Of Cowboys, Sheepherders, and Paying for a Ranch

My sheep shearer, Derrick Adamache, tells a story about the value of wool 100 years ago. Relatively speaking, wool was worth much more in 1918 than it is today - Derrick tells about entire ranches that were purchased using a single year's wool check as a down payment. As the world emerged from World War I, American wool was worth $1.25 per pound (last year, our coarse wool brought $1.56 per pound - our 2018 wool hasn't sold yet, but will probably be worth less than that). By comparison, sheep ranchers paid $0.10 per head for shearing services (compared to the $4.00+ I pay to Derrick). Sheep walked nearly everywhere they went (as opposed to riding in trucks or trailers). I can see how my predecessors bought their ranches!

If you talk to a family that has owned a ranch for more than four generations nearly anywhere in the West, you'll find that a good many of them started (at least in part) with sheep. The running joke (among those of us who still raise sheep) is that cows bring prestige; sheep bring profit. Reality is a bit more complicated (isn't it always?). Sheep take more management - somebody has to see our sheep 365 days out of the year; cattle can survive without daily human contact. Sheep are more susceptible to predators, too - those of us who still raise sheep spend much more time than our cattle rancher friends protecting our animals from coyotes, mountain lions, neighbor dogs, and other predators. But sheep produce multiple products - lamb, mutton and wool (at least). Sheep can survive on marginal forage; cows need the best grass. Sheep, with a shorter gestation (five months rather than nine), offer more flexibility in terms of their nutritional requirements.

Somewhere around the middle of the Twentieth Century, cattle began to be more profitable than sheep (at least for most producers). American GI's during World War II were fed canned mutton - and swore off all sheep meat for the rest of their lives. New technology allowed us to turn petroleum products into winter garments - culminating with the invention of Polar Fleece by Malden Mills in the late 1970s. Increased protections for predators (like mountain lions, gray wolves and grizzly bears) induced some ranchers to switch entirely to cattle. As life became more expensive and more time consuming (and as we expected things like health insurance, entertainment, and higher education), ranch owners switched to a livestock species that required less time.

While these changes reflect modern economic realities, there has also been a long-held bias towards cattle-raising and against sheepherding. This bias is reflected in our culture. Go to your local western wear store and ask for cowboy boots - they'll know what you're asking for! Ask for sheepherder boots and they'll laugh at you (believe me!). I know a number of families that still raise 20-30 cows on the side simply to be able to say, "I run cows." There are far fewer of us who raise 100-200 ewes so that we can say, "I'm a sheepherder."

But this seems to be changing. At least on the West Coast (and I hear on the East Coast as well), lamb is increasingly in demand among "foodies." Even more lamb (and mutton) is moving through "non-traditional" marketing chains - that is, as urban areas become increasingly diverse ethnically, more sheep meat is being sold outside of the formal marketing system. Thanks to innovative companies like SmartWool, Duckworth, Farm-to-Feet and Darn Tough Socks, wool is once again becoming the sustainable alternative for hikers, skiers, hunters, and other outdoors-people. The ability of sheep to utilize a wide variety of vegetation - and the ability of sheepherders to graze sheep in just about any environment (including urban areas) - has created new opportunities for sheepherders to manage wildfire fuels. Sheep are chic!

Even with these new economic opportunities, I'm under no illusion that my cattle ranching friends will turn once again to sheep. Sheep still require more management; I have to put my hands on every sheep we own four or five times every year - cattle do not require nearly as much labor. I know I'll never be able to go to a western-wear store and ask to see the sheepherder hats. Regardless, we're able to manage rangelands that wouldn't be grazed otherwise - with electric fencing and livestock guardian dogs, we can graze land that would otherwise burn (or need to be mowed). We're able to turn grass, weeds and brush into wool, lamb and mutton. I'll gladly trade practicality (and profit) for prestige!

Do these Big White Dogs Really Work?!

At the beginning of November, I had the privilege to be invited to speak about my experience with and research into livestock guardian dogs at the West Central States Wool Growers Convention in Casper, Wyoming. The Saturday session, where I spoke, was organized by Dr. Whit Stewart, Sheep Specialist and Professor at the University of Wyoming. Other speakers (including Dr. Stewart) discussed mastitis in sheep, mineral supplementation and nutrition, managing coccidiosis, using new technology to monitor rangeland use and diets of sheep and wildlife, marketing feeder lambs profitably, and a variety of other hugely interesting topics. I found it invigorating to be among other ranchers - and other researchers - with such enthusiastic interest in commercial sheep production!

To me, one of the more enjoyable aspects of ranching and conducting research in the era of social media is that I've made virtual friends with folks who share my interests all over the world! Dr. Stewart and I, for example, had never met in person before the meeting. When I went to pay for my purchases in the silent auction fundraiser, I met another virtual friend - Jenny Osguthorpe and her husband Brad ranch in Utah and Wyoming. I also had a chance to talk dogs and sheep with Cat Urbigkit, editor of The Shepherd magazine. Cat and her family ranch in western Wyoming - she's been using livestock guardian dogs in wolf country for a number of years. I had so much fun meeting these folks (and others) in person - social media is great, but there's no substitute for actually visiting with someone directly!

All of this is a long-winded introduction to a recorded version of my talk, "Do these Big White Dogs Really Work?! Livestock Guardian Dog Solutions: Observations from a Rancher/Researcher." If you've used these dogs, I hope you'll share your observations! If you have questions, ask away!

