We woke up this morning to almost a foot of fresh snow. We are starting to get some calves on the ground (or in the snowbank!) but yesterday’s wind had quit and it is pretty warm. This good wet snow will do us a lot of good.
We woke up this morning to almost a foot of fresh snow. We are starting to get some calves on the ground (or in the snowbank!) but yesterday’s wind had quit and it is pretty warm. This good wet snow will do us a lot of good.
We raise our own rams, both Rambouillet and Hampshire. These babies are born in March, in the sheds at Powder Flat. It is a ton of work. Each year, it gets harder to bring our excellent Peruvian employees, due largely to problems within our own government and our own system for getting visas for these essential workers. We are fortunate for the skilled employees who are on the ground, helping us to bring these babies safely into the world.
When I was moving a sheep camp the other day, I saw Mule deer, antelope and elk, all within a few hundred yards of each other. I dove for the camera, but of course the antelope ran off and the elk moved out of camera range. The deer posed.
The migration of these three species is about a month early this year. It is dry on the desert, where they winter, along with our cows and sheep. We were trailing our yearling ewes to spring pasture, also about a month early, when we saw the other grazers on the move. We have over 100 per cent snow pack in the mountains this year, so are hoping for abundant pasture in the coming months.
Some of our cows spend the winter months near balmy Laramie–or “Laradise” as Eamon calls it. They head down in the late fall to eat hay and hang out on our friends’ ranch for the heart of the winter. They travel to the feed, since we don’t raise enough to winter all our cows. This time of year, they head home, ahead of calving. Eamon, Megan, McCoy and Rhen put them on the trucks, and Meghan and I were here so see them unloaded.
Of course, a couple of them fell over from lack of wind.