2C
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2016
Courtesy of Steve Stuebner
Idaho sheep video gets 262,000 YouTube views
The 23-minute
video walks viewers
through a year of
raising sheep
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
W
ILDER, Idaho — A 23-minute
video about Idaho sheep has
generated a lot of attention on
YouTube and nobody is quite sure why.
The video has been viewed more
than 262,000 times since it was
posted in June 2013.
It features Wilder sheep rancher
Frank Shirts and some of his 28,000
ewes and lambs. Shirts speaks
openly about the love he has for the
job and the challenges he faces.
Shirts said though he’s “tickled to
death over” the video’s success, he’s
not surprised by it because a lot of
people love sheep.
“It wasn’t me,” he said. “The
people that watched it won’t even
remember my name. People love
seeing those baby lambs.”
Most of the 58 comments
below the video are positive, and
it has received 568 “likes” and 33
“dislikes.”
Shirts said he’s most happy that
the video has shed some light on
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Courtesy of Steve Stuebner
Wilder, Idaho, sheep rancher Frank Shirts speaks to a film crew while
shooting footage for a video that has been viewed more than 262,000
times on YouTube.
some of the positive aspects of the
sheep industry.
“If it can help our industry, that’s
the main thing I’m happy to see,” he
said.
The video was produced by Steve
Stuebner for Life on the Range, an
Idaho Rangeland Resource Commis-
sion educational outreach campaign
that informs people about Idaho
ranchers.
Stuebner followed Shirts and his
lock for an entire year as the sheep
were moved from the low country
near the Snake River to higher coun-
try in the Boise and Payette national
forests.
“He just walked us through the
whole process of raising lambs and
grazing across public and private
land to the point they are ready to get
shipped to market,” Stuebner said.
The 262,000 views is a lot for a
simple farming video, said Jake Put-
nam, broadcast services manager for
Idaho Farm Bureau Federation.
“It just shows the American peo-
ple are very curious about where
their food comes,” he said. “They’re
also very curious about farmers and
ranchers and they like to put names
and faces to their food.”
The Shirts video is one of 30 in the
Life on the Range series and is by far
the most popular, with second place
registering 47,000 views.
Gretchen Hyde, the rangeland and
resource commission’s executive
director, said she has no idea why the
Shirts video is so popular.
She said none of the videos is
scripted.
“It’s really them talking from the
heart, which is the most effective way
to reach the public,” she said. “I think
that comes through really well.”
The videos cover a wide variety of
range-related topics, from how to get
a BLM permit to photo monitoring to
how ranchers are taking care of Ida-
ho’s rangelands and managing them
for multiple uses.
“We’re letting people know the
positive stories going on on the
rangeland; the diversity of ranches
and rangeland issues and how peo-
ple are individually handling them,”
Hyde said.
To view the Shirts video, search
online for, “A year in the life of rais-
ing sheep in Idaho.” To view the other
videos, go to www.lifeontherange.
org.
Continuous
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