UC Davis Graduate Studies recently honored 34 faculty members with Graduate Program Advising and Mentoring Awards, including Dr. Jeffrey Stott, a professor in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology, and member of the Graduate Group in Integrative Pathobiology.
A small-scale sheep farm in California is the first in the Western United States to have the Awassi breed in its herd. Thanks to help from livestock veterinarians with the UC Davis veterinary hospital, Duckworth Family Farms had eight of the sheep—four males and four females—born via embryo transfer. The farm plans to use the sheep for dairy and fiber production, as well as semen and offspring sales.
When rancher Paul Plouviez—owner of the 600,000-acre Bench Creek Ranch east of Fallon, Nevada—noticed that much of the mountainous areas of his large ranch were underutilized by his cattle, he thought back to his native France. He noticed that the terrain and climate of the area, with its extremely hot summers and cold winters, closely resembled the Pyrenees mountain range in southern France. He thought Bench Creek Ranch might be ideal land to raise Gascon cattle, a breed which thrives in the Pyrenees.
