Homestead Sheep - Farm to Fork

Your support helps us bring you the programs you love. Go to WyomingPBS.org. Click support and become a sustaining member or annual member. It's easy and safe. Thank you. - Navajos never eat lamb. They always eat a lamb. - Very, very popular in many luxury restaurants. Navajo-Churro meat. - As tender as the heart of a schoolteacher. The conquistadors brought

sheep

from Spain and Portugal and the natives simply took advantage of this incredible breed. - In my experience, the Dorpers and Katahdins have been very hardy and good for this climate. - There are many different parts to making our soil more productive for us.

And

sheep

are definitely one of those parts. - This is a cycle, and if we choose to be meat eaters, then I think everyone should know what it entails. And don't get me wrong, it's not easy. (sheep bleating) - Farm sheep on this

farm

at Fork Wyoming. (sheep bleating) - Funding for Farm to Fork Wyoming is provided by viewers like you, thank you. (calm music) - The Spear S Ranch is home to a special breed of sheep prized for their hardiness and cultural importance in North America, the Navajo-Churro. - The Navajo-Churro sheep, which is the oldest breed of sheep in America, was the traditional wool breed that the Navajo and Hopi used for their rugs which makes them so valuable because they simply do not wear out. (calm music) - Due to the diversity of blondes, whites, blacks and different cream and brown colors, you know, really nice and natural combinations are created. (calm music) - These Navajo-Churros have a very fine inner fleece that is sometimes finer than even the finest merino, but then they have this very coarse outer pile that allows them to have this long lasting attribute.

They are wild sheep. They haven't been bothered much. They have had to survive alone. (calm music) - They are not native to North America. So where did these sheep originally come from? (relaxing guitar music) First brought to America by the Spanish in the 16th century, they spread throughout the Southwest and Mexico with Spanish settlements. (relaxing guitar music) - Churra, C-H-U-R-R-A, is a Spanish breed and was the somewhat subordinate breed to the Merino. And when Columbus arrived, Ferdinand said, "No, you can't take my good sheep, but you can take these sacrifices." So he sent Churra here. And then, the conquistadors brought them a second time. - As it spread throughout the Rio Grande Valley, the breed became commonly known as Churro. - The Native Americans saw that there was an opportunity along the way. - In the late 18th century, churro became an important economic force for Mexico's textile industry and an important food and fiber for the Navajo and Hopi tribes.

Over time, in the hands of the Navajo, the churro became a distinct breed known as Navajo-churro. - The race is very different in Europe than here. - The Navajo selected the quality of the fleece and acclimatized their flocks to search for food in the desert lands. - They are actually range animals, you know. The Navajo Nation is located in some of the harshest and most brutal sandstone country in the four corners region of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. They do much better in browsing than in pasture. I mean, this thick grass here they don't really care about.

You know, taking them to that canyon land is ideal for them. They love the mountain mahogany, they love all the different bushes and that's how they were able to save them. The army began to hunt them. - In the 1860s, the government began a series of ill-fated attempts to eradicate the Navajo-Churro. The first was an effort to subjugate the tribes. Subsequent efforts were due to economic and grazing land management reasons. - You have an agency doing one thing and suggesting something and the Churros were small and they wanted them bigger for the meat. The government had them bred with larger sheep.

They thought, "As long as you do this, you might as well have a big sheep." Well, bigger sheep eat more, they need more, they degrade the land more, they need much better pasture, and that's what surprises us now. We are learning a lot about how this land supports all the intricate interaction and complexity. So, it's a huge loop. And then they took the sheep from the Indians because they said they were degrading the land too much. So, there were reasons, well-intentioned and well-intentioned. You know, I'm not criticizing government agencies. They did what seemed right at the time. - Some wise tribal members took their flocks to the deepest corners of the reservation, where they remained for decades. - They went into those holes that you wouldn't imagine you could go into those canyons and they hid them. - They were in the hills of the reservation. - And there were some who survived. - And at the time I started, they were seriously threatened with extinction and I thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a nice flock of true Churros here in Wyoming, in an isolated area where they wouldn't interbreed and then we could send cattle to recreate flocks in other areas".

It's not like California, Oregon or Washington. They have a lot of people and a lot of

farm

s intermingled. We don't mix here and that is a special attribute if you are trying to save a breed and also select it and return it to its core qualities. (rooster crowing) - But other genetics had to be introduced in past years. - Let's go guys! But that's where we have that type of recession because to recover them completely, you have to introduce other genetic material and that's where the rough legs come from, the more felted ones. That comes from trying to get the herd back and using things like Rambouillet or other breeds to bring in, you know, new genetics.

