FORT WAYNE – Baby April squirmed and wriggled, dodging the splashing water from her first bath.
I took a giant step back to make sure the then 3-month-old lamb wouldn’t kick me for wielding the hose. She bucked her legs as I drenched her dark hair.
April wanted nothing to do with this beauty routine, but her preteen owners, Alaina and Sabrina Richert, needed to groom her for the Adams County 4-H Fair. The fifth-generation sheep farmers showed me during a visit to their family’s southeast Allen County farm just how much work 4-H members put into fair entries.
We had to wash April and ivory-colored Crystal so they would look their best in the show ring. The sheep got baths several days before the fair to give them a chance to replenish their wool’s natural lanolin oils. Judges want to see oil-coated wool in the show ring, 12-year-old Alaina Richert said. Wool quality determines about half the score.
April and Crystal are Lincoln longwool sheep, known for having particularly fine wool. I figured washing all that curly wool required fancy soap, but the Richerts use Joy dishwashing soap. After wetting Crystal’s coat, I gently patted my soapy hands on her wool to clean the it without tangling it.
This seemed pretty straightforward, but Alaina warned me it was critical to remove all the soap.
“Otherwise the wool might turn green,” she said, like blonde hair exposed to too much chlorine in a swimming pool.
I did not want to be responsible for a show-ring disaster, so I rinsed Crystal’s long, cream-colored coat carefully. The Richerts instructed me to start along her spine and wash toward the ground. Even though I sprayed her wool thoroughly, I kept finding a few stray bubbles near the spine and had to start over again. The entire bath took about 20 minutes.
Crystal stayed fairly still during this process, probably because the 1-year-old sheep had been bathed for the fair before. But that didn’t stop her from crying loudly in my ear. At first, I thought she might be criticizing my amateur bathing efforts, but Anita Richert, Alaina and Sabrina’s mother, assured me Crystal just wanted to let the rest of the herd – out of sight in the barn – know where she was. Still, Crystal left no doubt how she earned her nickname – “Miss Attitude.”
“We know all their names and their habits,” Alaina said.
The Richerts can recognize specific sheep from across the pasture. Some have stronger personalities than others. Mocha, a dark-colored Lincoln who won reserve grand champion at last year’s North American International Livestock Exposition, has mastered escaping through fences and even a barn stall.
And the sheep can jealously compete for back rubs and human affection. Crystal kept rubbing against my side when I went to greet other sheep in the barn.
April, the lamb, warmed up to me when it was time to eat. Alaina and Sabrina, 11, let me give her a bottle of milk. I was expecting a baby bottle, but April drank from a Coke bottle.
Lincoln longwool sheep like April are more work than meat sheep, but the wool can be valuable. The Richerts, who display sheep at the Fiber Arts Fair at Salomon Farm Park, charge $2.50 for an ounce of carded and dyed wool.
Each sheep can produce between eight and 20 pounds of wool each year, Anita Richert said. Sabrina and Alaina have entered wool outfits they made in past 4-H competitions.
A Lincoln’s crinkly wool grows about an inch each month. The Richerts’ meat sheep, which are Suffolk-Hampshire mixes, have wool that grows about four to six inches a year, in comparison, said Mark Richert, Anita’s husband.
But the Suffolks grow quickly. The lambs can gain a pound a day. Richert Ranch sells the resulting meat to J.K. O’Donnell’s Irish pub in Fort Wayne and New Haven Custom Meats. New Haven Custom Meats sells the farm’s lamb chops for $8 to $9 a pound and roasts for $6 to $7 a pound, Anita Richert said. Lamb burgers cost $4 a pound.
With meat and wool sales, Anita Richert said the farm earns enough to cover costs. But the Richert family does not want to expand to raise the hundreds of animals it would take to turn the farm into a full-time career for Anita Richert and her husband, a chiropractor. The family prefers to focus on a raising a smaller number of grass-fed, antibiotic-free livestock, she said.
The farm also serves as a classroom for the next generation, and 4-H provides part of the curriculum. Alaina worked on 26 projects for this year’s fair, and Sabrina entered 22 projects.
Sabrina won first place in her showmanship class at the Adams County 4-H Fair, and Alaina placed second in hers. April and Crystal each won her class but had little competition from other wool sheep, Anita Richert said. Crystal won reserve champion among all the wool entries, second behind another Richert Ranch sheep.
Farm life is influencing the girls’ ambitions. Sabrina is still pondering her career path, but Alaina has wanted to pursue a veterinary medicine career for years. She asked for the Merck Veterinary Manual for her eighth birthday. Her 4-H career is teaching her responsibility and how to care for animals.
The toughest part of farming is sending the young lambs to the butcher, Alaina said. The Richerts stay up late in the spring to help deliver the lambs and grow attached. Alaina said she tries to keep it in perspective by remembering the lambs enjoyed life at the farm.
“It’s hard when you have to sell your lamb because you raised them since they were born,” she said, but “it’s a great reassurance to me that it had a good life.”
