Alone in the wilderness: The lives and work of Colorado sheepherders
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MEEKER, Colo. — Up high in the national forests of Colorado in early August, Ignacio Alvarado knocked on trailers, peering inside.
“Hello! Hello! Hello!” he called, hoping to find someone.
Alvarado is in his late 60s and sports a thick black handlebar mustache. He walks with a slight gait. As an advocate for sheepherders (largely voluntarily), he treks out from his home in Fruita in his white pick-up truck at least once a month to check in on herders spread out across Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. He is one of the few people who look out for them and inform them of their rights and legal resources. It’s risky work — the roads are rocky, the cell phone reception is limited to non-existent, and the ranchers don’t want him around.
For most of the year, sheepherders operate alone in the remote deserts and forests of the western U.S. on horseback, surrounded only by guard dogs and herding dogs. They manage foraging flocks of sheep that sometimes number more than 2,000. The work is carried out by foreign workers on temporary H-2A visas that permit them to work in the U.S. for up to three years at a time.
The job is critical to the commercial production of wool and lamb in the U.S. The sheep need a herder to keep them together and move them so they don’t overgraze the land. The job demands a nomadic lifestyle, one Alvarado knows intimately from his days as a sheepherder in Colorado in the 1990s.
Colorado is the third-largest sheep producing state in the country, and most of the herders come from Peru or Mexico, and occasionally Nepal and Chile.
Sheepherding seems like a relic of years long passed — a lone man manually working the land, far from the sights and sounds of cities, traffic and technology. But while it can appear as a bucolic profession, it often isn’t.
The work can be tough — offering little to no days off each year — and incredibly lonely. One sheepherder is often by himself for weeks or months on end, with no one but their boss ("patrón” in Spanish) coming by for sporadic visits.
The industry has come under attack from labor advocates and lawyers representing workers exploited and abused by their employers and the industry writ large. The most extreme cases involve nonpayment of wages, withholding of food and medical care, forced labor and the confiscation of immigration papers.
Despite various court cases and reforms over the years, sheepherders today remain more vulnerable than other farmworkers, according to Jenifer Rodriguez, managing attorney for the farmworkers rights division at Colorado Legal Services.
“Probably about 30% of our cases involve sheepherders,” Rodriguez said. Rodriguez is one of only a few lawyers in the state representing sheepherders.
“It is pretty disproportionate compared to the number of other agricultural workers [in our state], but it’s not surprising given the vulnerability and exploitation that we see with them.”
Home on the range
Foreign sheepherders are able to work in the U.S. temporarily under the federal government’s H-2A visa program, a program that fills seasonal agriculture jobs unable to be occupied by American workers.
“In the probably 40 years that I've been involved in the business. I remember maybe three times we found an American citizen who would come to take the job,” said Al Villard, a sheep rancher based in Craig. “I think the longest one stayed was six months.”
Villard currently employs one herder from Mexico to manage his roughly 600 flock of sheep.
In 2024, there were approximately 4,000 H-2A workers in the state of Colorado, about 350 of them sheepherders.
By law, sheepherders on H-2A visas can stay in the U.S. for up to three years at a time before they are required to return to their home country for at least three months.
While most H-2A farm workers work a regular schedule, make hourly wages and are eligible for overtime pay, range workers such as sheepherders and cattle herders operate under a separate set of rules governed by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Sheepherders receive a monthly salary with no overtime pay and are expected to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. By law, Colorado sheepherders in 2024 must be paid at least $590 per week, or $2,360 per month.
“They’re on call constantly. In the middle of the night, if they hear sheep scrambling around and it's a coyote out there or a bear or something, they're supposed to take action,” said John Field, a rancher based in Montrose who currently employs two sheepherders.
“I don't know what we'd do without them because we aren't able to hire Americans,” Field said. “Americans don't want to do that type of work.”
Employers are required to provide sheepherders with free housing; food and potable water; all tools and supplies needed for the job; and a means of communication (e.g. cell phones).
A campito, or mobile wagon sheepherders live in throughout the American West. Ranchers move them by truck at various points of the year to coincide with the movement of the sheep — from the mountainous forests to the deserts to private ranch land. Video: Cormac McCrimmon, Rocky Mountain PBS
Most sheepherders live in small wagon-trailers commonly referred to as “campitos” in Spanish, the conditions of which can vary.
