Pat & Sharon O'Toole

Shearing is always a delicate dance between sheep, shearers, weather and the calendar. This year has been especially difficult due to rain and snow, snow and rain. I wrote about this for Writers on the Range. You can see this more detailed description on http://www.hcn.org/wotr/why-a-sheep-rancher-never-needs-to-go-to-las-vegas. The shearers were scheduled to come Monday, April 20th. It snowed. They started on Wednesday and sheared two days. It snowed on Friday. A week's worth of rain and snow was forecast. Since the ewes were destined to start lambing on May 8th, we decided to start them on the trail for the lambing grounds at Cottonwood, some 40 miles south. This trail can take up to eight days, but we pushed the ewes hard and they made it in five days. Bear in mind that the unshorn ewes were carrying about ten pounds of wet wool, seven to fifteen pounds of unborn lambs, and were slogging through mud. When we reached Cottonwood, we had a break in the weather and were able to finish shearing the pregnant ewes. This was the tail end of the shearing season, the shearers began leaving for the British Isles or other parts where unshorn sheep are waiting. We lost one to tick fever, so by the end, our crew was dwindling. They left us to shear more ewes in central Wyoming who were hard upon lambing, and returned to finally finish up our unpregnant yearlings on May 17th.

Siobhan and Edgar counting sheep
Badwater, Continental Divide

Meghan and Maeve, corral crew
Badwater, Continental Divide

Seamus, Sharon and Siobhan with shorn ewes
Badwater, Continental Divide
photos by Pat O'Toole

Lambing outside the shearing pens-1
Cottonwood

Lambing outside the shearing pens-2
Cottonwood

Lambing outside the shearing pens-3
Cottonwood

New lamb in shorn ewe pen
Cottonwood

Patrick Madigan, Rawlins District BLM Manager
Patrick O'Toole, Ladder Livestock
Cottonwood

Jose
Cottonwood

Siobhan, Pat and Seamus
Cottonwood
photos by Sharon O'Toole