ewes on Cottonwood Creek
After months of being in landscapes out of sync with where the ewes are used to being, they are at last on the lambing grounds during lambing season. They are happy and we are happy.
four camps on site for lambing
Leo near Muddy Mountain
ewes with twins, green grass at last!
Spring shearing is always an adventure. This year, we planned to shear a little later than usual, since we had put the bucks in with the ewes a few days later than usual. Our shearing crew comes from California, and they told us they would be a few days late (surprise!), due to persistent rains in California.. This year we didn’t have to worry about trailing to the shearing pens on time, since the ewes have been near them since late January, when we trucked out of the Red Desert. Still, when our crew showed up, we were just a few days away from the beginning of lambing.
The rains showed up the same day that the shearers set up,. We gathered up every tarp we could and draped them over the wool handling area. We have good sheds at Cottonwood, where we were to shear, so were able to put the ewes in to stay dry. Wet sheep can’t be shorn. The moisture ruins the wool if it’s packed, and the shearers won’t shear wet sheep because it leads to “wool pneumonia.” Between the sheds, the tarps and our intrepid crew, we got all the ewes with the “main line” wool done at the Cottonwoold pasture. Since that is also our lambing grounds, the ewes, who were starting to lamb by the time we were done, just moved right onto their lambing pastures.
We moved onto shearing the yearling ewes, who had spent the winter at Powder Flat. We moved the shed, the shearers and our crew and were able to finish the yearlings in one day. Riley, our friend and former ranch cook, supplied the meals, delivering them each day to where ever we were. Her tasty meals kept everyone going
waiting for the shearers
bringing up the wooly ewes inside the shed
Juan pushing the ewes
Lalo holding the ewes
shorn ewe running out of the shed
ewes above, wool below
packing wool under the tarps
Seamus running the skids
wool bales, ready to stack
crew heading in for lunch
a hearty lunch
Pat, Robyn, Riley Abby and Meghan
Riley, Abby and guard dog
Robyn and Belle
shorn yearling ewes
sheepherder on the horizon
I haven’t put up many posts this winter, mostly because it has been so overwhelming. 2022-2023 is one for the record books, not just for us, but all the way from Elko, Nevada to Rawlins, Wyoming. All of Wyoming, and parts of surrounding states were hit pretty hard. Interstate 80 was closed 55 times between October and early March. It seemed like every time they opened the interstate, someone died.
As this blog shows, we had to evacuate our sheep in January and early February from their usual wintering grounds on the Red Desert to safety on our hayfields north of Dixon. Normally, they spend December to mid-April grazing on the Cyclone Rim and Chain Lakes allotments before heading down the trail, first to the Badwater Pasture south of Creston Junction, then on to the lambing grounds near Dixon. Often we are worried about finding enough water and snow drifts along the trail. If the shearers show up on time, we usually shear at Badwater. If they are delayed, we set up the traveling shearing sheds on the lambing grounds. Sometimes a few lambs show up by the time we finish shearing.
This year our cows wintered on a friend’s ranch near Laramie. Who’d have guessed that Laramie would have a relatively mild winter with not much snow.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we were buried. The Snowtels were measuring record snowfalls. The story that the Snowtels (measuring devices for snow and water content located high in the mountains) didn’t tell is the amount of snow falling in the lower country. The wildlife normally spend the summers in the mountains where there’s lots to graze. That’s where our cows and sheep spend the summers as well. In the fall, we all move down together.
In 2022-2023, the snowpack was “inverted.” It piled up in the lower landscapes where the deer, elk and antelope can usually dig down to dried grasses and be sustained through the winter month. Usually, especially on the high desert, winds blow the snow into drifts and leave bare ground for grazing. This winter, it started snowing in mid-December, then warmed up briefly allowing the surface to turn to liquid, then ice. This formed a solid layer which the animals couldn’t penetrate with their hooves.
We usually turn our rams in with the ewes on about December 13th. We were worried because we had to wait a few days since the roads were closed. I said, “Well, if it’s a stormy spring, we’ll be glad to be lambing a few days later.” Little did we know how prescient those words would be.