Another Dry Autumn

As I write this, the Camp Fire continues to burn - mostly out of control - less than 60 miles to the north in Butte County. The grass that germinated after the inch-and-a-half of rain we received 48 days ago has withered. While our temperatures have finally become more seasonal (we've even had several frosty mornings), the warmer-than-normal daytime temperatures for most of October and low humidity have left our part of the Sierra foothills tinder-dry - or "crispy," as I remarked to my family yesterday. With the shorter days and cooler temperatures of the winter solstice just around the corner, and no rain in our forecast for at least a week, we're not likely to have much green grass until well into 2019. And so today, I pulled out our drought plan.

Our approach to raising sheep on our foothill rangelands gives us the flexibility to cope with dry conditions. We stock our pastures conservatively - our stocking rate is 2-3 acres per ewe for the winter and early spring, which leaves us significant dry forage going into the autumn months. We have invested in portable water and fencing systems, which allow us to take our sheep to standing forage (as opposed to feeding them hay). Our management calendar matches our production system with forage growth - we lamb in the late winter and early spring when the grass is most likely to be growing rapidly. We plan our grazing on a monthly basis to identify forage challenges before they become crises.

Even with this careful preparation, however, we also need to respond when dry stretches occur. To reduce the emotion involved in making these decisions, we've tried to think about the conditions and critical dates by which they'll need to be made. In looking at our drought plan this afternoon, I've realized that we're approaching a key decision point. If we have not had germination by December 1, our plan calls for two possible actions:

• Cull any ewes that are missing teeth or that have hard bags (if they weren't culled already).
• Provide supplemental protein to the remaining ewes to allow them to digest the dry forage we've saved from last year.

The second action is straightforward. By feeding supplemental protein, we'll be able to maintain the nutritional intake of our just-bred ewes through early gestation (when their nutritional demands are reasonably low). At some point (we hope) we'll get rain - and the grass will germinate again. Supplemental protein is the bridge that will help us get the flock to that point.

The first action is a bit more difficult. Every year, we keep a handful of older ewes who have always been productive (in other words, they've always had twins). Our hope is that with enough high-quality forage, we can get one more replacement ewe lamb out of these ewes. However, because of their lack of teeth, they need higher quality forage throughout their pregnancies. Our choice, in a year like this, is to bring them home and feed them hay - or to sell them. As older ewes, they won't be worth much at the sale - we'll have some difficult discussions about how we should proceed. We usually move the sheep back to our winter pastures around December 1 - we'll take a close look at these older ewes when we bring them into the corrals after Thanksgiving.

Our 2012-2015 drought has been called a "Thousand Year Drought" - the driest/warmest stretch of years in the last millennium in California. But I wonder if this drought isn't longer than just 2012 to 2015. Since I began keeping rainfall records in 2003, 10 out of the last 16 years have been below average in terms of precipitation. I realize that total rainfall doesn't begin to tell the whole story in terms of grass growth (indeed, last year's "normal" rainfall, combined with perfect timing and warmer weather, resulted in record-setting forage production). That said, a dry autumn like this one makes me extremely nervous. I suppose for now, I'll just keep checking the weather apps on my phone to see if the 10-day forecast includes rain - the twenty-first century version of a rain dance!

Here We Go Again

While autumn is my favorite season, it always seems a bit chancy to me. Since we rely on the grass that rainfall and Mother Nature grow in our Mediterranean climate, fall is a critical season. We need rain to start the grass; we need more rain to keep the grass growing. Having come through our once-in-a-lifetime drought (2013-2014) - or so I thought - an autumn season like the one we're experiencing now makes me nervous.

During the first week of October, we measured 1.5 inches of rain over the course of two days here in Auburn. While some ranches nearby measured next to nothing, we saw newly sprouted green grass about a week later. But since that time, it's been dry. We've even had several periods of high fire danger (a combination of high winds, low humidity, and relatively high temperatures). Since that time, the newly sprouted grass has withered.

One of my favorite weather blogs is Weather West, written by a guy named Daniel Swain. During the big drought, Swain coined the term "ridiculously resilient ridge" for the persistent ridge of high pressure resulting from unusually warm water in the eastern Pacific. This ridge deflected the storms that usually bring rainfall to central and northern California during the 2013-2014 drought. And according to Swain, it's back. Since our wonderful early October rain, the ridiculously resilient ridge is again blocking storms.

We're entering the third trimester of our autumn season. November typically brings stormy weather - and yet there are no storms in our 10-day forecast at the moment (indeed, we'll have another fire weather watch later this week). I suppose it's a sign of my weather obsession, but I check each of the weather apps on my smart phone 3-4 times a day. A predicted storm (even 10 days out) raises my spirits; I tumble back to earth when it disappears from the forecast.

We're not in crisis mode yet. Our production calendar is set with the possibility of a dry fall in mind. We save dry grass to graze this time of year. We plan to lamb in late winter and early spring when we'll almost certainly have green grass. And yet my experience in 2013-2014 - when we sold nearly half of our sheep - still haunts me.

Several weeks ago, my youngest daughter said, "I hope it rains soon - I don't want to listen to you worry." I do worry - I imagine all stock-people do when the rain doesn't come. Even so, having made it through California's last drought, I feel like I'm better prepared. Despite my preparations, though, I agree with Emma. I hope it rains soon.