Shepherd or Sheepherder - Either Label Works For Me!

Some days, I call myself a shepherd. Other days, I call myself a sheepherder. I'm not truly sure what the difference is, so both labels are fine with me. Professionally, as a livestock and rangeland extension researcher/educator, I find myself reminding my colleagues (more frequently than I care to admit) that sheep are livestock too. That sheep producers rely on rangelands just as much as cattle producers. That sheep might actually take more management skill that cattle. In a world that looks up to cowboys, sheepherder can seem like a derogatory title. Most days, I can laugh that off - a joke about looking for the sheepherder section at the Boot Barn generally makes all stock people laugh, regardless of what species they raise. But some days, I find I'm tired of having to remind my friends that we're all harvesting grass - we just use a different set of "equipment."

Sometimes I ask myself why I chose sheep rather than cattle - the Sierra foothills are, after all, cattle country (this hasn’t always been the case, however). The sheep bug first really bit while my wife was in vet school - the place where we kept our horse had a ewe that had a shoulder injury. Sami nursed the ewe back to health, starting me down a path towards sheepherder-dom. When we moved to Auburn, we bought 10 goats to help us get rid of our blackberry problems - the goats did great, but I realized I wasn’t a goatherd - I liked our sheep better. In the early 2000s, we bought a handful of ewes and started in the sheep business. We ran cattle for other folks, along with our sheep, but I always viewed myself as a sheepman first.

As our operation evolved, we grew our flock to the point where we didn’t need other people’s cattle to help harvest the grass. And yet I still had a choice - I still could have put my time and capital into beef cattle rather that woolly boogers (one of the least insulting terms for sheep in our part of the world). Why?

In our part of the foothills, where many large ranches have been fragmented due to development or purchased by conservancies or agencies, finding leased land at a large enough scale to graze cattle can be difficult. Smaller scale properties are available, but often without infrastructure (like fencing, corrals, and stock water). With sheep, we have the flexibility to use these smaller grazing properties - provided we bring the fencing, corrals, and water systems. We can put small ruminants on small properties - and sometimes even get paid to do it!

Sheep are versatile, as well. Not only do they potentially provide both meat and fiber, they are adaptable to a variety of landscapes, vegetation types, and management objectives. Do you have yellow starthistle you'd like to manage? We have sheep for that! Are you interested in controlling annual grasses to give native perennial grasses a chance to reestablish? We have sheep for that, too! Want to reduce overwintering pests in your alfalfa or your berry vines? Sheep are perfect! Want to manage vegetation between your grape vines or on your orchard floor? Sign us up!

Finally, sheep can be more accessible - both to the public and to new producers. Cows are big critters; mamma cows with new calves can be intimidating! While a ewe with new lambs is protective, but perhaps not as intimidating. The capital costs of getting started with cattle can be equally unapproachable for many new producers - not only are cows more expensive; the necessary equipment is as well!

Now I'm sure my cattle ranching friends will be quick to point out the flaws in my thinking here - I hope they do! But I hope they'll also think about adding sheep to their operations! We need more sheepherders in this world - or shepherds!

Between the Barstool and the Floor

Sunbathing in our lambing paddock! Photo by Roger Ingram.

Perhaps a decade ago or more, I had the amazing opportunity to meet folksinger and activist Utah Phillips at Riverhill Farm in Nevada City – owned at that time by my friend Alan Haight. I’d heard Phillips on our local community radio station (KVMR) for years – if you’ve never heard his story Moose Turd Pie, you owe it to yourself to listen – regardless of your politics! It might be the most humorous story about working on a crew ever! It's good (though)!

But back to this story! Somewhere (probably on KVMR), I heard Phillips tell a story about his pacifism. As I recall, the story involved a bar fight in which he was on the losing end. The guy next to him punched him so hard he fell off his barstool. He said, and I paraphrase, “Somewhere between the barstool and the floor, you decide whether you’re really a pacifist.”

I was reminded of this story this week when my Flying Mule Sheep Company partner Roger Ingram sent me a photo of a grey fox, from inside our lambing paddock! Roger is taking the afternoon checks now that we’re done lambing – and he came upon a sunbathing fox inside our 10-acre pasture. The fox trotted off to the brushy ravine that bisects the paddock and -  despite our repeated attempts to flush him out later that evening – was never seen again.

The next morning, when I checked the sheep, both livestock guardian dogs were down in the creek channel when I arrived. Neither was barking, and neither was particularly agitated. The sheep seemed calm – a handful of ewes were calling for recalcitrant lambs, but nobody seemed to be missing a lamb.

As the handful of you who read my blog know, we’ve committed to using nonlethal predator protection tools as much as possible. Our electric fencing and livestock guardian dogs seem to work – we’ve never lost an animal where we were using both. And part of the reason I love raising sheep on rangeland is that it puts me in an environment where I’m likely to see wildlife – including predators.

But I realized this week, after seeing the fox, that I’m probably not a pacifist when it comes to protecting our sheep. We use LGDs and electric fencing as a rational – rather than philosophical – approach to raising sheep. Ultimately, I think I have an ethical responsibility to my sheep as well as to my environment. Our predator protection approach minimizes conflict; our responsibility to the sheep in our care would require more direct action.

Because of the drought, we’re trying to maximize our grazing in every paddock we build. This current paddock has enough forage to last for two more days – which buys us two more days before we need to ship the flock back to irrigated pasture around April 19. We could move – away from the fox and away from the forage – but it would mean moving sheep early or buying expensive hay. And while I’ve realized that I’m probably not a pacifist when it comes to predators, I’ve also realized – somewhere between the barstool and the floor – that I should trust our system (and especially our dogs!)