As chronicled in earlier posts, the ewes spent the winter on full feed on our snow-buried fields. We have brought in truckload after truckload of alfalfa to keep them alive. Family, employees and friends have done an heroic job. Some of the neighbors fed elk alongside their cattle, and we even had Greater Sandhill Cranes picking alfalfa alongside the sheep.
Deer and antelope are not very adaptable in their diet. They cannot digest hay and alfalfa, and we have watched them die. Now that the snow is finally melting, we find their emaciated bodies alongside the roads and piled under Juniper trees. Some few deer have survived by staying in town and foraging there.
It has been a slow warm-up so far. This is generally good because it slows down the flooding, but much of the snowpack is still in the mountains. We pray for warm days so the grass will finally come, but not too warm so we’re not inundated. Water managers in the Lower Basin States of the Colorado River are happy as they anticipate the runoff. However, Mother Nature is taking her due, soaking runoff into drought-dried soils, and evaporating into the sky. Even so, we hope to see significant rises in reservoirs large and small.
Today, I was in the feed store in Craig. An older gentleman, there loading up bags of feed, said “It sure is a nice day.” I agreed. It made me look around and appreciate it.
I went inside to sign the ticket and chatted with a young lady, there to pick up calving supplies.
We commiserated and told war stories about the winter. She told me about the scores and scores of dead deer, antelope and elk that she had counted along the roadside.
She said that she and her husband had thrown valuable alfalfa to antelope sheltering in a draw near their home. “They’re all dead now,” she said.
Finally, finally, most of the ground is bare and we are seeing a green sheen on the pastures and hillsides. The surviving deer, antelope and elk are looking a little better as they are able to forage. Most of them will make it now.
As for the sheep, they too will look a lot better once the green grass comes.
I hope now to spend the next months posting about sunshine, grass, lambs and great weather.
barn in late March
Tiarnan trailing the horses home (Rhen, Siobhan and Trevor helped too!)
Sheep Mountain and Flattop in late April
brush hedged by deer and antelope
winter-killed antelope
more winter kill
three more dead antelope
Sandhill Cranes on the Dixon Ranch–better days ahead!
March came in like a Polar bear, and is going out like the Abominable Snoman. Here’s the cows in the Ames Field, waiting for spring.
Lambs in the sunshine
Rams in October mean lambs in March. Even though we still have record amounts of snow on the ground, the lambs are arriving right on schedule. We raise our own rams–Rambouillet and Hampshire–and the moms lamb in March at Powder Flat. Our Peruvian crew is doing a great job at getting live lambs on the ground. It is a reminder that spring will actually arrive, someday. We did see birds migrating north. We saw geese in the sky and Sand Hill Cranes on the alfalfa feed line with our ewes.
Alejandro pulling a lamb
Alejandro bringing twin lamb #2 into the world
Pat and Edgar
bum lambs
guard dog on straw, cows on feed
cows on the feedline
Geese heading north
Alejandro supplementing a lamb with milk
hanging out on the snowdrift
The sheep, herders, dogs, and horses are all safe and sound on our hay meadows near Dixon. All the grass is still buried under snow, but we can get to them with feed every day, and bring alfalfa and cake to them (except when the highways are closed, which is pretty often). It took several more days to ferry all the sheepwagons, panels and other equipment off the Red Desert and to the Dixon ranch headquarters. It continues to be especially brutal in the area we evacuated the sheep from, on the Chain Lakes allotment. Hay prices are high due to demand from impacted livestock producers and state game agencies. These historic winter conditions stretch through northern Nevada, Utah, northwestern Colorado and southern Wyoming. Wyoming’s Governor Gordon has declared an emergency. Spring still looks like a long ways away!