One herder Rocky Mountain PBS met had an older, dirt-stained camper with a gas stove that had seen better days. Perishable food including chicken and bacon were delivered in a cooler under his trailer and refilled every few days by his boss.
But another herder camping on the range had accommodations that included a mini fridge and several lights in his campito, lit by solar powered-batteries.
The campitos are roughly the size of a roomy, walk-in closet, and all the herders have propane tanks they use for cooking and heat in the winter time. They often keep a rifle, sometimes on their bed.
Due to the remote nature of the work, refrigeration, running water, toilets and electricity are not required and often not provided. Herders typically wash themselves and their clothes in a tin with potable water.
Far from cities and towns and often with no vehicle of their own, the herders typically lack access to transportation, other than the horses they ride for the job, or a lift from their employer.
Meet the herders
Rocky Mountain PBS met with five sheepherders on three separate occasions over the summer of 2024, both with Alvarado, a labor advocate, and with sheep ranchers who led us to their herders.
In the summer months, herders migrate up to federal forest land and settle the sheep away from main roads and hikers and campers. In some instances, it took several hours of driving remote roads to find them.
Most of the workers Rocky Mountain PBS met did not complain about their employers or their treatment.
“I came here for a better future and to earn more because in my country [Peru] we earn very little,” said sheepherder Faustino Feliciano Sanchez Medrano, who Rocky Mountain PBS found inside his camper off a narrow, scraggly road on a rainy day.
“We work here alone. There is no company at all.”
Medrano has worked for the same ranch for many years, and he said he likes his employer.
He showed Rocky Mountain PBS inside his campito, which was clean and tidy, with a calendar hanging by his bed, dish towels above the kitchen countertop and firewood tucked underneath the stove.
Medrano’s campito is furnished with a mini fridge, and he said the rancher who hired him insists on keeping the shelves full of food and brings him whatever he requests on a shopping list (Medrano likes loose beans, not canned ones, for example). His employer also bought him a new iPhone, where he keeps a photo of his wife, Elizabeth, and daughter, Daniela, on the lockscreen.
Medrano’s wife, 8-year-old daughter, 36-year-old son, and parents are all in Tarma, Peru, where his wife runs a small store. Medrano visits them every 2 years and 8 months. He will return to Peru in December and stay there until lambing season begins at the end of March.
Medrano said the work is pretty easy, with leisure time in the afternoon that he uses for cooking and rest. But he said his brother, Hugo, had a troubling experience when he was a sheepherder in New Mexico that he never recovered from. He said one day his brother had intense stomach pain and called his boss for help.
“The boss was a little bad, he didn’t come quickly enough to help my brother.”
Hugo’s intestine eventually burst before the patrón could get to him, and he was taken to a local hospital, and later airlifted to another hospital.
Hugo is now in Peru, unable to recover or work, and fighting terminal cancer. It was unclear whether the terminal cancer was related to Hugo’s injury as a herder.
Ever since that happened, Medrano said his family doesn’t want him to work in the U.S. and wants him to return home.
“I want to have the money to have a mini market or a large hotel,” he said. “When I make enough money for that, I won’t come to the United States anymore.”
Medrano said he knows a few herders from his hometown of Tarma who had bad experiences with their employers in Wyoming, and ran away to California.
Another herder from Mexico, who Rocky Mountain PBS chose to keep anonymous to not put his job or life at risk, said the winter months are the toughest.
“There are times in winter when the weather is very bad and very cold, and you have to go out to find the sheep,” he said. “If they are very far away, the cold makes you desperate.”
After a while of chatting with him this past spring, he admitted to some problems with his boss. He explained that in the past, some of the sheep died in the winter because there wasn’t enough grass for them to feed on — it was buried too deep under the snow.
The herder said he warned his employer that the sheep needed external provisions. “But he didn’t do his part, he didn’t help,” he said. “Then he got mad at me.”
“It wasn’t my fault. If there is no grass, I can’t do anything.”
