The Glamorous Life of the Sheep Farmer

What a day! After stopping on our way to the ranch to buy goat's milk and lamb milk replacer for the bottle lambs, we proceeded to get the truck stuck in the mud at the Lincoln ranch. We processed the 12 new lambs (which means we put ear tags on them, docked their tails, gave them a selenium supplement and dipped their umbilical cords in betadine) and gave the flock some fresh feed. The first tow truck that showed up to pull our pick-up out was too heavy, so we walked a mile in the rain to move another set of sheep on the north side of the ranch. By the time the truck was out and we were done, we were all soaked. Thankfully, our intern Courtney and our daughters Lara and Emma were all good humored about the entire ordeal.

As I mentioned yesterday, lambing in weather like this always makes me nervous. As usual, my nervousness proved to be unfounded, for the most part. We've tried to select ewes who take good care of their babies, and all of yesterday's lambs made it through the storm just fine.

The glamorous part of this job is the muck and mud associated with being outside in this kind of weather. Even with the best rain gear, it's tough not to get soaked. I enjoy being outside in all kinds of weather, partly because it feels so good to get warm again once I'm back inside.

We hope you're all enjoying the wet weather - we sure need it! However, I wouldn't mind a little sunshine now and then over the next several days!

Lambing Season

We've given both of our daughters their own sheep as a way of involving them in our farm. Lara, our oldest, now has 2 breeding ewes, a half interest in one of our rams, and a set of twin lambs. As of last Tuesday, Emma, who is 5, has a ewe with twins, too. She is so excited! When she got home from school today, she asked if we could "process" the lambs, which involves weighing them, ear-tagging them, docking their tails, and (if they are ram lambs) castrating them.

I guess some parents would want to protect their young children from these types of things. For me, it has provided an opportunity to talk to our kids about why we do certain things. In talking about these production practices, it has also given me a chance to think about them more critically.

Sheep are born with long tails. While some producers do not dock the tails, we've seen what fly strike can do to sheep with tails. Some producers (largely those who produce lambs for fairs) go to the other extreme - they dock the lamb's tail extremely short, which creates other problems. As I explained to Emma this afternoon, we dock tails so that they don't have fly strike but also so they don't have the problems associated with a short dock.

Like us, our kids love our animals. But they've also experienced the entire life cycle - they realize that we raise some of our animals for meat. As another sheep producer, Al Medvitz, has said, they realize that death is not the opposite of health. In other words, our kids realize that we treat our animals humanely throughout their entire lives, and that "harvesting" the animals is a natural part of this process.