And I don't castrate any of my rams because I choose them when they are two years old so I know who I am going to use. That's the oldest one here in the front. Because they don't mature until then. If he neutered me, he would probably kick me several times because what he neutered would be the most beautiful structurally put together and fleece to die for. There you have it, up close and personal. (laughs) It has beautiful fleece. I mean, look at the length of its basic fiber, the long hairs. - And I'm not interpreting all this careful upbringing and what a lot of people did.

I stare at it and run by the seat of my pants, but we truly have an exceptional flock because of what we've been able to select here. - Today, Karen has assumed the direction that Nan started decades ago. (clang) (sheep bleat) - (sobs) There, that's right, darling. (pats) And basically in this position, they give up most of the time, especially the older sheep. They know something is going to happen, but it's not a big deal. This is like our fingernails or toenails. And she is a very good mother. This girl is three years old, but she has a very nice bag.

But all you are looking for is a healthy animal with four legs. I'm looking for an animal with a good disposition, good mammary glands, so they can have plenty of milk for their babies, and just a good solid animal that looks like it can structurally have babies. (whimsical piano music) (sheep bleating) - And with annual shearing, the quality of the fleece is as important as the quality of the meat itself. - Because these are double coat sheep and the outer coat can be three to six inches long and the inner coat is very fine. It is very difficult to separate the fibers, so the process of separating the two to get to the really fine wool will not be economical.

But they felt very good, which is why they are used a lot for felting. I twist it and get yarn out of it and I also make rigging, horse rigging, so it's another way to make a little money. Most of them have a coat that is more or less a true Churro type coat. They don't have as much lanolin. Like you can see my hands. I just dealt with three different sheep. If I had been using Suffolk or playing with Suffolk or Rambouillet or something like that, my hands would be shiny. They don't have it, they have lanolin in their fur, but not in the amount that other breeds have. - This is important because lanolin production is linked to the strong lamb flavor that many negatively associate with eating lamb. - If you like to eat lamb, you will always want to eat a hair sheep like your Dorpers or a thick wool sheep meat.

The Churro is a sheep with thick wool. Your Lincolns, your Romneys that you find in the north of England and Ireland, are generally lamb that you can eat there, it's just phenomenal and that's why the lamb that comes from New Zealand is so well received here. Most of it is thick wool sheep, while the sheep meat that comes out of Australia is fine wool sheep. - Most lamb eaten today is slaughtered at 12 months or younger, but this industry standard does not fit the reality of most traditional slow-maturing breeds or unfed livestock. exclusively from cereals. - I sell them at 16, 17 months.

They mature slowly and do not develop until they are older. So I try not to call them lambs, although really it's because of their breed, probably legit, but by world standards, it's not, and I've never had a problem with anyone saying the meat was hunted or tough or that I didn't have that with the old sheep - And like many heritage breed farm animals, Nan and Karen's churros serve multiple purposes on the farm. - Cattle graze one thing and sheep graze another. - I use them to control my weeds. (laughs) They're great, they do, they eat spurge, but they love burdock, curly dock, lamb's quarter, and all those things that start to get ahead of us in years like this. - So that was my general idea in bringing them in and it worked wonderfully with the cattle. (cows mooing) - Sheep eat different forage than cattle.

Sheep are more explorers, so weeds and woody things are much more likely to eat and retain them, while cows come and, after the fact, clear up the grass, which has grown much better because it doesn't have as much competition from the weeds. And, you know, it's always, it's never a perfect world and it doesn't work ideally all the time, but also the advantage is that sheep parasites and cattle parasites are different. So when you bring sheep into an area for a while, yes, you can have a buildup of problems of that nature, but if you take them out of that pasture and have them in a different pasture where the cows were and put the cows where the sheep were , then you get a kind of natural selection of the problems you might have.

So, you know, it's not perfect and it won't eliminate things completely, but it helps reduce the load, which is something they talk about a lot, the parasite load for the animals, and then with fertilization. Oh yes, you can feel the heat there. If you put your hand there, you can feel the heat. - Yes. And the sheep manure is... - It's really good. - Very high quality garden... - Yes, it is not, it is not so strong that it cannot be used, but in combination with our cow manure, horse manure and chicken, we get this, you know, and we don't put none of this right away.

