UPCOMING SHOWS

MEDICA 2011 - November 16-19, 2011 - Hall 3, Stand 3C16-20
Dusseldorf, Germany

NEWS

Spring Shearing

April 2011 - As April rolled in with Spring in tow, a 7-person crew rolled in to Quad Five with a sheep shearing wagon in tow. The group consisted of 3 men from New Zealand, a man from Australia and another from Wisconsin, a woman from England and another from Montana. This diverse group all came with the same mission: to separate the sheep from their wool.

Shearing sheep is beneficial in several ways. It helps keep the animal cool during the summer months to avoid overheating and heat stroke. Removing the wool on a yearly basis also helps with mobility and parasite control. Although the sheep at Quad Five are not bred while they are here, shearing often occurs before lambing which allows for a cleaner lambing environment and keeps the wool cleaner.

After eating a hot breakfast, the shearing crew heads out to the portable shearing shed to get started. The day is broke out into 4 - 2 hour segments allowing for a morning and afternoon break as well as a lunch hour.

A couple of Quad Five men push the sheep up a ramp where the sheep wait for their turn to be shorn and sent out a small door on the back of the wagon. Although it might be a bit of a shock at first, there was a sheep or two that reveled in their newly acquired weightlessness and jumped and frolicked as they made their way from the shearing shed to the pen where food and water was awaiting them. 

On average, professional shearers can shear a single sheep in 2-3 minutes.  But, we did not have average professional shearers. The lead shearer, Matthew Smith from New Zealand, just so happened to have set a World Shearing Record at age 25. In January of 2010, Smith set an eight hour ewe shearing record of 578, with an overall average of 1.2 minutes per sheep. The other four men who were shearing were no slackers either, and together with Smith sheared around 1,200 sheep per day at Quad Five.

The back and sides of the sheep are taken off in one piece; this piece is called the fleece. The wool shorn from the legs and belly is dirtier and is taken off separately. The wool is pushed under the waiting sheep out the opposite side of the shed the sheep are released from. The two women with the crew stood outside the shed to collect the wool. The fleece is collected and placed in the baler, while the loose wool is collected and placed in bags on either end of the shed. The fleece wool is collected and compressed in a nylon bag; the filled and tied bales average approximately 400lbs per bale. A skirted fleece from a single sheep can range from 8 to 10 pounds depending on the size of the sheep, with around 60 skirted fleece per bale.

After four days of shearing at Quad Five, the shearing crew rolled out with their shearing shed in tow, the shorn sheep the only evidence of their visit. The Spring weather, however, was here to stay awhile.

Quad Five's Four-Legged Workers

June 2010 - Like all good ranches, Quad Five is not at a loss when it comes to dogs.  However, at Quad Five, man's best
friend also becomes man's co-worker, as Quad Five utilizes Border Collies and Great Pyrenees around the ranch.  Speck
and Blaze are Border Collies whose main enjoyment in life is to help move and work the livestock.  In fact, you just try to
go move sheep without them!  You'll hear nothing but whining and whimpering unless they're allowed to help.  The Great Pyrenees are not named, because they are not considered pets, but strictly workers that guard the various sheep flocks at
all times.  If you treat Great Pyrenees like pets, they will abandon their posts and leave their sheep flocks open to the attack
of predators.  Still, as Great Pyrenees are generally white, Quad Five's four Great Pyrenees are nicknamed "The Whiteys."

            Cesar, Blaze, Ramiro, & Speck                               Whitey                                    Dunny & Border Collies

A Busy Time of Year

July 2010 - It's haying season and Quad Five is in top gear striving to cut, rake, bale, haul, and stack all of the bales
of hay off of three pivot fields in the shortest amount of time as possible.  This is a never ending cycle during the
summer months.  As one field is cleared, the center-pivot, a method of crop irrigation, is started up again so that new
alfalfa can grow and replace that which was just cut.  It takes about 1 month for the new alfalfa to grow before a swather
cuts it.  It is then allowed to lay and dry for several days, after which time it is raked, forming one row out of two. 
Next, it is baled into round bales weighing approximately 1,500 pounds each.  The baling takes place during the cool
hours of the morning, when there is still dew on the ground.  This is so that the leaves of the plants are not so apt to
fall of the stem.  Once the field is baled, two men, one running a tractor and one running a haul truck, work long hours
to haul the bales off the field and stack them in a hay yard.  Then once again the cycle repeats itself.  Amazingly
all of this takes place on top of Quad Five's usual work load of bleeding, feeding, and caring for its donor livestock...
a truly busy time of year.