Shearing Day 1

I am beat right now. Which perhaps begs the question why I am here in my office at 10:18 posting this when I should be curled up in bed?

In any case today was a relatively easy beginning to what will either be a 3 or 4 day adventure depending on how hard we push things tomorrow and Saturday. The official shear list this year has 217 names on it which includes everyone from 6 month olds who haven’t quite left their dams yet (next week kiddos!) to a few older imported girls that are 18+ years old .

Today we tackled the Main Barn animals which included all weaned juveniles, visiting females, and our entire male and female show strings. Though it was fun to see those fleeces come off, I do worry that by starting out with the knee-biters today that we may have set ourselves up for a rather more challenging start to day 2. Tomorrow we start with the Herdsires of the Stud Barn and they are not apt to be as forgiving of our rustiness. As it was Jason and I, who act as the take-down duo probably 90% of the time, almost got our asses kicked a couple of times today by some 10 month olds. What happens early tomorrow when we take on our first testosterone-driven 200 pounder??? If nothing else it will provide mirth for the rest of the crew. Off to bed now…