sheep shearer through the door
It’s a wrap! or at least a lot of bales. Our intrepid shearing crew arrived just in time. The ewes had already trailed to the sheds on our lambing grounds north of Dixon, but it’s very important to shear first, lamb next. The shearers have two portable shearing sheds which they move from job to job during the shearing season. It has been a wettish spring so far, not that I’m complaining, but we do have to have dry sheep in order to shear. It takes several days with about 1,000 head per day. We had a couple of days when it rained and we had to shut down early, or wait a day, but we did get through the “main line”–the ewes with long staple fine wool–a couple of days before the first lambs dropped. The yearling ewes are still to the north in our Badwater pasture. They aren’t pregnant, so getting them shorn isn’t quite so time-sensitive, but the shearing crew needed to move on as soon as they finished with our sheep. It rained for several more days, but finally it was dry enough and they got the yearlings done in less than a day. Now it is time for us to secure the bales of wool until it is shipped to a buyer.
shorn ewes
corral full of ewes
fleeces coming out of the shed
wool bales with the baler
Maeve and Tiarnan are marking the bales
guard dogs keeping us safe
Ladder Ranch
Martha Kennedy
June 8, 2024 at 8:23 AM
Wow. I see baselayers…