It's not often I get into a discussion about sheep, much less with a rancher's widowed wife, but there we were in the Petro Truck Stop in Fargo waiting to board the bus for the last leg home from our trip to Branson. I was using my ears as antennae to ferret out interesting conversation, and I picked up that signal and tuned in. We talked breeds. She liked the Rambouillets because you could grab them by their horns and wrestle them to where you wanted them to go. Her son and his wife operated the place now, but she still helped out. They leaned to the Suffolk breed of sheep, a disappointing fact to her: they were too stubborn and were poor mothers besides. I asked if there was any money to be made now in sheep, and she shook her head no. They had to haul their last wool crop to Billings to sell at an almost give-away price.
I thought back to my life with sheep as a boy. Dad liked to buy inexpensive broken-mouthed Columbia bred ewes from Montana. Broken-mouth meant they were old and had lost many of their teeth. They usually proved to be a sound purchase, however, since we'd get one crop of lambs and one clipping of wool from them, then sell them again, the whole affair usually earning some profit.
One time Dad thought he'd like to buy a Southdown buck for breeding and found one that had won a blue ribbon at the Red River Valley Fair. It was a nice looking animal, and he got turned in with the ewes to earn his keep. Alas, something went wrong. He got sick and died. There was no way of telling how many ewes he'd bred, so another buck of lesser quality took his place. In the spring the results of the high-powered breeding plan proved meager. Only one lamb of recognizable Southdown characteristics roamed about the barnyard. Luckily, it was a young buck, and he grew to be his father's replacement.
