Published: November 29, 2006 03:03 pm            

Nearing a million — Veteran shearer cuts with the times

Never less than 100 ewes, and 250 are even better if you’re thinking about getting into the sheep business.

That’s the advice of a real veteran, Howard Thomas of Olivia, who celebrated his 56th year of sheep shearing in 2006 and estimates that he has shorn between 850,000 and 900,000 head in his career.

Today, at age 74, Thomas is enthusiastic about the sheep business. “There’s never been a time when the sheep industry is as profitable as it is right now,” he said. For the beginner, he even suggests the breed: Polypay ewes, then once you get your flock established run two Polypay bucks plus some Suffolk bucks.

“The Polypay give you prolificacy. A 200-percent lamb crop is very doable and that’s important any time, but especially when building your flock. The Suffolk bucks produce a lamb better for feeding. Use the Polypay rams on your ewe lambs,” he said.

Sheep numbers dwindling
He recalled in the 1970s when shearing at Gettysburg, S.D., he had five shearing jobs of 1,000 ewes. Today there’s virtually no sheep left in that area. When he started shearing back in the early 1950s the United States raised about 55 million sheep. Today that number has shrunk to about 6 million.

Thomas said he feels the industry has shrunk because the older sheep men have died or retired, and the younger guys just don’t want to do the work of being a sheep producer.

“Back in the ’50s and ’60s they bragged about getting $12 for their lambs. Today they’re getting $100 to $125 a head for their lambs and there’s no sheep. I just don’t understand what’s happened.”

He thinks many young men raised on sheep farms might have got a bad taste for sheep because often their dad didn’t shear before lambing. “That’s a mess. They’re wet and sloppy and hard to handle. Today most producers shear prior to lambing and it’s a piece of cake.”

He questions too the practice of earlier shed lambing versus later pasture lambing. “One couple with shed lambing can handle 250 ewes. If they lamb on grass, they can take care of 1,200 ewes.”

Despite the labor advantage of pasture lambing, Thomas has only three or four customers who practice pasture lambing. “They’re sticking about $700 per acre in their pocket for pasture lambing. I don’t see how you can make land more profitable.”

Pasture lambing means delaying until about May 10. “You want good growth of your pasture grass before your ewes start lambing. But you can keep right on pasture lambing until mid-June and still have enough season to grow your lambs for the fall, early winter markets.”

He mentioned a customer selling pasture lambs Oct. 4 or 5 weighing 139 pounds and he got 97 cents. Thomas indicated heavier lambs are worth more currently, but be cautious. “Get too many heavy lambs into the market and they can tank real quickly. Because of the heat this summer, lambs didn’t gain normally so heavier lambs later this fall are likely.”

He related to last year when the market kept paying for heavier lambs but when it stalled out, it really stalled. “Some producers kept on feeding their lambs, soon they were up to 175 pounds and the market plunged to 35 cents. That’s the very worst predicament, so pay close attention to these markets when your lambs get to 135 to 140 pounds is what I tell my customers.”

Thomas gives a forthright reason for getting into the shearing business 56 years ago: “Basically it was money. My father-in-law was working for $35 a week. I got 35 cents a head shearing lambs so that was $35 a day shearing 100 head or better. I used to do 150 to 200 head a day occasionally but I was at 100-head a day consistently. It’s not hard to shear 20,000 head a year. My better years 32,000 per year was the number. You only need shear 56 lambs a day, six days a week to do 20,000.”

His three older brothers taught Thomas the skills of shearing. They had learned from a veteran South Dakota shearer. “He came to our farm to shear. My oldest brother started with him in 1928 and there’s been a sheep shearer in our family every since.”

Thomas prefers to do the bulk of his shearing in feedlots. He recalled one feedlot job where he was routinely shearing 14,000 head every season. He often lined up 10 to 12 other shearers to assist with the bigger feedlot jobs.

“At one time my three brothers and I each ran a crew. In our best sheep days, when we worked out of the Lakefield area, we’d have as many as 20,000 head called in on a weekend,” Thomas said.

He doesn’t like to admit it, but he’s one of a vanishing breed of livestock professionals. “Today I doubt there are more than 25 shearers in Minnesota. And we shear other than just here. I have regular customers in South Dakota and Iowa, as well as Minnesota. I like to stay within 250 miles. You get out farther and it costs too much money to come home.”

