Archive All Issues April 1944

Arizona Easter Lambs

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Featured in the April 1944 Issue of Arizona Highways

Mountain ranges afford grazing for breeding herds in summer before the long trek to the southern valleys for lambing.
Mountain ranges afford grazing for breeding herds in summer before the long trek to the southern valleys for lambing.

Often for the early market. A herder is placed with each band of ewes, usually there are from 400 to 500 in each band and special care is given the flock during lambing. A 24-hour vigil is kept over the flock and some operators pen them in at night and feed dry hay, but the majority of producers leave them right in the fields all the time. The little lambs often times need help in nursing for the first time and the herder must see that the ewes claim their lambs. It happens many times that a ewe will lose her lamb and in order to induce her to claim a twin lamb that needs more milk the herder will skin the dead lamb, place the pelt on the lamb to be adopted, and in nearly all cases the ewe will claim it as her own. The average number of lambs raised per flock is slightly over 100 per cent meaning that there are enough twin lambs born to make up for the death loss. The 1944 crop will not quite reach 100 per cent because of poor breeding conditions on the range during the spring. These little potential lamb chops are then turned out on the pastures with their mothers and the job of lamb production gets under way. In about 30 to 60 days they are put into corrals and the job of ear marking, docking, castrating and branding with sheep paint gets under way. Every grower has his ear mark and brand so they may be identified if they should happen to get separated from the herd and stray away. It is a very picturesque sight to see these thousands of ewes and their lambs grazing on the green pastures of the valley dur-ing the winter. Every operator is anxious to keep his flock on good pasture so the ewes will furnish plenty of milk for the lambs. A large percentage of sheep men rent pasture from farmers, string around their own wire and keep a herder and his faithful dog with the sheep all the time. Pasture averages about three cents per head per day this year.

About 90 per cent of the operators in the state own Rambouil-let ewes. Rambouillets are a fine wool breed originating in Spain. They have excellent foraging ability and shear, on the average, about 10 pounds of wool per ewe. The wool is long, fine, with plenty of crimp and sells higher on the market than wool from the mutton breeds. The money received from the wool clip is a big help in paying the costs of operating the herd and the higher the grade the more it brings per pound. Hamp-shires and Suffolks are mutton breeds and rams of these breeds are crossed on the Rambouillet ewes to produce a cross bred lamb with a black face and usually black legs. These mutton type rams crossed on the fine wool ewes produce a lamb with excellent mutton qualities. They have short, low set bodies, wide backs and loins and a leg of lamb that is full and deep. It also fattens faster and more uniformly than straight bred Rambouillets. They will weigh heavier at marketing time which is very important.

A good many of the sheep men graze their rams cooperatively during the off season. They put them all in one herd, hire a herder and share expenses. They are all ear marked so it is easy for each breeder to identify his rams when they are ready to use them in the spring.

It takes about one hundred and fifty days to get Mary's little lamb ready for market. They start to roll to market about the last week in March to the first week in April and continue for about six weeks. In the early days the market discriminated against lambs that weighed over 80 pounds, but the modern Mrs. Homemaker and her family like larger lamb chops. The marketing weight last year averaged 88 pounds-from eight to ten pounds heavier than usual. This will be about the average weight for the 1944 crop and likely will continue in fu-ture years. These choice luscious lamb carcasses were demand-ed by the eastern market exclusively in past years and about 85 per cent of the crop was shipped to Kansas City to be redis-tributed from there. It is interesting, however, that 85 per cent of the 1943 crop went to west coast markets and this year's crop is following suit. The reason for this is the shift in popu-lation types as well as numbers on the coast. Huge trucks back up to the loading chutes and whiz away with the majority of the lambs when they are shipped west but when they go east they roll by train.

Arizona-produced milk-fed lambs are doing a double duty performance and the sheep industry of the state is plunging full speed ahead to produce more lambs next year.