Gary Johnson and I met again at his mother Eva’s house’s back yard to fill in the “rest of the Johnson Ranch story.” I asked Gary about his first memories which took him to recollections of his Dad Floyd Johnson’s commitment to breeding and raising for himself what had become a US Department of Agriculture-certified registered hybrid breed of sheep called Targhees.
After the end of World War II it became clear to sheep farmers all over the western United States that they were losing the now-global battle to influence the price of wool as a clothing commodity. Australia and New Zealand were raising wool sheep like Merino and Rambouillet on richer, greener pastureland at lower costs of production, including labor and property tax rates.
These “Down-under” stockmen were exporting their product all over the world and setting the global price for lamb and wool with lower operating expenses, thus better profits than US farmers could achieve. The American sheep band as counted by the USDA was declining dramatically in every state, and cattle were replacing sheep as the source of meat for the public’s table and fast food joints.
As it had in the past done to create Columbias, the Department after World War II crossed a number of registered breeds, Rambouillet, Lincoln, Corriedale, to create a hybrid, the Targhee. Part of the Targhee’s commercial value was in the amount and quality of its wool, but more important was the lambs’ large market size at spring sale time, up to 90 pounds or more. Floyd bought about 80 of these newly-created registered hybrids from a rancher near the Targhee National Forest in western Montana and began breeding the stock to become his whole sheep band and occasionally to sell to his Anderson Valley neighbors. He also crossed the Targhees with Suffolks to build his stock of rams. Suffolks also had a good rate of weight gain for its spring lambs and were narrower in the shoulders than Targhees, thus easier for ewes to lamb out in the hills on cold, wet winter days.
Gary’s sister Janese, also raised registered Targhee lambs, and as a member of the high school’s 4-H Club, regularly showed them at the Boonville Apple Fair and the Lake County Fair winning many blue ribbons for best of breed. There hangs today on the elevated weighing scale in the Johnson shearing corrals a large wooden sign saying “Janese Johnson, Registered Targhee Lambs.”
Gary described to me the complicated job of managing a band of some 4,000 sheep in the 1960s and 70s. The band was run on the 4,000-acre home ranch, on the leased 7,000 acre Palmer Ranch adjacent and further up Highway 253, and on the 1,300-acre Rickard Ranch east of Boonville, now known as Deer Meadows subdivision. On the home ranch and Palmer ranch the band was divided in two with the breeding ewes and rams along Anderson Creek and the Bald Hills, and the replacement yearling ewes fenced on a couple of hundred acres around the family home, barns south toward Burger Rock and the CDF fire station. At shearing time Floyd marked the breeding ewes with a blue “J” brand; the replacement yearling ewes received a red “J.
At the top of the Bald Hills, beside the fence line, there was a complete sub-ranch used regularly during the whole operating year. This “second home” included a line cabin to a resting place during multi-day activities, a hay barn for storing feed, and a shearing shed with all its accommodating corrals.
For the purpose of growing food supplements for the breeding sheep Floyd also fenced off about 30 acres from behind his and Eva’s house toward Burger Rock and the Fire Station. There he annually grew some oat hay, crown vetch and Sudan grass. Oat hay was a spring-harvested crop planted at first rain. The Sudan grass and vetch were planted in the spring, so these two required irrigation in summer with water supplied from Robinson Creek via a pump and distribution piping placed near the CDF Fire Station. The yield from the field was fed exclusively to the replacement ewe lambs in the nearby pasture.
Floyd also cultivated and grew oat hay at Dr. Banks’ home north of the Boonville middle school at Con Creek and for years grew permanent pasture on perhaps 50 acres on Lambert property across the Mountain View Road from the High School and at the Palmer property west of Highway 128 near home, now Penny Royal Farm and vineyard.
As I used to drive up Mountain View Road on my way to the Boonville dump, I would see an old, crippled hay baler rusting away on the east side of the field uncultivated for years. No more. It disappeared sometime in the last decade or so, junked or salvaged.
More sad as you head over the hill to Ukiah on 253, there is a vast array of farming equipment including a German brand wheeled tractor of a name I’ve never heard of, Deutz Fahr, probably 60 years old, a lot of cultivation equipment, two hay balers, a tractor pulled road grader, and an ancient 20 foot long 1962 International flatbed truck, used to haul wool and old ewes for sale at the Ukiah auction.
Gary went on to describe to me the annual agenda for his family’s sheep band management. The process begins in late August by “flushing” the breeding ewes. More specifically they were put on heavily grazed pasture for a month to sharpen their appetites. Then in September, they were moved to rich undergrazed pastures and fed supplementary food, often nutritious, expensive alfalfa. This flushing cycle encouraged a vigorous sex-drive in their three week ovulation cycle. The rams, who also have been invigorated with alfalfa, are then, as the early rains begin in late September-early October and November, are put in with the ewe band to do their breeding jobs.
The gestation cycle for sheep is about five months, so lamb birthing would begin in January and continue into February and March. The births for the most part occurred up in the hills, so Floyd and Gary would go up to the top of the ranch almost daily to check on the flock, see if any lambs were stuck in the birth canal, or more likely to look for evidence of predators upon the lambs: bobcats, coyote, panther, eagles, etc.
In March began lamb management, more specifically marking and docking. The former involved castrating the buck lambs to prepare them for market as “wethers.” This was done with a tool placing a rubber ring up the animal’s testes bag above the gonads. Restricting the blood flow to the balls meant the skin there dried up in a week and the balls fell off painlessly. “Marking” is the term for removing the tails from all lambs for health reasons. An Italian-made tool called a Burdizzo, clamped and snipped the boneless cartilege between the tail bones closest to their rear ends. If the clamp were held in place for half a minute or less after the snip, the lamb’s remaining tail stub bled very little and stopped altogether in a few minutes.
Last event of the lambing cycle occurred in late May and early June. The whole band was rounded up at the shearing corrals to shear the ewes and bucks and to clean burrs, thistles other obvious prominent range waste from the lambs’ wool. All sheep to continue as part of next year’s band were then checked for pests like ticks and lice, disease like footrot, liver flukes, or broken teeth. Aged ewes with worn-down teeth were separated from the band and sent to the auction over the hill in Ukiah.
Replacement lambs for the aged “broken-mouth” ewes were also separated from the band, about 20-25% of the market stock. They were placed on the fenced pasture next to the cultivated fields whose product fed them all summer and fall.
In 1988, Floyd sold the Bald Hills piece of the Johnson Ranch to a partnership of city people from Santa Rosa, who use the place as a weekend retreat and hunting club. And as the lamb and wool industry in Mendocino County and the rest of The West continued its decline they gradually converted the rest of the grazing lands to running cattle.
Today the ranch comprises about 2,000 acres, mostly cows with about 300 Targhees on the home place. Gary and his children, JR and Nichole also run cows, mostly Angus, on the Day Ranch, and the Prather and Rawles ranches, altogether about 250 head on a total of 11,000 acres.
The conversion of the Johnson Ranch from sheep to cows tells the story of the decline and fall of sheep herding in Anderson Valley since I moved here in 1971. Driving to Ukiah or Cloverdale back then I would see bands all the way to Mehtonen’s place above Cole Valley, and along Highway 128 to south of Yorkville on Butch Hill and Glenn Johnson Ranches. No more. But at least among the vineyards and second home subdivisions there are a few bands of sheep on the Reilly, Prather and Johnson “Blue Jay” ranch. Sic transit gloria oves.
Be First to Comment