Sheep

It's been a busy day on the ranch.

We started out early riding horseback to take the 2 year-old heifers back to the North Pasture after weaning their calves this past week.

The mother cows were reluctant to go,

but go, they did.

We've had some beautiful rains here in the past week and there were puddles everywhere we rode and blades of new green grass shooting up.

The pastures are freshened and growing again.

Good news for a cow.

After taking the cows out, we rode down to the Shearing Pens where we always work sheep. The shearing pens were used extensively "back in the day"

when our ranch was exclusively a Sheep Ranch.

Now we raise mostly Hereford cattle

and just a few sheep on the side.

The ramshackle building you see

was used for shearing sheep

and these weathered and worn corrals were used for sorting sheep,

and we use them just the same today.

Our Border Collie dogs, "Jessie" and "Sue" are helping us corral and sort the sheep....

and they LOVE their jobs!

The ewes here have been sorted away from their lambs

and will be turned out that gate to the left of the horses.

They'll be free to graze as they please.

Most of the lambs will be sold at the livestock yards tomorrow,

but we did keep back about 40 head of ewe lambs

which will go back into the herd as breeding ewes.

I also talked the men into saving back a couple lambs

to take to the butcher for next week.

(Can you say, "Lamb chop?")

Click on pictures to enlarge them.