69 Connecting with the next generation of shepherds – an online sheep-based webpage serves as an additional tool in Extension education

Abstract

Abstract Cooperative Extension education continues to maintain a strong foothold in educating people in the agricultural industry. To connect with the next generation of agriculturalists, Extension needs to investigate alternative methods to disseminate educational material. Developing and maintaining a webpage that provides relevant and scientific based sheep production information is critical as interest in the small ruminant industry continues to rise. The Ohio State University Extension Sheep Team webpage provides shepherds across the nation with the latest information regarding sheep production from daily management to industry outreach. In addition, a unique highlight of the webpage includes research summaries of sheep research conducted at Ohio State that are simplified to illustrate real-world application to improve on-farm production efficiencies. Over the past year alone, the OSU Extension Sheep Team webpage has recorded over 90,000 page views with an average visit duration time of approximately two minutes. Of these page views, approximately 9,000 originate from locations beyond the United States including Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. According to the web servers’ descriptive statistic analysis, the top referral search engine is Google, representing 58% of all page visits. Interestingly, due the OSU Extension Sheep Team’s presence on social media, Facebook accounts for approximately 18% of all page visits whereas direct subscription of the weekly newsletter only accounts for 15% of all page visits. Furthermore, top article topics include those that relate to basic sheep management practices, health and disease, parasite control methods, and common poisonous plants. Due to the unusual weather patterns of 2019, an article related to poisonous plants accounted for 16% of the webpage’s total visits, which surpassed the number of homepage visits. In order to continue providing relevant Extension information, universities should consider utilizing web-based articles to efficiently reach a larger audience and provide timely articles based upon viewer interest.