Followup to Yesterday's Blog
03/02/12 05:40
I suppose that you already have heard the news. Yesterday at about the same time that I was writing my blog Punxsutawney Phil was seeing his shadow and predicting six more weeks of winter. Regular readers will recall that I was wishing for such a prediction. Our winter has been so uncommonly mild that it feels like we haven’t really had any winter yet. Even the media are getting into the act. All day yesterday there were predictions on the radio of the snow that was heading our way. Never mind that the snow went 300 miles south of town. Never mind that I awoke to no snow on the ground. I suppose I could drive down to Scottsbluff to see a blizzard, but somehow it just doesn’t seem to be worth the effort.
Here is the deal, however. If we are going to get six more weeks of winter, I really, really, really hope that they’ve got some good sheds or a warm barn on the Giannonatti and Siaba ranches up by Ludlow. Here’s why:
This year the Black Hills Stock Show and Rodeo was host to the National Sheep Shearing Championships. Maybe some sports fans lost the event in all of the Super Bowl hype that is filling up the television, but if you grew up where I did, you’d know that sheep shearing is a manly sport. Did you ever try to wrestle a lamb? Try doing it with one hand while you are holding the clippers in the other. Add in a clock. Remember you get docked for each time you cut the sheep instead of the wool. It can get very interesting. It requires strength, dexterity and training.
The math is pretty simple. On the ranches a shearer gets paid about $3 per sheep. The more you shear in a day, the more money you earn. The really good shearers can separate the wool from a hundred sheep a day. Anything more than that is legendary. When I was a kid there was a rumor of a traveling shearer who could do 200 head a day. I never got to see the guy, but I have always believed that he is out there somewhere.
Most ranchers don’t have enough sheep to handle very many shearers who can shear 200 sheep a day. They don’t really care how fast the shearers go as long as they don’t cut the sheep and don’t damage the wool. 300 sheep are going to cost $900 to get sheared. They should produce a couple thousand pounds of wool. If the price is good, say $2.25 a pound, there is enough to pay the shearers, the cost of feed and veterinarian supplies. There will also be a bit left over for equipment repairs and paying the power bill. Some years there’s a little grocery money in it as well.
There isn’t much glory or wealth in sheep ranching. The Shepherds in the Bible got some fame out of the deal, but not in their own lifetime. Even the shearers don’t get much glory. There are a couple of trophies and the national winner gets a belt buckle. It is about the size of a postcard and has some gold on it, but around the Civic Center this week, that buckle wouldn’t be out of place. It’s smaller than the buckles won by some of the rodeo cowboys.
I guess we’ve come a long way if we can have a big stock show and rodeo with she sheep contests running alongside the rodeo. If you’re going to haul more than a hundred semi loads of dirt into the Civic Center and about half that amount onto the parking lot to accommodate all the critters, you might as well include sheep along with the cattle and horses. It wasn’t always so. There was a lot of animosity between cowboys and sheepherders back in the days when the leases on government pasture were cheap and critters straying from one place to another was common. In my hometown, the closest thing we had to an integrated bar was the Timber, where business people from town mixed with loggers. The sheepherders had their own bar at one end of the street and the cowboys had another at the other end. They didn’t need to have fighting words. If a cowboy stepped into The Court or a sheepherder into The Grand that was enough to make the sheriff nervous. If they actually ordered a drink it was enough to get a fight going. They usually didn’t bother to fight in the alley behind the bar – main street was good enough for a good old fight.
Those days are long gone, thank goodness. I’ve got friends that raise sheep and cattle on the same place. The sheepherders and cowboys are mixing well at the Civic Center this week. I guess the place isn’t quite fully integrated. At least I haven’t heard of a hog-hollering contest yet, but we’re making progress.
It is all in good fun. People get together are stock shows and they are good people so getting together with them is a treat. When they get together they have a good time and having a good time is what the whole event is about in the first place. In the ranching business there are plenty of days of solitude and lots of time to be out in the hills or plains by your self. You learn to be independent and self-reliant. When the shop says your 12 year old pickup truck isn’t worth repairing because it has a quarter of a million miles on it, you tow it back to the place for a parts truck and start shopping for a used truck of the same make, model and year with a few less miles on it. When something breaks, you fix it. So when there is an opportunity to get together with other folks you take it and you really enjoy it.
