Shear Profit : Sheep Breeders Travel Wild and Woolly State Fair Circuit
There are a few things you may not know about sheep. If you shave their bellies, they seem taller. Hair spray keeps them looking good throughout a contest. And every time you shampoo them, you have to clip their wool again.
Those were the grooming tips circulating at the Orange County Fairgrounds on Tuesday as sheep ranchers prepared for the evening’s livestock judging.
Ironically, only one of the two dozen contestants registered in this year’s competition is an Orange County rancher--and he decided at the last minute not to attend. Instead, the competitors are from Bakersfield, Riverside, San Bernardino, even Coolidge, Ariz. They are an itinerant band who travel a circuit of California fairs that begins in June in Del Mar, followed by Orange County, Victorville and Pomona.
Their profits come from prize money and the sale of sheep for breeding. One good show can bring in $500; the sale of one ram, $300.
“I see my fair family more than I see my related family,” said Penny O’Brien of Bloomington, a San Bernardino suburb. “I let that slip to my mother once, and she’s still irritated.”
O’Brien’s daughter, Kelly, raises 80 sheep on five acres and nets about $3,000 a year toward her college tuition.
As many as 67 prizes, ranging in value from $12 to $30, may be awarded at this year’s open competition in Orange County.
Show-quality lambs can be identified about three months after they are born. Ranchers look for body length and structure, muscling and something called confirmation--basically good posture for sheep.
Most ranchers in Southern California pursue the business as a sideline. But other parts of the state raise enough of the animals to rank California second among the nation’s sheep-producing states. In 1990, California produced about 10% of the nation’s sheep, or $44.6 million worth, compared with Texas’ 17%, or nearly $76 million worth. California’s sheep production is concentrated in the central counties of Kern, Solano, Imperial, Fresno and Merced.
But Southern California was once home to an annual migration of sheep. Ranchers moved their herds from the Mojave Desert in early spring to graze in the valleys of the Southland. When towns and cities began getting in the way, ranchers would truck sheep from one field to another. A rancher or two near Ontario in the eastern Los Angeles basin still do that, said Flint Freeman, a professor of agricultural education at Cal Poly Pomona.
Freeman is one of this year’s exhibitors at the Orange County Fair’s sheep competition, which began Monday and ends today. He is also a customer. His school buys sheep from the ranchers, as do 4-H and Future Farmers of America groups. The annual judging gives ranchers a way to reach that market, and prize-winning ewes and rams become all the more valuable.
“I consider it like advertising,” said Page Jacobs, an exhibitor who raises sheep as the Wooly Sheep Co. in Coolidge, Ariz. She and her husband, Norton, started raising sheep when their children were involved in the 4-H Club at school. Their 100 sheep are now a profitable sideline for Norton, a dentist, and Page, a receptionist in his office.
The Jacobses raise karakuls, longhaired sheep that are native to Afghanistan and are on the endangered-species list. Almost every karakul in the United States comes from the Jacobses’ stock: They sold one ewe to Cal Poly Pomona a few years ago--a legendary sheep named Spider Woman--whose descendants are now beating the Jacobses’ entries on the fairs circuit.
While the competition can be profitable, Kelly O’Brien said, it’s more for love than money that she raises sheep. “Some people like poodles, some people like goats,” she said as she sheared a ewe’s hind legs. “Why I like them, I’m still trying to figure out.”
Counting Sheep
Counting sheep is only a dream these days in many parts of the state. The number of stock sheep--the reproducing herd--has been stable in Orange County for several years but has dipped in the rest of Southern California. Statewide, the number of sheep-producing operations has dropped from 7,000 in 1983 to 5,500 last year. Below, the numbers of stock sheep in six counties since 1987.
Year Orange Los Angeles Riverside San Bernardino San Diego Imperial 1987 * 18,000 12,000 20,000 1,000 11,000 1988 100 20,000 22,000 20,000 1,200 200 1989 100 19,800 21,800 19,800 1,200 200 1990 100 18,500 19,000 20,300 400 200 1991 100 18,000 19,000 19,000 500 200
* Fewer than 100
Source: Marketing Services Division and Agricultural Statistics branches of the state Department of Food and Agriculture
Researched by ANNE MICHAUD and DALLAS M. JACKSON / Los Angeles Times