What’s ahead?
Thomas, who still has good health and enough muscle power to handle even 200-pound ewes, has a goal to go until he’s 80, then slow down. “Three square meals a day and plenty of sleep seems to work best for me.”

Once upon a time, wool values were high enough to pay for the shearing costs. “But that disappeared long ago. Every time wool reaches $1 it seems to soon slide to a dime. I’ve seen that happen four or five times in my 56 years of shearing. Right now the wool market has stayed dead the longest I have ever seen it. It usually takes four to five years and the wool market comes back. Today it’s 40, 50, 60 cents for this medium-grade wool. If you’ve got real fine wool today (grading 64 or better), it’s worth 70 cents. But the black-face lambs, maybe only 25 cents today. That’s doesn’t come close to cover shearing costs.”

Thomas charges $2.50 or more for shearing lambs ($3 if you only have 50 head or less). On ewes, if they are jumbos (real big) it could be $5 to $6 per head; normal sized ewes and plenty of them cost $4.

For a sheep shearer, this size thing is a real issue. Thomas said sheep today are much bigger than when he first started. “There are a lot of ewes weighing 250 to 300 pounds. Keep that coming and you soon won’t find shearers to do the job. A young man starting to shear just won’t want to handle these bigger critters. I do have a method. The farmer has to help me but I can get the wool off these 250-pound ewes and it’s very time consuming.”

Why the trend to bigger sheep? Thomas points at the fairs. “It seems to take a big animal to win so that’s what they start breeding for. They keep the very best ewe lambs for replacement. Years back they needed the money from the ewe lambs so they sold the bigger ewe lambs and kept the smaller.”

Idle acres to blame for fewer sheep
Thomas admits this could be only his theory but with literally a million acres now tied up in Conservation Reserve Program and other conservation programs, this is land no longer available for pasture. “This has hurt the sheep industry tremendously.”

He still has nearly as many customers but they don’t have the numbers like they used to have. “When we moved to Lakefield in 1950, there were five sheep feedlots within 15 miles of town that each maintained at least 5,000 head of lambs. Today there is not a sheep at Lakefield. Today we have only three feedlots in the Olivia area and they maintain only 1,000 to 1,500 head. So the numbers just aren’t there like they used to be.”

Where he used to be running four to five men shearing this time of year, now he has a challenge keeping himself busy each day.

His wool gets shipped to Groenewold Fur & Wool Co. of Forreston, Ill. “They’re the biggest and best in the wool business. They send a semi trailer up here as needed.”

Thomas loads wool into burlap sacks, weighing 175 to 200 pounds when stuffed full. He prefers to buy his farm wool on a grade and yield basis, saying that way the producer gets what his wool is actually worth. The biggest problem with wool is what he calls “tippy wool,” meaning wool dirtied with mud and manure.

Medium-grade wool runs 48 to 56; finer wools grade 56 to 64; and occasionally real fine wool like from a Merino can grade up to 72. Lambs coming out of Texas often grade 64, but put in feedlots up here with a high-protein finishing ration and that grade often drops to 60.

These more aggressive feed rations are growing a different fleece, Thomas said. “Sheep don’t comb like they used to. I can tell when I’m shearing, the condition of the fleece. The ones that comb and cut good, it just seems like the wool falls off as I’m shearing.”

Thomas hesitates to do November-December shearing on young lambs. “I prefer waiting ’til February. The hardest cold punch is over by then.”

Also he sees few Texas lambs moving into Upper Midwest feedlots anymore. “They just don’t gain. You often have a 10 percent death loss. It seems like 15 to 20 percent of them just don’t adapt up here. They’ve been running dry, poor pastures in Texas. I think their stomachs haven’t had a chance to develop.”

Equipment in shearing is key to doing good work and doing it rapidly. Much like farming, sheep shearing equipment costs are climbing. Thomas said a new hand piece cost him $27.50 when he started shearing. Today that hand piece costs $575 and comes from Australia. Steel combs that used to cost $1.25 are now $32. Cutters that used to be 25 cents are $6.25.

        

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