Posted: 4/4/06
Not a ëbaaadí living
Lea McEvilly works hard at keeping her 75 sheep safe and sound
By David Heiller
Argus News Staff
Leatrice McEvilly had the look of a math student faced with a challenging problem.
We were standing in her barn on Wednesday afternoon, March 22. Two ewe sheep were wandering around the room, licking five very tiny lambs.
ìYou sort it out, because I canít,î she said as she walked around the barn.
Lea wasnít talking to me.
ìI think weíll shove this one into the pen,î she continued. She guided a ewe and two lambs into a temporary pen in the corner of the room. It took some quick moves for the 79-year-old lady, especially because she had to tell a ewe and her twins that were in the pen to get out.
ìYouíll get used to it,î she told them as they left.
Lea not only talks to sheep, she thinks like them. She seemed to be one step ahead of the sheep as she moved methodically through the barn.
We had just concluded an hour-long interview at Leaís kitchen table, and in that 60-minute span, two ewes had lambed.
ìThatís why I say, when youíre not here, all hell breaks loose,î Lea said.
Yes, that was one of the themes of our interview. She said several times that a big part of sheep farming, and lambing in particular, is just being there. ìI try to be there most of the time,î she said.
Five days earlier she had gone to town for two hours, and came home to find two new sets of triplets. That led to more puzzling and watching and waiting. She finally was able to separate them correctly. ìLuckily I had it right and they accepted them all,î she said.
Lea knows a lot about sheep, and her knowledge is more complex than just hanging out and gabbing with them. She can tell you a lot about grazing and fencing, genotypes and scrapies, birthing and breeding.
Like the lamb that she had lost the night before. It was the second one born, and was small. She gave it a swing to get it breathing, then brought it to the house and doctored it with colostrum that she keeps in the freezer for just such occasions. It didnít work this time though, and the lamb died. ìIt had no interest in living really,î Lea said matter of factly. Then she repeated, ìYou just have to be there a lot.î
Leaís interest in sheep started as a child on her family farm near Waterville, Iowa, 10 miles east Waukon. She would bottle feed lambs for her grandfather, George Olson.
ìI just kind of learned to handle sheep,î she said.
Her sheep farm took off in earnest in about 1965 when Lea and her late husband, Jerry, moved to a farm in section two of Caledonia Township. She calls it Windy Ridge Sheep Farm. (Lea still lives there with her son, Sean, 35.)
Lea got an old ewe and a lamb from Art Doering about that time. Leaís daughter Lisa named the lamb Shertigo. I asked Lea what that name meant. ìEverywhere that Mary went,î Lea answered with a smile.
Lea bred the ewe the next year. It had two lambs, but disowned one of them. The next year it had triplets and disowned two. That was enough of that for Lea. She rigged up some hay bales and forced the issue until the ewe accepted her offspring.
The ewe lived nine years, and her lamb lived 11 years. ìJust by dumb luck I got longevity,î Lea said.
Lea now has 23 ewes, and expects to have 50 lambs this year. They are in demand as breed stock because they are prolific and have multiple births. Minnesota has the highest rate of lambs per ewe in the United States, at 175 lambs per 100 ewes, Lea said. Her operation is at about 200 lambs per 100 ewes.
The breed is what she calls ìHigh Fives,î a five-way cross, with the main one being a Texel/Columbia cross. Texels came from The Netherlands.
There isnít much money in the wool these days. She gets about 50 cents a pound for it. ìDoesnít pay the shearer to shear,î she said.
Lea has done a lot of studying about sheep. She gives credit to the late Dr. Bob Jordan of the University of Minnesota, who convinced her to breed some Finnish bloodlines into her ewes. Her herd is also certified scrapie free, a process that took five years to complete. She finished it this year. (Scrapie is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy that occurs in sheep, goats and other animals.)
She does rotational grazing in seven different pastures. They are planted with trefoil, which is a non-bloating legume. ìThey can eat all they want and they donít bloat,î Lea said. Thatís not the case with alfalfa.
She also has Electronet fencing, a portable electric fence that makes it easier to keep the sheep contained and do rotational grazing.
In 1982 Lea received the Minnesota Lamb and Wool Producers Association Silver Bell Award. It is given to Minnesota shepherds who have excelled in modern sheep, lamb, or wool production.
She is also very active in the Southeastern Minnesota Sheep Producers Association (SEMSPA), an organization of sheep farmers.
Warm weather is changing things at the McEvilly farm now, and none too soon for Lea. The ewes that have lambed are going outside and eating off a round bale of hay that Sean put out.
Leaís dog Sheba followed us around during my visit at Windy Ridge Sheep Farm two weeks ago. Sheba was a good watch dog in her day, Lea said, although now they have a good case of arthritis in common. Sheba, who is 14 now, would patrol the whole pasture to keep the sheep safe from coyotes, which are a terrible predator. One year she lost seven lambs to coyotes.
Lea recounted the day she watched Sheba run a whole pack of coyotes across the pasture to the east, then come back through the fence to chase away another one. ëShe was big and strong and wasnít afraid of them,î Lea said with a hint of respect in her voice. Lea found dried blood on her dog in the morning. ìI looked and it wasnít her blood, it was the coyotes,íî Lea said.
I left my visit with Lea with more knowledge of sheep than my 53-year-old head could handle. Lea is a talker in the Huffey tradition, which by the way is a good one. Her generosity didn't hurt either: she gave me a large hunk of mutton sausage. It was tasty.
Caledonia Argus
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