sheep on the plowed lot
guard dog still on the job
ewes, drifts and Muddy Mountain
sheep loading at Chain Lakes (the bucks are red)
On Groundhog Day, we all saw our shadows, but we don’t have any expectations for an early spring. We did have a sunny day to evacuate the last of the ewes and rams still on Chain Lakes to our ranch near Dixon, Wyoming. It is almost as snowy at the Dixon Ranch, some 20 miles west of our main headquarters and proximate to our lambing grounds. We still have to have the sheep on full feed, but they are safely closer to home. We’ve had days that our sheepherders and sheep were stranded and unreachable. We’ve had days when even the oilfield plows couldn’t work because conditions have been so terrible. We are grateful to our neighbors who have worked to keep the roads open. They need to tend their wells, and they have gone our of their way to keep our access to sheep and men open as well. After three horrible days of blizzard and cold, we finally had a window to evacuate the rest of the sheep, horses, dogs and herders. The truckers are working constantly. There aren’t enough sheep trucks and truckers to keep up, and they go from one herd to the next as the sheep producers wait to get their critters and employees out of danger. All this costs a non-budgeted fortune for plowing, for trucking and for feed. The feed, alfalfa, is soaring in cost and really hard to find.
This doesn’t take into account the antelope, deer, elk, and even feral horses that share the same winter country. They too depend upon open winter grazing, with enough snow to provide water. We are watching them as they seek open ground, and as they die. We are the ones there as they gather into ever larger bunches, and eventually lay down and die.
We’re not yet sure how we will pay all these expenses, but we know we cannot leave our animals without care and safety. That is the original meaning of “animal husbandry.” It is our obligation to keep them safe and fed.
Hampshire buck, ewes in meadow near Dixon
ewes under Sheepman Express chute
Modesto, Seamus and Border collies unloading
unloading
sunset
unloading after dark
herd of sheep on Chain Lakes allotment
We are experiencing the worst winter in decades. We trailed the ewes to their usual wintering grounds on the Red Desert, north of Wamsutter, Wyoming. We got there in early December, right on schedule. Most winters, snow falls, then blows into drifts, leaving bare ground where the ewes can graze on dried grasses left from the summer. My Dad used to say that when that country is good, it’s great, and when it’s bad, it’s awful. Well, this year it is awful. It started snowing in mid-December. We were two days late putting the bucks into the ewes because the part of Interstate 80 we need to traverse, between Creston Junction and Wamsutter was closed. We normally just feed some extra corn or cake while the bucks are in, but we have had to purchase and bring in extra feed as the landscape has gotten buried in snow. All our neighbors in the region have been trucking their sheep out of their desert winter pastures to their home ranches. Sometimes in bad winters, it is possible to find a place to take the sheep where they can graze. This year, the bad conditions reach from Nevada to Nebraska. In mid-January, we brought four truckloads of sheep closer to home on the Dixon ranch, where we are already feeding some cattle. These were the thinner ewes. Since then, we have been trying to evacuate the rest of the sheep, but have been unable to line up trucks since they are busy hauling so many sheep. We are grateful to Sweetwater County Road and Bridge, and our neighbors who are plowing in the oilfield.
We were supposed to load the rest of the sheep all last weekend, but a major storm came in and closed all the roads, locally, on the Red Desert, and especially on I80, which has been littered with accidents every time they try to open it. Our sheep truckers are just waiting for the conditions to allow it. As soon as everything is plowed, we will load the rest of the sheep and come to safer grounds. We’ll still have to feed alfalfa and cake, but both the sheep and our herders will be close to home. Here’s some photos of the loading of the sheep in mid-January.
Here’s the semis coming in very early in the morning.
Ewes trailing in to the corrals
Meghan and Leo waiting at the corrals
ewes following truck
Sheep coming in, trucks waiting
getting the corrals ready
ewes on drifts
guard dog with the sheep
Three guard dogs, sheep, drifts
truckers
loading
sheep in corrals, drift behind
setting up the chute
oilfield tanker passing
Modesto, who went with with the sheep to Dixon
Meghan and Modesto
The team of Belgium horses that we’re feeding with at Chain Lakes
Eamon and Chandler
unloading at the Dixon ranch
Marty’s “Sheepman” truck
Fed Ex truck near Dixon
 | Martha on Lambing days are here |
| Martha Kennedy on Floodwaters |
 | Ladder Ranch on The Last Lament (hopefully) |
| Ladder Ranch on The Last Lament (hopefully) |
| Martha Kennedy on The Last Lament (hopefully) |
Ladder Ranch