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Range Maggots Used to Control Weeds

BigHornRam

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"Land of Giant Rams"
The increased use of sheep and goats to control weeds in the west is of great concern for the wild sheep advocates such as myself. But as this newspaper article details, there are more than one point of view concerning this complex issue.




He is Esteban Millan. He is 25 years old, and a graduate of a dental school in Peru. He wants to open his own dental clinic in Lima one day.

And so he herds a flock of 800 sheep over 6,000 acres up Miller Creek.

It is not quite a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job, but it's close. Aside from a couple of shopping trips into Missoula each month, Millan stays with the sheep. He lives in a pickup camper. His only companions, usually, are five border collies who herd the sheep and two Akbash dogs that guard the flock.



He calls them his family.

Millan spoke no English when he arrived in America three years ago, and most of what little he can speak now has been picked up from television. He gets one station at his camp.

He earns $850 a month. Because his room and board are provided, he can sock away most, if not all, of his paycheck. In fact, his boss, Pachy Burns of Big Timber, says Millan never spends all his food allowance.

"I give them the money and let them buy what they want," she says. "It's just easier than me trying to figure out what they want and buying it myself. But I don't think they buy more than $150 worth of food in a month, and whatever they don't spend, they keep."

In three months' time, Esteban Millan can save more than the average Peruvian earns in a year.

His name is Brian Heffron, and he tends bar at Montana's Lounge in the Holiday Inn-Parkside.

In 1997, he traveled to Peru to attend the wedding anniversary of relatives of his uncle's wife, who is from the South American nation.

"Got a good deal on airline tickets, had a place to stay and decided to go," he says.

The two-week visit somehow ended up lasting 11 1/2 months.

Heffron spoke no Spanish when he moved to Peru, but today the autodidactic Heffron is fluent in the language.

Would he help translate Esteban Millan's story?

He would. And he brings along a flask of cheap Peruvian brandy to help break the ice.

Their names are Chip, Violeta, Ron, Wind, Sissi, Paloma and Chiguitin.

Chip and Violeta are the large white Akbashes. The breed, native to Turkey, Iran and Iraq, has the size, strength and courage to challenge large predators and the speed and agility to chase fast predators. Their temperament is calm, quiet and steady, but they remain aloof toward - and suspicious of - strangers.

They are fiercely loyal to the sheep, to the point that they'll even bite their sheepherder if they feel he's being too aggressive with the flock.

Ron, Wind, Sissi, Paloma and Chiguitin are the border collies, four of them young and still eagerly learning their craft.

The collies will occasionally roughhouse with each other, but mostly they curl up in a bit of hay in the back of the old Ford pickup Millan drives, awaiting his command.

When the herder feels his flock has strayed too far, he orders the dogs to action.

They live for the command, you can tell. Their ears perk up as Millan calls their names and they come to attention in the bed of the pickup.

When he gives the order, it's like they've been shot out of a cannon. They fly across the fields and, in an odd and spontaneous choreography of the animal kingdom, race in circles, forcing wanderers to rejoin the masses and gathering the flock into one large group.

More commands from Millan, who joins them, and the dogs get the sheep moving in whatever direction the herder wants.

It is fascinating to watch one human and five dogs marshal 800 sheep.

Her name is Pachy Burns, and she worked on a ranch in north Idaho one summer years ago.

At the end of the season, the oldest hand on the ranch, an 83-year-old man, took her aside and told her: "I've watched you work all summer. You've got a knack for this. You should go buy your own farm and raise sheep."

"I thought, 'Oh well, why not,' " Burns says.

So the single mother of two daughters bought a farm outside Edgar, southwest of Billings, in 1980.

She and her daughters worked Blue Pines Ranch, and Burns herded her own sheep for five years, living the lonely, isolated existence.

In the years since, Burns has married (to Big Timber rancher Horatio "Rasch" Burns) and aligned with the Mountain Plains Agricultural Service of Casper, Wyo., which helps bring foreigners to the U.S. on temporary work visas to take agricultural jobs that don't interest Americans - such as herding sheep.

When the federal government said that all foreigners working in the U.S. must be documented, a group of ranchers formed the agricultural service, which takes care of the paperwork necessary and brings about 800 range production livestock workers into the United States each year - half renewals, half newcomers.

Most hail from Peru, Chile and Mexico, according to Tammy Dominguez, executive assistant of the service. Shearers often come from New Zealand, Australia and England.

