 I'm John Michael Bearden with Riverside Ranch here in Hot Spring County to talk a little bit about our sheep operation. First off, how do you know that you need a shear? This lovely example we have, she's one of our heavy breads, you can tell she has wool that's about three to four inches long. It is time for her shearing. One of the things we like to do is shear once a year in the spring so that we can go ahead and clean her off and she can have a productive year. In our operation we do mutton busting for the rodeos in the area so we have to kind of plan around that so we have to let our wool grow a little bit longer than what we care for. She probably is ready for her shearing. When we go ahead and shear her, I'm not good enough to shear her without a stand. So I go ahead and I'll throw her on the stand, I'll shear her out right here standing and it's pretty simple. When we talk about professional shears, the world record is 37.9 seconds. That's crazy, it takes me at least five minutes of lamb to do this. But they can grab her by the head, come here, and they'll hold her and through pressure points on the head, the back drops, they can flip her over and they'll start at the head and work all the way out and in one long swoop and keeping all of her wool the same completely sheared. If you get a chance to go watch that video or watch some YouTube videos, it is amazing to see how fast they shear these. Do we raise sheep in confinement? For us we do, we do not have this group of sheep on pasture. They stay in the barn the majority of their life, they have a little bit of an outdoor run where they can get some sunshine. We provide all the water, the hay, and the feed for them. This group for the future we will be putting them on pasture this coming year now that our fences are in place. But a lot of commercial producers are starting to find ways to use old chicken houses, build their own barns, and design a system that allows sheep to be raised in confinement on accelerated breeding programs. Those systems are pretty cool if you actually start looking in and doing the research on them. The question is, are sheep dumb? Do they have dumb tendencies? Yes. I think they're pretty smart. They know how to unlock a gate. They know that if there's a hole that they can go through it. They even know that if you leave that gate partially open that they can slip in and out. They take the time to run around you and know not to go back in the hole. For being so dumb they sure do know their way around getting our blood pressure up. Feed reaction and feeding any type of animal is a tricky business. Biggest thing is you need to have clean water and you need to have fresh feed. With the confinement system you're going to be providing not only the feed but the nutrients, the minerals, the vitamins, and making sure that you're putting those mineral packs into that confinement system. For us we have a local feed mill that puts together about a 14% ration for our breeding use and then we use a show right show feed on all of our lambs as they're growing out. We found that going ahead and buying that higher dollar feed puts a little bit better finish and grows out those lambs better. On pasture you can get away with not having as much feed because they're getting that nutrient base from the grass. But in any situation when grass is short or in confinement you have to have really good quality hay or else you're going to lose condition on your youth. When we talk about cast and casting luckily we have not had that happen here on this farm but it's where a bred you just like this one she'll get down she'll lay down and because of the way the she holds her baby she can't get herself back up and she will actually end up rolling all the way onto her back with her legs straight up in the air and if you see this you want to go ahead and get to her as quickly as possible roll her over and when you roll her over her whole side will look like she's bloated that's because everything moved around while she was upside down it's just one of those lovelinesses that you have to deal with when you're pregnant. When we talk about wool sheep and hair sheep they are yes they are both sheep but their purposes are different their environments are a little bit different. Wool sheep can be broke down into a fine wool a long wool or a medium wool. For us we like the medium wool it is designed for meat production and the quality of wool is not as great as that is the long wool or the fine wool. Hair sheep just like any other animal on the farm kind of like your cows your horses they have a hair follicle it will shed it will replenish itself and there's not that maintenance side whereas with wool animals we do have to shear them once a year it's recommended once a year to go in in the spring shear them out clean them up and let them come in but once you shear you need to make sure that you are providing them the shade from the sun and protection from the cold cold days because if you pull that wool off of them then they don't have that protection. When we talk sheep and something that makes them unique it is their eyes if you look into them most sheep have brown eyes and either they're going to have a full pupil or some of them actually have a slit within that eye if you start looking at that slit and kind of playing with it it actually moves and it what it's doing is it is controlling the amount of light that is entering that eye so that they can see better during the day or at night and it that's how they adjust their eyes. Let's talk weight this wool once this lamb is sheared it's going to weigh between five and seven pounds some of your fine wool and your long wool breeds they're going to produce over 10 pounds of wool per shearing. Now what's that worth? For me it's not something that we worry about because because of our setup and the amount of dirt that we have in our environment and the amount of rain our wool is not quality it has too many impurities in it but you take others that can raise in a true confinement with the proper bedding and being able to prevent that water in that or that arid climate where they don't have the dirt in the wool near as bad market price right now is about a dollar and ninety a pound people will buy it that way they can make their nice clothing they can use it for all kinds of other products. As we're talking about grazing sheep and how to benefit not only your sheep herd but your grass let's throw cattle in there the question is can cattle and sheep be grazed together that they can. A lot of guys use the cows first and they're going to go through and they're going to eat a type of grass and then after that you come in with your sheep and graze after your cows what it is is these sheep eat a different grass than your cows they're going to eat your weeds they're going to eat your plants that are less desirable to your cows having a good rotational program allows for that grass to grow for not only the cow side but with the sheep going on top of that and finishing up right behind it it actually allows that grass to have more nutrients more protein and will make a healthier herd let's talk parasites when you take your cows across that in your rotationally grazing and then you follow it up the worms can't affect your sheep like your cows and so you're actually creating the cycles to where the parasites can't grow and you can actually reduce your amount of parasites on your place by rotationally grazing