It’s been almost a second Monday on this Tuesday for me. But coming home to this sweet little girl who is so excited to help me milk out a ewe and feed the bottle babies when we get to the barn makes the rough days better 😍
Her love for animals and working hard is so inspiring and fascinating. She loves to feed sheep with her daddy and help “mommy pull the baby lambs out of the ewes butts” 😂😂 We are in the process of learning uterus, repro tract, more factual terms 👌🏼😂 She is why we do what we do. To show her the value of hard work, determination, and responsibility. While many in agriculture are feeling the negativity of certain groups trying to end our way of life, it’s important to remember these moments and why we do what we do. They don’t know how hard we work and never will, because they don’t want to know. They won’t care that I spent an hour trying to get a lamb out of a ewe today with my husband’s help instead of just saying “whatever, she’ll get it out eventually”. Or that I milked 35 oz. of colostrum out of a ewe late at night to make it easier for her lamb to nurse and to make her more comfortable, and to save other lambs with frozen colostrum one day. They don’t care that Doug is at the barn if he’s not at work, taking care of the sheep, feeding and cleaning every day, just to do it again the next day. Constantly checking the barn cameras to make sure everything is fine. They don’t care about all of this but that’s fine. We do care. It’s our job to care and it’s our job in agriculture to feed the world. Period. They can eat their lab grown fake meat 🤢 and we will continue to produce high quality protein that’s affordable, safe, and nutritious for the world. We just need to remember our WHY on days like today. 💗
What’s your WHY? Why are you in school? Work? Raising cattle? Think about it and let your answer get you through the rough times. Like spending an hour shoulder deep in a ewe on your knees in the barn 😢 (the ewe is fine! lamb was a stillborn, more on that in another post).
Happy Hump Day friends! (early AM as I write this, too much coffee today 😂) and thank you for reading!
-Jessy Shanks
Shanks Genetics 