So it will probably always stay around a year. -UH Huh. - And the compost that we put on the pastures to revitalize the grass that we have here is also a key component of the agricultural products business. So, in the beds where we grow the vegetables, we create our own compost for growth and our compost tea for the type of fertilization. Ah! The tomatoes are spinning. Just an integration and then getting involved in that and part of that is also laying the groundwork. So once we fertilize and level the lawn, we try to be self-sufficient. You know, it's just a whole cycle of using everything, but trying not to overuse it and actually increasing the fertility of the soil through the use of our compost and our rotations.

We don't till. We usually use no-till practices more exclusively and that just means we don't lose our soil in Nebraska and Kansas because, heck, we have winds around here and they'll just blow it away and that's one thing with the corrals we have. problems with sometimes. But they are small, so we try to keep all these areas covered. But, really, I raise them. (sheep bleating) They have to pay for themselves, so I sell a lot of lambs. I sell ground lamb, which seems to be an incredibly popular meat these days, and then the skins when they are processed.

We try to use it all and make them pay for their own hay because it's not a big enough operation to make economic sense on its own, just selling them means they're not that big. I mean, Dorpers, those suckers, you can sell them a year for, what, £125. If I buy one that's 65 or 70 pounds, you know, it's just a smaller animal. (whisper) This is one of our fall lambs that was processed for customers. - Is that box a whole animal? - That's a whole animal. So, you have your chops, of course, and some steak type things. You have leg of lamb.

We make rolled leg of lamb and whole leg of lamb. Or this is actually a roasted shoulder. And then the legs are a very popular cut. These legs are actually the legs and people use them in stews, they use them grilled, roasted. Probably the hardest thing I have to do is decide who will be prosecuted and who won't,and I know it's done correctly when it's done by professionals. It's just wanting to make sure everyone is done right. Crazy little rascals. They like trees more than grass. You just know you're killing something. But, you know, there's a cycle and people want to eat this animal, so for us it's just a way of perpetuating the breed, a species that we believe should be allowed to continue contributing to the planet.

So. - It is a rescue story, but it is also a marketing story and it is necessary to involve the people who kill and do the sacrifice well. (instrumental string music) (chat) The client has become quite sophisticated. They know the cuts they want, they know how thick they want them, they are quite specific about how they cook it and what they like to eat, and as producers we have to balance what we make with what they want to buy. (upbeat music) - In Lovell, a more modern breed of sheep is being used to rebuild poor soils while homeschooling the family. - My husband found this place on eBay (laughs) and started researching the area.

We initially came here just to do some construction and own some property, hoping that we could make enough on the property to pay some property taxes, grow some of our own food, and teach the kids some of those skills. But, shortly after moving here, we started trying to grow things and realized the soil had problems here. We didn't really have land, we had land. So, that's where our journey began. - The first years were dedicated to trying to aerate the land and at the same time establish pastures to go from weeds to pastures suitable for grazing. - There are many different methods that people use to contain weeds and they still come back.

We never spray. We tried burning some and thought, "Well, why not sheep?" In fact, we started with just four sheep and built it. Now we have about 800 heads hanging around, but we really like the Katahdins and Dorpers. - Both breeds were developed over the last 80 years and are now becoming very popular in Wyoming. - When doing a straight Katahdin or a straight Dorper, we haven't really seen our best result with that. A mix between the two has produced some of the prettiest lambs. - Both are hair sheep bred for meat production instead of wool. - Since they do not have wool, all their energy and all that forage they eat is used for meat production.

So for us as owner operators on a smaller acreage, the fact that they shed and then we don't have to shear them every year is a huge benefit. - Moms Dorper and Katahdin are really good. We don't find many that turn their lambs away or that's what we need because it's very cold and we tend to have so many lambs dropping at the same time that we need good mothers to look after their lambs. - And sheep fit in well when children are part of the farm team. - From the farmer's point of view, it's really nice.

Lambs and sheep are easy to care for and if you know how to raise lambs, that is a good source of meat. - Well, it is an interesting experience to learn how to market and you learn things in the course of everyday life that you can use later. - This year we gave them the option to try to go to school or continue homeschooling and three of our four decided to try to go to school. - Jenna decided to stay with farm work. - I would have gone last year, this year to high school, so I can't say that that impressed me very much.

