Spring Sheep Shearing
Time Travel Tales
Submitted by Janet Petersen
Spring emerges in Northeast Nevada in many forms; Daffodils, tulips, fruit trees in blossom, baby chicks, Easter eggs and the Easter bunny but a not so noticed and recognized event is the annual shearing of the sheep and birthing of the new lambs at lambing sheds and meadows in various parts of the Nevada and the west.
We had the opportunity to visit one such location in Lander County, south of Battle Mountain at the Fish Creek Ranch owned and operated by Ellison Ranching Company. Sheep shearing was in full operation. The ranch has been owned by ERC since 1917. Manual Maldanado, employed at the ERC since 1991, was in charge of the event. Helping him was retired mining electrician and overall helpful assistant, Toby Jonas. Overseeing the whole operation was Ira T. Wines, president of Ellison Ranching Company. Headquarters are at the legendary Spanish Ranch in Independence Valley, north of Elko.
Beginning in mid-October, early November, the sheep and herders spend the winter near New Pass, 15-20 mile west of Austin in Lander County, Nevada. There are five bands consisting of about 1600 sheep each. Beginning around the 1st of March, they are trailed, not by truck but on foot, north by a Peruvian herder with his two Great Pyrenees dogs to Fish Creek to begin the shearing and lambing operation. It’s a six-day trek.
Beginning in the early 1900s, there were many Basques in northern Nevada and elsewhere in the west with sheep flocks. Young men immigrated from the Basque country bordering France and Spain to the west over the next several decades to join fellow countrymen in the ranching business. Often, they left their homeland to escape the regime of Generalissimo Franco in Spain. After Franco’s death in 1975, his reign of terror against Basques died and young Basque men felt safe to stay in their homeland. (This is another story in itself!)
Beginning in the 1970s, sheep herders were recruited from South America and Mexico. Today, most herders come from Chili, Peru, Columbia and Mexico. The herders work on three-year visa contracts and go home for 90 days after the season ends in the fall. In earlier years, they took items not easily available in their remote towns, such as shoes and clothing. Now, they take back home laptops and electric devices for better communication with their families and the outside world.
At Fish Creek, the sheep are herded into pens and then, in single file, enter the shearing trailer. This is a converted semi-truck trailer with an area for 6 shearers with a small door on each side of the trailer adjacent shearer. All six work at once. The shearers supply their own clippers and use a sling so the constant bending over isn’t as hard on the back. Each shearer completes shearing one sheep in less than 2 minutes and puts the pregnant ewe out one side and the fleece, about 9 pounds, is taken out on the opposite side of the trailer. Each man keeps track of how many he shears as he’s paid by the number of sheep sheared – about 200 ewes a day. It takes about 4-5 days to process the entire flock.
Fairchild Shearing, L.L.C. from Buhl, Idaho is the contractor. They contract with shearers from Uruguay to come to the United States on work visas. The crew arrives in January to Washington state and works their way southward to sheep operations in the west. It’s a team of nine men – six shearers, two sorters/wool graders and the boss. They do the shearing, grading and baling. Fish Creek ranch is on their annual schedule.
The Uruguayans as well as the Peruvian herders return year after because their pay is considered substantial and monies are sent home to educate their children and provide a better way of living in their home countries. Many have sent children and grandchildren to college or provide money for items, such as electric wheelchairs in their home countries.
In the olden days, before 1960 or so, sheep were sheared by hand using special shears that had to be sharpened each night. The raw wool was packed into six-foot-long bags inside a wooden frame. Usually, a draftee ranch kid was the sack packer/smasher. (He/she must have had shiny shoes and soft hands from the lanolin. We don’t to wonder how many ticks were hidden in the wool!)
Outside, at the wool side of the trailer, the wool is graded and sorted for quality – course, medium and fine. The fleeces are packed and compressed with a compressor into bales weighing about 450 pounds. Two semi loads of wool bales are then hauled to market in San Angelo, Texas. From there, the wool is sent to Egypt for cleaning, then to Turkey for spinning into thread or yarn. THEN, the Turkish products are sent to South Carolina for either weaving or using for other wool products articles we use every day.
Many people don’t realize the origin of natural materials. Last year, ERC president Ira Wines was hauling wool bales to the warehouse on his flatbed truck. A young woman asked him what he had. He explained it was wool, like the sweater she was wearing. She looked puzzled but interested and he explained that this was recently shorn wool he was taking to be processed. It would be cleaned, spun into yarn and then woven into material or yarn for sweaters or socks or other clothing items. She looked puzzled but interested and commented “huh, I never thought about this.”
After being relieved of their winter coat, the ewes are again herded single file to be vaccinated,
sprayed and branded by “sheep branding paint.” Different bands have a different brand color. Sheep are not hot branded like cattle but are branded with a special paint using the ranch’s traditional iron.
The ewes are trailed to the east side of highway 305 where they begin birthing their lambs about 2½ weeks after shearing. The birthing is completed in about 45 days. The herd has now doubled or tripled in size as each ewe often has twins and sometimes triplets. That part of the cycle begins around the 1st of November when the rams are put in with the ewes, the gestation period for the ewes is 5 months less 5 days.
In May and/or June, the bands of sheep are transported to northern Elko County to Charleston and Martin Creek, Gold Creek east of Wildhorse, to spend the summer and return to the winter grounds in October and/or November. During the time is in the mountains with the sheep, ERC brings food and other supplies to him about every 4th day. The routine is traditional as 75 years ago. In the summer he lives in a tent that he hauls by horseback from camp to camp. In the winter, he lives by himself in the sheep camp home on wheels. Most look like they did 75 years ago. The concession to modern times is that each herder has a cell phone and can check in with his family in South America or at the Spanish ranch headquarters many miles and mountains away. He learns where reliable spots are for cell service.
The annual shearing is a rite of passage. As long as we consumers wear wool and eat lamb the culture will continue. The traditions and yearly cycle will continue as long as sheep ranching remains. As seen on a bumper sticker on a beat up old ranch truck, “Eat more lamb, 10,000 coyotes can’t be wrong.”
Many thanks to Ira T. Wines, Toby Jonas and Manual Maldanado for their help.
Photos taken by Janet Petersen