Which is why I hope that there are some warm barns up by Ludlow. The people may have been having a good time, but there are 300 or so sheep that just got sheared. If Punxsutawney Phil is right and we’re headed for six more weeks of winter that is a great big bunch of cold critters. They’ll probably spend the next six weeks dreaming of spring.
On the other hand, I’m glad they sheared some of them. If it does turn cold, I’ve got my fleece-lined moccasins and my wool blanket to keep me toasty until spring comes.
Here is the deal, however. If we are going to get six more weeks of winter, I really, really, really hope that they’ve got some good sheds or a warm barn on the Giannonatti and Siaba ranches up by Ludlow. Here’s why:
This year the Black Hills Stock Show and Rodeo was host to the National Sheep Shearing Championships. Maybe some sports fans lost the event in all of the Super Bowl hype that is filling up the television, but if you grew up where I did, you’d know that sheep shearing is a manly sport. Did you ever try to wrestle a lamb? Try doing it with one hand while you are holding the clippers in the other. Add in a clock. Remember you get docked for each time you cut the sheep instead of the wool. It can get very interesting. It requires strength, dexterity and training.
The math is pretty simple. On the ranches a shearer gets paid about $3 per sheep. The more you shear in a day, the more money you earn. The really good shearers can separate the wool from a hundred sheep a day. Anything more than that is legendary. When I was a kid there was a rumor of a traveling shearer who could do 200 head a day. I never got to see the guy, but I have always believed that he is out there somewhere.
Most ranchers don’t have enough sheep to handle very many shearers who can shear 200 sheep a day. They don’t really care how fast the shearers go as long as they don’t cut the sheep and don’t damage the wool. 300 sheep are going to cost $900 to get sheared. They should produce a couple thousand pounds of wool. If the price is good, say $2.25 a pound, there is enough to pay the shearers, the cost of feed and veterinarian supplies. There will also be a bit left over for equipment repairs and paying the power bill. Some years there’s a little grocery money in it as well.
There isn’t much glory or wealth in sheep ranching. The Shepherds in the Bible got some fame out of the deal, but not in their own lifetime. Even the shearers don’t get much glory. There are a couple of trophies and the national winner gets a belt buckle. It is about the size of a postcard and has some gold on it, but around the Civic Center this week, that buckle wouldn’t be out of place. It’s smaller than the buckles won by some of the rodeo cowboys.
I guess we’ve come a long way if we can have a big stock show and rodeo with she sheep contests running alongside the rodeo. If you’re going to haul more than a hundred semi loads of dirt into the Civic Center and about half that amount onto the parking lot to accommodate all the critters, you might as well include sheep along with the cattle and horses. It wasn’t always so. There was a lot of animosity between cowboys and sheepherders back in the days when the leases on government pasture were cheap and critters straying from one place to another was common. In my hometown, the closest thing we had to an integrated bar was the Timber, where business people from town mixed with loggers. The sheepherders had their own bar at one end of the street and the cowboys had another at the other end. They didn’t need to have fighting words. If a cowboy stepped into The Court or a sheepherder into The Grand that was enough to make the sheriff nervous. If they actually ordered a drink it was enough to get a fight going. They usually didn’t bother to fight in the alley behind the bar – main street was good enough for a good old fight.
Those days are long gone, thank goodness. I’ve got friends that raise sheep and cattle on the same place. The sheepherders and cowboys are mixing well at the Civic Center this week. I guess the place isn’t quite fully integrated. At least I haven’t heard of a hog-hollering contest yet, but we’re making progress.
It is all in good fun. People get together are stock shows and they are good people so getting together with them is a treat. When they get together they have a good time and having a good time is what the whole event is about in the first place. In the ranching business there are plenty of days of solitude and lots of time to be out in the hills or plains by your self. You learn to be independent and self-reliant. When the shop says your 12 year old pickup truck isn’t worth repairing because it has a quarter of a million miles on it, you tow it back to the place for a parts truck and start shopping for a used truck of the same make, model and year with a few less miles on it. When something breaks, you fix it. So when there is an opportunity to get together with other folks you take it and you really enjoy it.
Which is why I hope that there are some warm barns up by Ludlow. The people may have been having a good time, but there are 300 or so sheep that just got sheared. If Punxsutawney Phil is right and we’re headed for six more weeks of winter that is a great big bunch of cold critters. They’ll probably spend the next six weeks dreaming of spring.
On the other hand, I’m glad they sheared some of them. If it does turn cold, I’ve got my fleece-lined moccasins and my wool blanket to keep me toasty until spring comes.