But he has good teeth. If her teeth start to fall out, that means he is getting quite old and she is probably near the end of a fruitful birth. But I was hoping my brother would be in high school and I would be in high school, yeah, next year that we could hear about it and who knows, maybe I'll decide to go to high school next year. -For now, Jenna continues her education on the farm. And with the addition of a sheepdog, there is a new skill to learn. (sheep bleating) (upbeat music) - Louie, he's a Border Collie.

We saw him, he was for sale. We had never had a sheepdog before. We had done all the herding ourselves so we decided to look him up and see how he is doing and it has been a lot of fun. (upbeat music) A lot of learning for us and for him, how sheepdogs work. (sheep bleating) (upbeat music) Because everyone has different characteristics, like some like to herd sheep in different ways, some like to be around people, others, so yeah, it's been a lot of fun. (sheep bleating) (upbeat music) - Ah, easily. -I've thought a little about training some sheepdogs, but now I'm keeping up with Louie and we're seeing how he goes.

He is a good boy. (sheep bleating) I think we all like him. - And guard dogs are also an important part of the farm family. - Well, livestock guard dogs are essential to our operation. We couldn't do this without them. - Most sheep farms in Wyoming are surrounded by large populations of predators. - Most of our predator pressure here is predominantly coyote and fox. We have some smaller predators, raccoons, some weasels, skunks, things like that that are a bigger problem when we are calving. And we have predatory birds of prey. We have hawks, eagles and owls, and they will catch a lamb if they get the chance or they will take advantage of a mother who...

If there is a mother in the pasture and she just had lambs and she has been having trouble and can't get up, a bird will take advantage of that, which is natural and normal. We have had... Some of our livestock guard dogs are very good at seeing birds overhead and will run underneath them barking, which is usually enough to help keep the birds away. - Through centuries of breeding, these guard dogs are highly attuned to instinctively protect their livestock. - They are smart and know what to do with predators and stuff. They won't always run after a predator, but they will keep it away from the sheep.

Ours tend to be that. -When the coyotes pack up and start pushing harder, the dogs are good at chasing them. - Yeah, especially if we hear coyotes or something, we'll hear them barking. - It's an ancient way of leveling the playing field where predators are always present. - We're not really interested in killing off wildlife (laughs) in any way, shape, or form, so the presence of the dogs is a big part of keeping other predators away. We have treated wounds on our LGDs because they get scratched on things, so we like that our LGDs can be handled, even by our children if we need to hold them and treat wounds or injuries. - We have mainly Pyrenees.

They are quite friendly and nice. What people really like about them is that they are very intelligent and when they form a bond with the sheep, they stay out there. Our Pyrenees have a kind of half and half with the sheep, but they like people a little. - We actually have four dogs with this pack right now and that's a little excessive, but three of the dogs are young puppies that we are training. And what we have discovered is that it is good for them to follow an older dog, but also our older dogs, you can have accidents and we had a case where we lost one, one of our best dogs just before giving birth, and we had the other. dog down with a litter and we had nothing to protect our sheep during lambing, which is when these dogs probably work the hardest for us. (barking) So now we have a couple of dogs that are more withdrawn and don't come out and do as much.

We have two really strong dogs and we have three puppies that we are training (barking) that are not yet a year old. So they say it takes two years to make a good livestock guard dog and we would have to agree with that. They need to mature and become big and strong enough. Ours are here, you know, with the sheep all the time, even from a young age, and they learn very quickly. But, to be mature enough to handle all the situations they may encounter, they need two years to mature, so we try to always have a dog that is ready to take over if necessary. - They tend to be almost a little lazy, they sleep a lot, but then they work at night.

They do a lot of things at night. There may be a lot of things here that people don't know and it's good to learn and actually useful. - I think it has been good for them to learn how animals work, how they interact with each other, what we can do as people to take care of our animals. -Then, of course, if there is a problem with the lambs and the mother can't get them out of her, then sometimes we have to catch her and help her deliver the lamb. - That type of care can also translate into other skills, professions, life (laughs) in the future, showing care for the things that have been given to you, entrusted to you, you know, things that are your responsibility.

I think their respect for food and where our food comes from has also increased. (calm music) For me, a big part of this is also the ethical treatment of animals. I love animals, so I know we slaughter them for food, but I would like to know if they had a good, healthy, safe life up to that point. (calm music) (calm music becomes more cheerful) (sheep bleating)