Attracted by the foul-smelling carcass of the calf he’d killed the day before, the grizzly bear climbed into the green metal box to resume feeding. As he grabbed the carcass with one huge front paw, the metal door of the cage slammed shut behind him. Trapped, the bear sprawled atop the carcass to wait out …
Tag: Ranching
New range
We got the sheep herd moved to new range today. We’re in the foothills of the Wind River Mountains, and this private pasture is about seven miles from where a black wolf was seen in another sheep herd the day before. Federal control efforts on this pack of sheep-killing wolves continues. Wolves in Wyoming are …
Rolling with the changes
Today I was supposed to be residing at a luxury hotel in Cody, Wyoming, scheduled to give a presentation about using livestock protection animals to the Western Association of State Agricultural Directors. Instead, I’m sitting in a pickup truck on the edge of my sheep herd, pounding the keyboard on the laptop and waiting for …
Wool harvest
Yesterday was shearing day for our herd. First, we crowd the sheep up the loading chute and into the shearing plant. My lead sheep, named Assistant Sheep, sticks her head over the top of the chute to let me know of her displeasure. As the crew of shearers work, each fleece is kicked out the …
Prey base decline
We’ve noticed that our western Wyoming jackrabbit population has crashed in the last few years, and that makes us wonder about cohabitating wildlife and livestock species, and what the impact will be to those animals. With so few jacks last winter, our wintering golden eagles didn’t stick around long because there was little for them …
Spring silliness
Warm temperatures have been welcome, but our snow cover is long gone, and the resulting mud has dried. The animals seem to be enjoying the spring weather. In the photo above, Rena greets Buck, a bum lamb raised by a little girl who recently moved to Oklahoma, so Buck returned to the herd. Rena is …
Herding sheep, and words
It’s been such a long time since I’ve posted, and I have missed the blog much in the last few months. Our sheep and guardian animals are all fine and wintering well. We’ve moved the herd to the pasture at our house, so my “checking the sheep” sometimes only involves looking out the window. When …
December in the sheep pasture
The Wind River Mountains are magnificent in their snow-covered spendor, but the sagebrush rangelands still contain only a scattering of snow. The image below is our New Fork River pasture where the sheep are currently located, taken at sunrise earlier this week. It was about -8 degrees that morning, which is a typical overnight low …
Thanksgivings
It’s been a rough few weeks, with major ups and downs. Son Cass took a job at a ski hill near Laramie, so we fixed a Thanksgiving feast a week early since he was about to head off to the new job. Two miles from our house, on a slick wintery road, he drove his …
Homecoming
Husband Jim’s Uncle Walter passed away early last week, so we left home Friday to attend the memorial services in Cheyenne. We were gone for about 30 hours, and of course I was nervous about how the animals faired while we were gone. When we arriving to see the ewe herd in the river bottom, …