This is a post I debated not writing. But it is part of my life. These photos are mostly from Friday. which was a full day…as are most days.

One of my regular customers wanted 8 lambs for Friday. This is the rack that Dan built for drying salted hides. It’s far better than having 9 pallets spread out on the floor. And even better, that orange netting like they use for construction work was given to us by someone who was cleaning up a property and didn’t want it.

I took these three hides off the rack so that I could fill it up with new ones. That is two Jacob sheep and the neighbor’s goat. One of my customers wanted to add a goat to the order and there happened to be one next door.

I have learned to take photos of hides before I send them to the tannery so that I can keep track.

This is the previous batch of hides…

…and the reverse side. This is what you get when a professional does the work. There are no holes and no big chunks of fat left on these. I sent these and the three above to Driftless Tannery in Wisconsin.

This batch went to Vermont. The tannery is up and running again after being sold. Why send these so far away? Tanneries are few and far between and I like the natural mimosa tan that is offered. There was a tannery in Idaho that did a great job for a year, but they moved and didn’t start up again.

Warning: dead sheep parts in the next few photos.

If I’m going to sell sheep for butcher then I want to use as much of the other parts as possible. The hide is an obvious option, but there is also a market for skulls with horns and horns by themselves. With the sheepskins all I have to do is salt them and then ship them to a tannery where all the work is done. I have to deal with the other parts. I’ll write a button post one of these days to explain the process I use to make buttons from the horns.

I have a hard time getting the skulls in shape to sell. I used to put the skulls out in back, wiring them inside a fence so they couldn’t be dragged off. After I retrieve them from “outback” there is still a lot of work to do. They are not completely cleaned and definitely not ready to list on the website.

One year I bought a “starter kit” of the kind of beetles that will do the work for you. But that is a whole other story and it’s not that simple. Also that was the year of my accident and I wasn’t able to keep the beetle colony working.

This is my new method which is not yet perfected. Last fall I buried several heads and left them for the winter. There was so much rain for so long, that there was plenty of insect and/or microbial action. When I dug the skulls up I found that they were still not perfect, but much better than the “outback” method. They mainly need some work on whitening, after turning brown in the dirt, and there is a risk of the horns deteriorating faster than the bone. I don’t know how long these need to stay in the ground and I don’t know how much difference it makes if I add water occasionally. There are some heads under the dirt pile in the middle of the photo and there are some under the black tub. There are some IN the black tub as well. The last few that are buried have baling twine tied to the horns so I know where they are. The new ones in the foreground have baling wire around the horns that sticks up through the dirt when they were covered.

When I make buttons I need just the horns so I cut them off the skull. There is a bony core that is attached to the skull. You have to soak the horn or otherwise allow the tissue between the horn core and the outer part to deteriorate or be eaten by something so that you can get the outer part off.

This was a ewe lamb with horns that tipped forward. One was so wobbly that it didn’t seem attached to the skull. You can see here that it wasn’t. I think that would be an example of a scur.

Friday’s harvest was fast. The farm harvest guy dealt with all those sheep within two hours and did a great job with the pelts. After I finished salting hides I spent the rest of the morning sorting and organizing sheep coats. I don’t coat a lot of sheep, but usually have about five coated through the summer and up until shearing. These are usually the sheep that go to Black Sheep Gathering and/or State Fair. Right now there are only two with coats. I’d rather see my sheep without the coats and it adds work to keep up with changing coats as the fleeces grow out. You can see that there is also a lot of coat repair to keep up with.

The coats I have always used are those lined up in the middle and the left. I recently bought a new brand of coats that was recommended when I was at the Jacob show in Estes Park. My original coats are sized by number. The new ones have a color tab that indicates size. I matched them up to the old coats to figure out where they fit as far as size and I added the numbers to match the others. The coats on the right are the new ones. I guess I didn’t get the sizes I’ll need as the fleeces grow out.