The first of the two annual harvests, spring and fall, that mark the sheepman's life is now in full swing. Utah's half-million sheep are losing their winter coats.
Soon after the shearing, the ewes will be dropping their lambs. Those lambs will come off the summer grazing allotments next fall weighing around 90 pounds, if forage conditions are good, and be shipped to the feed lots and the meat counters.The lambs are the sheepman's second harvest.
Unlike a half-century ago, when the herds were trailed in from the winter range on Utah's deserts, the ewes are usually trucked in now to their owners' corrals, sheds and lambing grounds.
It's a critical period for the industry, because cold, wet weather can cause heavy losses of the newborn lambs and even sometimes of the ewes that have lost their fleeces if a storm is very severe.
Helping the spring harvest along now are the mobile shearing outfits that travel to places like Wah Wah, Antelope Valley, Flat Canyon and Christianburg.
The Johnson Brothers, headquartered in Manti, will shear in Sanpete, Sevier and Emery counties, removing fleece from around 25,000 to 30,000 sheep during a season that began in early March and will end about the middle of May.
The Johnsons' mobile unit includes a pickup equipped with a generator that supplies the electricity that powers the clippers and a specially-designed trailer.
The sheep move up a long chute on one side of the trailer, enter through small doors, lose their fleece in about three minutes.
The Johnsons will shear 800 head a day at $2 a head.