals as well. Step back and THINK about this for a minute. We take several million dollars worth of land, build quality improvements on it to care for these wild creatures their entire lives, and only the old males which have gone past their prime breeding years are hunted. Sounds like the perfect conservation plan right? Yes it has been until the Federal Government decided to make stringent regulations on some of these animals reducing their value. Sustainability has STOPPED as it relates to any animal that is considered rare or endangered.

Anyway I encourage everyone to THINK when some discussion comes up like Sustainability. What does it mean to you and what should it mean to us as farmers and ranchers.