The border collies tend to get top billing at the Meeker Classic Sheepdog Championship Trials, but it could be said that behind (or in front of) every good dog, are sheep that will test their mettle and bring out the best in dog and handler. These are the sheep Julie Hansmire, owner and manager of Campbell Hansmire Sheep, brings to the Classic every year.
Hansmire has about 3,400 sheep in her operation. The Merino sheep spend winters in Utah, trail to high mountain pasture above Eagle, Colorado, in the spring, and trail back west in the late fall. They spend a few months in the Fruita/Loma area before heading back to Utah.
Hansmire has continued the work she started with her late husband Randy Campbell, who passed away in 2010, and their children. Hansmire sheep are “range sheep,” meaning they are raised without fences, guarded by shepherds and dogs.
Raised on a farm in Nebraska — albeit one without sheep — Hansmire received ag degrees from the University of Nebraska and Texas Tech. After meeting her husband, the couple bought their “base property” in Utah so they could apply for grazing permits, and raised sheep and some cattle. She was serving on the board of directors for Colorado Wool Growers when the board received a handwritten letter from Gus Halandras about the idea for the Meeker Classic. Hansmire was interested, and so began a decades long partnership.
Julie Hansmire (above) brings about 700 range sheep to Meeker each year for the sheepdog trials. The ewes are as close to identical as possible. | NIKI TURNER PHOTO
For the Classic, Hansmire pulls about 700 yearling ewes out of the mountains and brings them to Meeker. The ewes are as close to identical as possible. “I try to make it even for everyone,” she said, setting aside sheep that are smaller or with a longer tail, characteristics that might set them apart from the others.
Hansmire selects fresh groups for the first three days of the trials so that each dog and handler team faces the same challenge — untested and untried sheep. For the semifinals and finals, the groups are blended together. For the finals, dogs have to “lift” two groups of sheep, bring them to the shedding ring, and separate out five that have been outfitted with orange collars.
Sheep, like most humans, prefer familiar settings and safety in numbers. Being cut from their flock into small groups, facing dogs they’ve never encountered and being put through the trial course makes them edgy.
“They don’t like being separated from their sisters,” Hansmire said. “And they’ve never been worked by a dog.”
If they were worked daily for about two weeks, she explained, they’d learn the system and become more compliant. As it is, when they set foot — hoof — on the trials field, they’re unsure what the dogs are doing, what the handlers are doing, and why they’ve been separated from the larger herd, and they can act up.
Case in point, during Friday’s competition this year, one of the sheep refused to cooperate with the dogs and riders who herd the trial group off the field between runs. She jumped a fence and escaped into the parking lot. Once captured, the ewe was safely returned to the corral via ATV.
For spectators, watching the sheep can provide almost as much entertainment as watching the dogs. Over the years Hansmire’s sheep have jumped over, kicked, and even tried to bite the dogs that attempt to manuever them through the trials course. Sometimes the sheep are so feisty the dog gets frustrated, a situation that inspired a new term: “Meekered.”
Industry changes
The sheep industry in the West has faced and overcome multiple challenges, from the range wars in the previous century when cattle ranchers attempted to prevent sheepherders from taking up residence on prime grazing land, to market competition from New Zealand and Australia over the price of wool and lamb, to battles over grazing permits, to depredation from mountain lions, bears — and now in Colorado, the impending threat of wolves and the inherent risks reintroduction of a new predator will bring.
Hansmire’s sheep are not ‘dog-broke’ when they arrive for the trials. This year, they were particularly tough. | CAITLIN WALKER PHOTO
But like the sheep they raise, sheep ranchers are adaptable, and they’re finding ways to innovate for the future and redefine their industry for new market trends. One example of that innovation is happening in Oregon, and Theos Swallow Fork Ranch in Meeker and the Campbell Hansmire Ranch are participating.
In 2017, the 32,000 acre Imperial Stock Ranch in Oregon was the first in the U.S. to adopt the Textile Exchange’s Responsible Wool Standard (RWS), which provides guidelines for humane animal husbandry and standard for land management and worker welfare, according to a 2022 article in Inside Outdoor Magazine.
Upon realizing the demand for wool that could be verified as sustainable and traceable was growing exponentially, Jeanne Carver and her late husband Dan created the Shaniko Wool Company to provide a way for other sheep ranchers to obtain RWS certification with less expense, through collaboration. The availability of certified, ethically-sourced wool has opened doors to major brands like Ralph Lauren, which used RWS verified wool in the sweaters and hats worn by U.S. Olympic teams in the 2022 Winter Olympics.
The use of sheep for other environmental benefits include programs in California, where sheep are grazed under power lines and in rural/urban areas for fire mitigation and chemical-free vegetation control, similar to the use of goats in recent years in Northwest Colorado to manage leafy spurge, a noxious, invasive weed. The California Wool Growers Association’s website states, “Employing livestock to manipulate vegetation is as old as grazing itself. Promoting grazing to manage vegetation as a paid service–typically called prescribed or targeted grazing–is a more recent phenomenon.”
Sheep provide another benefit to the environment besides grazing and fertilizing… wool is environmentally friendly in more ways than one. Each wool fiber is almost 50% carbon, more than cotton or wood-based textiles. Sheep turn carbon into wool, sequestering environmental carbon in a completely natural way.
And for those who feel itchy when they think about putting on a wool sweater, the wool from certain breeds, including the Merino breed raised by Hansmire, is so fine it reduces or eliminates skin irritation.“It’s the finest wool in the world,” Hansmire said. This has opened new markets and increased demand for new wool products.
Hansmire and her industry continue to innovate, and we hope to be counting sheep–and the successful ag operations who care for them–well into the future.
By NIKI TURNER – editor@editorht1885.com
