BUM LAMBS by Mary Flitner

In the 1960’s when I married and came to live in Northern Wyoming, more than 300,000 domestic sheep grazed the Bighorn Mountains.  Few sheep ranches survived the economic struggle of the following decades; empty sheep-wagons parked in a few back yards are what remains of that proud industry.  Our family is among those who no longer raise sheep, but we re-tell stories which keep our history alive.

Here in the Shell Valley, we and other ranchers “shed-lambed”, which means lambs are birthed inside a giant shed.  (In other places the norm is to lamb “out” which means the ewes lamb unattended, on the range.  Pro’s and cons, each way.)  Shed-lambing, if a ewe hasn’t sufficient milk to raise a set of twins, her extra lamb might be saved to graft on a different ewe if weak lambs died.  Often the lambs left over are bottle-fed and raised by the ranch kids.  Most people with experience agree that bum lambs can be the cutest and the most aggravating of all the Lord’s creatures. 

One year when our kids were small, they had six or seven bums they’d named, fed, tended and kept alive contrary to a sheep’s born determination to die.  By summer the lambs weighed about eighty pounds and followed the kids like house-pets, all over the ranch.  Those bums were absolutely everywhere – in the flower beds, the yard, the garage or even the house if somebody left the door open – generally out of their pen and in the way.  The lambs got a good cussing several times a day amid threats to turn them into a big lamb stew.

Our ranch payday came in August, when we shipped the market lambs straight off the mountain range.  At the Battle Creek corral, we’d sort a thousand or so lambs away from the ewes and then trail them down several miles where they could be loaded on semi-trucks.  It would be a busy, trying day, because mistakes could result in extra “shrink” or loss of pounds thus dollars, on the lambs. 

We expected trouble at “The Rockpile” - a half mile of boulders nearly vertical with a trail winding through.  After all was said and done, nobody would admit to creating the plan of action:  to use the bum lambs as Judas goats or lead sheep – you know the expression “follow like sheep”.  In the plan, the kids Carol and Tim would lead their favorite pets (Toby and Jumper), the other half-dozen bums would follow and then the other thousand would, too.  It seemed like such a great idea we’d hauled the bums up from home, and the kids were excited about being a part of things.

After staying the night before at the mountain cabin, we started work at dawn on a cold mountain morning, corralling and then sorting the lambs from the ewes.  I still remember that beautiful sight when we started them down the trail - a white, sprawling mass, spilling over Snowshoe Pass.  My husband Stan and the kids walked confidently with the herder and his dogs.  Practically a scene from “Heidi”. 

At the Rockpile, The Great Plan fell apart immediately:  the band of sheep took one look at the rocks and began to mill.  Everything turned into noisy, bleating pandemonium; Stan and the herder yelling; the dogs barking, the kids crying – me watching helplessly from the pickup at the top of the Pass.  Carol and Tim couldn’t even drag their pet lambs off the first ledge – Toby and Jumper pulled away and escaped, got swallowed up with the other bums into the big bunch. Stan finally grabbed one of the bums and wrestled it the first few steps down through the rocks and somehow, sheep began to follow and then all of them clambered down the trail

The trucks were waiting at corrals near the Shell Ranger Station.  While my father-in-law Howard and the truckers wasted no time filling the trucks, the kids ran from pen to pen looking for their bums.  In a thousand look-alikes it was impossible.  The chute-gates closed and the trucks pulled away.   

To make matters worse, by then the sheepherder had found a bottle of whiskey he’d stashed for the occasion, and he was swigging down Southern Comfort and mourning his loss..  “Poor little things”, he said.  “Yup, by this time tomorrow they’ll be hangin’ on a meathook”.  Which wasn’t even true, but there was no convincing Carol and Tim and they cried even harder.  I tried to tell them that Howard and Stan would find the bums in Worland at the scales, where the buyer would weigh the sheep and write the paycheck, but we were a gloomy crew heading off the mountain in the pickup.

When Stan got home, he had to tell us that he’d failed to find the bums.  The kids were heartbroken, and Stan and I were disappointed, too.  “I tried,” he said.  “I really tried.  I looked through every damned pen.  I just couldn’t find them.  I can’t figure it out.”

We sat down for supper, but nobody was hungry, and the kids kept glaring at us.  When the phone rang Stan jumped for it, anxious to escape.  We heard him say “You did?  Really.  Well, I’ll be damned.  We’ll be right up.  Thanks.”

He shared the news – Toby and Jumper and the other bums were fine, grazing around the Shell Ranger Station lawn.  In short order they’d had enough of being real sheep; they’d separated themselves out from the bunch before we ever got to the corrals and they’d found a spot to rest.  The District Ranger had found them on the porch at the Ranger Station that evening and was anxious to get rid of them. 

In the Shell Valley now, only a couple of farm flocks remain.  The lambing sheds are dilapidated; weeds grow up in old corrals.  Sheepherders don’t frequent local stores to cash their paychecks.  Occasionally we see a shearing set-up or notice some shed lights at night, occasionally we see a band of sheep trailing through the Bighorns.   I have great respect and admiration for those sheep ranchers who made it work.  And I wish them good luck with the bum lambs.