"We are not a recruiting agency," Dominguez says. "A rancher has to know who he or she wants. It's usually a word-of-mouth deal. Someone who's already here suggests a brother, a cousin, a friend."

Burns has used the service for several years. She's also launched three innovative programs to introduce people to her way of life, and turned her sheep loose on the noxious weeds plaguing Montana.

"I just care about this state, and believe there's a better way to control weeds than spraying poison on them," Burns says.

The sheep eat leafy spurge, spotted knapweed, sulfur cinquefoil and hound's-tongue, taking the tops of the weeds before the seeds can spread and weakening their root system in the process.

"The sheep have to acquire a taste for the weeds," Burns says. "Of the 800 ewes I have up Miller Creek, 200 of them were raised on weeds. The babies will eat what their mothers eat. When we got to Miller Creek, those 200 hit the weeds and the other 600 scattered. It took Esteban three weeks to get them all eating weeds, but eventually he did."

The rancher says she's convinced the rise of noxious weeds directly correlates to the decline of sheep populations in Montana.

"In the early 1900s, there were 5 million sheep in the state and no problems with weeds," she says. Today, there are 250,000 sheep in Montana and no end to the weed problems.

Burns also employs Millan's father (also named Esteban; Burns often refers to them as "Senior" and "Junior") and one brother, has employed another brother and expects to hire yet another in the future.

"These guys love animals, and are just wonderful with the dogs and the sheep," she says. "I trust them immensely. They're clean, they're hard workers. And they love the money. It makes them wealthy in Peru

In the drawn-out daylight of summer, Esteban Millan's days watching the sheep run deep into the evening hours. Now, as winter threatens to erupt at any time and darkness comes earlier, his work day is shorter but significantly more uncomfortable.

Brian Heffron passes around his flask of Peruvian brandy. He and Esteban have been talking in Spanish for three hours before taking refuge inside a vehicle, where the conversation will go on for a fourth.

"Normally he is very taciturn," Heffron reports later. "But you could tell, he was starved for conversation."

"He told me the animals are his life, and the dogs are his family," Heffron says. "He makes jokes with them, plays with them, fights with them. They are the center of his life.

An uncle first came to America 25 years ago to herd sheep, and brought other relatives into the fold. Unlike Esteban, who is saving with a purpose in mind, the men normally send everything they earn back home to their families.

They can return to Peru for a few weeks every year or so.

Esteban has returned once, but when he visited his old hangouts, he was met by strange faces. His friends have scattered; to where, he knows not. The family home had been remodeled and his room was gone.

"He feels like he doesn't belong there anymore," Heffron says. "He felt very disconnected. And of course America is still a strange place to him. He feels like he belongs in neither place."

Heffron thinks of purchasing Esteban some Spanish-English flash cards to help him with his English, and promises to alert him the next time there's a salsa dance in Missoula.

"I love it that people up there are so good to him," Burns says. "I (herded sheep) for five years, and I know how lonely it can get."

Esteban's English is broken, but he does remarkably well considering he spoke not a word when he arrived in Montana.

"I like the Montana," he says. "Not too much people. No big city. I like the mountains. I like animals. I love my dogs."

Later, he says, "I no have home. Long time, I am here."

After a breakfast of eggs and bread, or ham and bread, Esteban is out the door by 7 a.m. He and the dogs herd the sheep, which spend the night around his camper, off to whatever area needs to be grazed that day. The sheep tend to be most active in the morning, wanting to wander, and keep Esteban and the dogs busy.

He returns to the camper for a quick lunch, usually just soup or Ramen noodles, and returns to the flock. The sheep have often calmed down by the afternoon, and Esteban whiles away the hours reading Spanish versions of the "Harry Potter" series

The Peruvian tells Heffron he figures it will take five more years in America, living in a camper, his only steady companions a pack of dogs, before he has enough money to open his dental clinic.

His name is Esteban Millan. Up Miller Creek, he pursues his dream.
 
I know of more than one success story of using sheep and goats to control weeds or hazardous fuels. It's about the only positive that (ie sheep/goats) livestock industry has going for it. Sheep growers in the US just can't compete with NZ or Aus. prices.
 
"Sheep growers in the US just can't compete with NZ or Aus. prices."

Not true Pointer. With the rising cost of transportation (i. e. fuel), and the tanking U. S. dollar, the U. S. producers are competitive.
 
That may be true for the few that are left. Many sheep grazing permits were converted to cattle a long time ago. For the small operators left, I feel that doing contract vegetation control could (should) be a viable alternative business venture for them.
 
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