Churro sheep thrive in the desert Southwest, an environment drastically different from the green pastures of sheep lore. But despite their storied hardiness, the creatures nearly went extinct three decades ago.
Researchers are determined that won’t happen again.
They’re scouring the Navajo Reservation in the Four Corners region, collecting semen from dozens of churro rams on Navajo ranches and freezing the genetic material in a tissue bank in Fort Collins.
Researchers could use the bank to study how the churro adapted so well to the desert, or as a reserve to regenerate a population. Federal scientists have collected semen from about 30 rams, half of what they want.
The project has earned the trust of many Navajo breeders.
“We’re responsible for the breed. This animal that is so sacred to us, we are nonexistent without them,” said Roy Kady, project director for Navajo Lifeway, a nonprofit that supports sheep producers and weavers. “In any means that we can preserve them, we’re open to that.”
He and his colleagues use churro wool in their weavings. They eat the animal’s meat and drink its milk.
Kady has let federal researchers collect material from his rams several times in the past two years, he said.
At close to minus-300 degrees Fahrenheit, semen remains viable indefinitely, said Harvey Blackburn, director of the churro project at the National Animal Germplasm Program in Fort Collins.
The Spanish introduced the small-bodied, long-haired churro to North America in the 1500s, Blackburn said, and American Indians quickly adopted the animal.
“Biologically, we do not know yet, but there may be genes there that make those sheep better adapted to an arid environment than other kinds of sheep breeds,” he said.
Lyle McNeal, director of the Navajo Sheep Project in Logan, Utah, said he supports the federal conservation project.
“I don’t want to see anyone have to bring them back from extinction again,” McNeal said. “That was quite a chore.”
Beginning in the 1970s, McNeal spent several decades looking for remaining churros in remote canyons and isolated valleys on the Navajo Reservation. He built a small “nucleus flock” in Utah and bred the animals. As the flock grew, McNeal returned churros to the reservation.
At one point, there were just a few hundred of the sheep left, he estimated. Today, there are 5,000 or more.
But that number may be dropping again, said Jay Begay, a churro shepherd in Hard Rock, Ariz.
“From what I see here on the reservation, there has been a steep decline,” Begay said. “The entire Navajo economy was based on sheep, and you don’t see that anymore.”
Staff writer Katy Human can be reached at 303-820-1910 or khuman@denverpost.com.
