Sheep Tomfoolery by Eugene Wyatt

Eugene's winning Best Fleeced Sheep, 1992

August, 2005

I had a lot of sheep; I bred the 200 ewes to my rams, every other ewe that didn't have a single lamb had twins, trips or quads, and I had a lot more sheep.  I began operating sheep on the commodity model: I trucked the lambs to auction and sold them to the highest bidder and I sold the wool to a broker but this income didn't cover the expense of keeping the flock.  The short grazing season in the Northeast meant that I had to overwinter the sheep on costly harvested forage.  Sheep breed optimism, I had high hopes: with the sale of lamb and wool, I would sell breeding stock to other sheep owners. This sounded very sensible then but as I look back it seems comical now: I saw that my sheep would become fearsome warriors in regional sheep shows as they vanquished the enemy ovines in the show ring; they would win ribbons, become known for the fineness of their wool and they would sell to the beaten breeders orto new breeders who wanted to get into merino sheep at good prices.

I had entered the pyramid world of the lamb jockey, sheep breeders who travel from state fair to state fair showing sheep to compete for prize money. Sheep shows were originally for showing sheep, breeders would get together, show each other their sheep; then perhaps trade a sheep to a fellow breeder, all very social and informational. Then came the idea of competition, and competition needed a marker, that marker being money which fostered the lamb jockey, always looking for a sheep buyer, the 'greater greedy  fool' that is the foundation of the pyramid scheme.

But my problem in the show ring was not with the lamb jockey, who would break any rule to win,  it was the negative correlation of sheep size to wool fiber diameter.  To have fine wool, one will have smaller sheep, but big sheep win in the ring.  And I did win in 1991, W-23 was a big sheep who won the Overall Champion Ram at the National Merino Show and in 1992 I had a ram, an offspring of one of my imported Aussie sires, that won the Best Fleeced Sheep in show, but he was smaller and I was committed to breeding fine wool; and, generation by generation, my sheep were going to get smaller as they got finer.  I also didn't like the idea of selling my sheep to someone who would breed them to  larger, coarser merinos to attempt to have the best of both worlds, fine wool, but of lesser quality,  on a large sheep, thereby negating what I had bred the sheep for.  And as much as I liked the thrill of competition, of winning, I wasn't selling enough breeding stock to cover the cost of showing sheep.

Bettina had had enough of my sheep tomfoolery and divorced me so in short, I ended up with a farm and  a  flock of 700 sheep who couldn’t feed themselves and me too.  The wholesale/commodity model of farming wasn't sustainable and neither was the breeding stock model and I no longer had a working spouse to prop up my sheep venture.  The sheep and I were free but we were in trouble.