Elko - a happy guardian!

Maybe It Looks TOO Easy?!

Photo: Sequoia Williams

This year marks my seventeenth lambing season. When I think back to our early years operating a small-scale, commercial sheep business, I sometimes marvel at the things we thought we needed to do then - and the ways we manage today. Some of these changes are simply reflective of a never-ending quest to improve our efficiency - simple things like learning to build electro-net fence more effectively; complex things like learning to train and use border collies. Some of these changes, though, reflect lessons we could only learn by doing - and by making mistakes. And while the work can still be challenging and the days long (especially during lambing), after 17 years, I feel like I mostly know what I'm doing!

During this time, we've often shared our management approach with others - through this blog, and as we gained more experience, through informal internships and formal workshops. Last week, we held what I think was our tenth pasture lambing school. Our students were a mix of aspiring shepherds and folks who had gone into sheep in a big way (one operation ran more than 2,000 head of sheep). I tried to convey my experience in the importance of developing a systematic approach to lambing:

• We plan our winter grazing with an eye towards saving the more sheltered pastures for lambing in late February and March.
• We constantly evaluate the amount of forage ahead of us, so that we can plan for dry years like this one.
• We stock our lambing kit with everything we need in the field - processing supplies, lambing aids, nutritional supplements, etc.
• We "mark" the lambs the same way every time (record dam's ear tag and EZ Care lambing score, ear tag and record lamb, weigh lamb, dock and castrate, dip navel in iodine, paint-mark lamb with dam's ear tag). This ensures that we don't miss a step.
• We track maternal traits during lambing to continuously improve the maternal abilities of our flock in future years.

I suppose this can seem like a lot of complicated steps for what should be an easy thing - the ewes will lamb whether or not we treat lambing season this deliberately. If we're short of feed during lambing, we can simply feed hay. Does it really matter which ewe produced which set of lambs? But even at our small scale, we try to think through what's best for the sheep and what's best for our economic well-being. Even at our small scale, we take our sheep operation seriously as a business.

Another part of this deliberate approach extends how we organize other parts of the work, like building fence. When the sheep are moved, the fence around the old paddock is picked up. We roll and tie the electro-net fencing (which comes in 164-foot sections) to make it easier to move to the next paddock (and to keep livestock and wildlife from getting tangled in a non-electrified fence). We try to set up a paddock ahead of our current grazing site so that we're ready to move when the feed gives out. We think about the economics of trading our labor (for building fence) versus buying feed (and it's almost always better for our business to move the sheep to grass rather than move baled "grass" to the sheep).

I don't mean to suggest that we have a perfect system - and I guess that's another component to taking this seriously. I still make mistakes; I still learn from other producers. I have a much better sense of how much I don't know now that we're 17 years into raising sheep than I did when I started!

From the outside looking in, I imagine, all of this planning and forethought is probably not apparent. How hard can it be to raise sheep? Grass grows, sheep eat it, they reproduce, we sell their lambs and wool. Repeat. But on the inside - of any serious ranching operation, I think - a deliberate, thoughtful approach is critical to this year's success. And next year's opportunity.

Silver Linings - I’ll Take What I Can Get

Last Sunday, the forecast for Auburn said we’d get close to three-quarters of an inch of rain from March 2-4. As seems to happen during a dry year, the forecasted amount decreased as the week progressed. This morning, I had 0.01” in the rain gauge. We might get that much more overnight. Our soil moisture, which I checked this morning, seems more like what I would expect in early May - not early March. After a record-setting October, and a great December, it seems that drought has returned (or maybe it never left) the Sierra foothills. But for a pasture lambing outfit like ours, the dry weather has it’s benefits.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m stressing about the lack of moisture. Warm temperatures and dry weather have brought our oaks and shrubs out of dormancy; this early growth increases water demand - which explains our lack of soil moisture. I’m seeing many of our annual grasses (like Italian ryegrass and foxtail) mature 3-5 weeks early. Wildflowers we usually see in April are blooming now. Even our native grasses - like purple needlegrass and California melic - are ahead of schedule. 

This accelerated seasonal growth complicates our work as shepherds. We’ve found it’s better for our sheep - and better for our bank account - to move the sheep to the forage rather than move forage to the sheep (in other words, we’re better off grazing than feeding hay - and so are the sheep). In a year like this, when feed becomes short, our approach means we need to move sheep more often - and graze on areas that are more difficult to fence with our electronet fencing. And moving ewes with lambs is always a more time-consuming process. In addition, as our grass matures and goes to seed, it becomes less palatable (and less nutritious) for the sheep.

But the dry weather has also meant that the ewes are giving birth in very favorable conditions. We had some cold weather last week, but most of our afternoons have been sunny and reasonably warm. During lambing season (from the third week of February through the end of March), we check the flock three times a day. In wet, windy weather, we also check them three times each night - just to make sure that any new lambs are warm and well-fed. So far, in 2022, we haven’t had to do any nighttime checks at all. Small blessings, I suppose.

In many ways, I guess, we’ve developed a pastoral- (as opposed to a ranch-) based system. We follow the feed, even at our small scale. In productive years, we have more forage than we can get to; in years like this, we’re moving more often - and worrying that we won’t have enough. Sheep lend themselves to our un-landed business model (we own less than 2 percent of the land that we graze) more so than cattle would. A shorter gestation - and a more varied diet - make sheep incredibly flexible in our increasingly uncertain climate. And our sheep convert the grass we have available into protein and fiber. The miracle of rangelands - and the miracle of ruminant animals. Tough years like this make me appreciate this system even more!