DIFFICULT TIMES make John Helle, right, wonder if it will be possible for son Nathan and others of his generation to make a living ranching. But Helle, who comes from a long line of sheepmen, is committed to the life and has diversified his operation to help it survive.

Helle Rambouillet Struggling
To Survive In Changing World

By Colleen Schreiber

DILLON, Mont. — Sheep are almost an endangered species in Beaverhead County, once one of the largest sheep producing areas in all of Montana. Today sheep are rapidly being displaced by predators, high overhead, erratic markets, labor problems and loss of the Wool Act. A few diehard sheepmen continue to hang on.

John Helle and brother Tom maintain one of a handful of large sheep range operations left in the area. Several of the other large operators are family members.

Rambouillet sheep have always been the Helles’ mainstay. They have long been one of the larger suppliers of breeding stock for area sheepmen. Their grandfather started the practice of trading the family’s Rambouillet ewe lambs for yearlings, and that practice is still in place today.

"The key is genetics," Helle says. "Lots of people say they want to go to these bigger-framed ewes that produce more milk, etc. but would you buy Holstein cows to carry out on the open range in Eastern Montana?" he asks. "You must match the animal to your environment. You must focus on getting that animal to get the most out of the environment it is living in."

When selecting replacements for their registered herd, Helle closely follows the numbers.

"We focus on pounds of lamb weaned. We have to know our ewes and know how many lambs on average they’re producing.

"We need to do a lot more research on how we test our animals for selection purposes," he continues. "We’re all testing for gain, but not all animals are made to be the biggest gainers. Maybe instead we should be testing for efficiency."

Today John and his brother partner on about 4000 ewes in four bands. They also have a large yearling operation. They have four full-time herders on the payroll and a camp tender.

The Helles run a combination of public, state and deeded land. Their summer range is all public land, and other areas are mixed. The sheep are trailed the 65 to 70 miles to the summer range in the Centennial Valley.

The loss of the Wool Act, Helle admits, had a major impact on the large range operations in the West. But unlike many, the Helles were determined to survive, and changed their whole operation.

During the years of the incentive check, wool, not lamb, was the major emphasis. Today they focus on pounds of lamb weaned. The operation is much more intensive than it once was. In 1992 they began shed lambing as opposed to lambing on the open range. They had always shed lambed the yearling ewes and their purebred herd, but only after the incentive phaseout was underway did they begin shed lambing the majority of their herd.

The purebred herd is lambed first, beginning in March through the first part of April. After that, the commercial herd is sheared and lambing begins the 20th of April. The ewes are bred to lamb in bunches of 1000. It takes a week to 10 days to lamb out 1000 ewes.

Because everything is sonogrammed, Helle has an idea which ones are twinning and which are carrying singles. Generally the ewes carrying singles are lambed on the open range. The rest, which is the majority, are shed lambed. The primary reason they do this, Helle says, is because they only have the capacity to shed lamb 3000 head. That leaves a thousand or so ewes on the range.

Shed lambing, Helle admits, is expensive when feed and labor is figured in, but their Peruvian herders who are on three-year contracts help in the sheds. The feed expense is kept at a minimum as well, because they have an irrigated farm.

"It would be more difficult to make shed lambing pay if we had to buy feed from an outside source," Helle says.

After they’re born, the lambs spend one day in the shed in a jug and one day in the mixing pen. From there they go straight to grass. Because the turnover is relatively rapid and lambs are kept in confinement for such a short period, sickness, Hells says, is kept at a minimum.

It’s not unusual for Helle to get a 175 percent lamb crop on the young ewes lambing in sheds. The six year-old ewes are pushed harder, he says, and the lamb crop is often as high as 186 to 190 percent. Overall across all ages, Helle figures, about a 160 percent lamb crop on those ewes which are shed lambed. Even in their range herd, Helle expects to get at the very least an 80 percent lamb crop and lots of times it’s right at 100 percent. This year it was 120 percent.

Shed lambing benefits the range, Helle says, because animals are removed from the native pasture basically from April to May. That gives the grasses a head start at the first of the growing season.

Bucks go in beginning in October. Lambing is basically from March through June and they’re weaned in September through November. The lambs usually average 85 pounds at weaning, but rather than sell, they retain ownership and take advantage of putting on some cheap additional gain, about 15 to 20 pounds. The lambs are brought down into the valleys where they graze stubblefields.

"We’re basically backgrounding our lambs much like they do calves, giving them a little extra time to grow before we start putting fat on them," Helle explains.

"Rambouillets are real efficient. They can graze a stubble field or pick up grain knocked to the ground and gain some value where a cow couldn’t."

From the fields the lambs are usually sold to a feeder. Their closest packer, Helle says, is in Canada, and they have tried to work with them because the Canadian market has been a good market. In the end, however, the dollar exchange ratio doesn’t make it very attractive.

"The Canadians have a real good program there. They have a real aggressive marketing program, etc. but the free trade isn’t working as freely going that direction."

Helle has been table skirting his wool since about 1991 when the first big push was made to improve the domestic clip. They sell their wool direct rather than go into a pool or warehouse system. He says it’s harder and harder to find order buyers because wool companies can’t afford to hire someone for an area with so few numbers.

The threat from predators is an ever-increasing problem, but the Helles have long realized that there’s not a whole lot they can do about the problem other than live with it. Coyotes pose by far the greatest threat to their sheep operation, but there’s also the occasional bear and now wolves.

This summer they had a grizzly killing in their herd, which Helle says is unusual for that area. Government regulations and politics prevented them from doing anything to protect their property. Even if the bear was killing on private property, Helle’s hands are still tied. Instead, they had to depend on the animal damage control program to handle the situation. They were 30 head short but only 10 could be confirmed as bear kills.

Helle learned from a neighbor friend’s misfortune. A herder was with his sheep when he found a dead lamb. He saw a bear run off. When he looked up from inspecting the kill he was staring in the face of a grizzly not 30 feet away. The herder pulled his pistol and shot the bear.

The law stepped in because the herder told officials he didn’t feel he was in immediate danger. The law reads that a grizzly cannot be taken unless it’s in self defense. In this case the judge ruled that it wasn’t in self defense and fined the herder $3000. Helle says they’re appealing on the grounds that they hadn’t been notified the bear had moved into the area. It also turns out that the bear had been "relocated" to keep it out of trouble elsewhere.

With some of their land located just outside Yellowstone National Park, Helle says wolves are coming into their herds now on a regular basis. One pack was in their herd three or four times this summer. The first time six were tranquilized and moved out. Two weeks later a male and a female that had been removed came right back. They tranquilized them again, but the female returned and finally with no other alternatives the wolf was killed.

Local ranchers tax themselves to help provide additional animal damage control funds. Sheepmen and cattlemen alike pay the tax.

"We’re providing almost half or more of the money to pay for animal damage control," Helle says. "Sometimes we feel like we’re providing more than we need to for fighting the wolves."

Helle is looking for ways to diversify his income. Last year he took advantage of a niche market when he sold some yearling ewe lambs to a man in New Hampshire interested in putting a herd of sheep together to graze powerline rights-of-ways. The power company, Helle says, paid their customer to graze his sheep in these areas.

Helle also believes that there will be a real niche for sheep as an environmentally friendly weed control mechanism.

"The noxious weed problem is coming and it’s going to hit Montana like a freight train," Helle insists. "It’s too expensive to control them chemically, so we must begin looking at sheep as a resource for other things besides just meat and wool."

Helle realizes that diversity is a key to survival in agriculture today but it contributes problems in that he says it’s hard to be good at any one thing.

"We had to go into farming and haying and cattle and commercial sheep and purebred sheep and dryland farming, just about everything you can do that fits in on this ranch to make it work. We figure that way at least one of those things might make a little money. The scary thing is, this year every one of them are down. Cattle are down, lambs are down, wool is in the tank, purebred sheep down, hay is kind of there, but with the cattle market down, how can that not be down?" he laments.

Helle says one of the toughest challenges facing him and others in agriculture is free trade in a global economic market.

"We’re in such a global economy today that I don’t think we realize what it takes to survive. Markets can turn overnight. We can’t have 30 percent of our domestic market made up of imports."
The volatility of the lamb and wool markets, Helle says, makes it very difficult to plan for his operation.

There are also the usual challenges of hiring good help and following all the regulations that go along with hired labor.

Despite the bleak outlook, Helle continues to push forward with as much optimism as he can possibly muster. He believes in the sheep industry and feels strongly that there still is a future for the young generation. A sheep operation generally turns a profit quicker than cattle, and for young people the cost to get into sheep is much cheaper than for cattle.

"It takes a lot of land and a lot of cattle, 300 to 400 head, to make that kind of operation work. It’s hard for someone young to get into that because they don’t have the capital or the credit. Sheep can really produce if you put enough time into it and really intensify your operation," Helle says.

It’s times like the present that make Helle stop and evaluate his situation, but he always comes away with the same answer.

"I love doing it. It’s a real challenge to see if I can make it work."