The herder also said his boss doesn’t always bring him food in a timely manner. Ranchers are required to provide their herders with three meals a day worth of food.
“Sometimes he brings it to me every 15 days when I no longer have anything,” he said. “I don’t have water, food, dog food, or horse food.” He attributed his boss not bringing the provisions due to bad roads in the winter.
The herder said he stays because he needs the money. “If I didn't need it, I wouldn't come.”
He said he’s been too afraid to report his employer to anyone or to seek outside help.
Ignacio Alvarado has been visiting sheepherders and providing resources for them for nearly 30 years. “Finding them is not easy because they are moving all the time,” he said. He can often figure out where the sheep and herders are by examining the grasses sheep graze on. Video: Andrea Kramar, Rocky Mountain PBS
Alvarado, the advocate who left Chile to work as a sheepherder in the early 1990s, said he never would have come to the U.S. if he had known what the job would be like. He said the campito he was given had mice in it, and that when he got severely ill from a tick-borne illness, his boss’ family didn’t take him to get medical care when he needed it.
He was outspoken about his dislike for the job, and was able to convince his boss to give him a different job after three years as a herder. He eventually became a ranch hand and later a truck driver, checking in on herders and bringing them food and other supplies.
Despite his issues with his employer, his boss helped him eventually get a green card.
Since Alvarado left the job in the early 2000s, he now manages a 15-acre ranch for an individual in the Grand Junction area — and checks in on sheepherders in his free time throughout the year. He offers his phone number and important contacts should they need help and keeps a hand-written notebook of all the herders he’s met over the years.
“Work is work. Everyone needs it,” he said, “But I don’t want people to suffer so much.”
He’s received grants from organizations like Colorado Legal Services and Project Protect and often comes bringing clothing donations from a local church.
“I do what I can but I've been doing it for about thirty plus years now, and I'm getting old and tired,” he said.
Repeated violations and court cases
From 2006-2020, the U.S Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division cited 17 Colorado sheep ranches in violation of the law. Some ranches, like the one where Alvarado worked, which remains operational today, had as many as 30 employees involved in cases where violations were found.
Monetary penalties of the ranches ranged from $0 to $35,400 and one group of workers won back wages totaling as much as $22,000.
Rodriguez, who has been representing sheepherders and other farmworkers for the past 17 years, said employers sometimes withhold wages or medical treatment as punishment for when a sheep gets killed, lost or driven over by a truck.
“It's usually the ones that have left and have been able to escape the mistreatment who will ask us to represent them,” she said. “The herders that are still in the employment situation are afraid to come forward because of the danger it could put them in with their employer.”
“We’ll get phone calls without names, asking like ‘Can I know about this?’ or ‘Is this supposed to be happening?’” said Rodriguez. “Nine times out of 10 they'll say, ‘Okay, thank you, but I’m not going to do anything about it because I need to come back next year.’”
"The sheepherders are so extremely isolated and 100% dependent on their employer for everything — for food, water, access to medical care, communication with their family, everything," said Jenifer Rodriguez, managing attorney of the migrant farm worker division at Colorado Legal Services. “And so obviously depending on the employer, there's just a lot of room for exploitation.” Video: Cormac McCrimmon, Rocky Mountain PBS
She said a lot of herders who contact her for help come from the same ranches year after year.
In one of the most egregious cases she’s worked on, Camayo v. John Peroulis & Sons Sheep, Inc. in 2010, a group of herders alleged their visas and passports were confiscated by their employer; their food was rationed; they suffered verbal and physical abuse and were refused medical care.
In one specific allegation, a herder claimed he was told to continue working after he became injured when he was bucked off a horse and fell from a ladder while working on the job.
“Stanley Peroulis ‘cursed and yelled at him until Mr. Bruno relented and performed the work,’” the complaint stated.
In another allegation, one of the Peroulis sons threatened to send the herder back to Peru after the herder was found talking to a coworker. The case was settled on confidential terms.
Federal investigators found repeat violations at the Peroulis ranch over several years — in 1990, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998. Federal agents raided the ranch in September 2000. But year after year, the ranch continued to operate and hire workers through the H-2A program. It wasn’t until 2015 that they finally stopped bringing in workers.
“It wasn't the feds as much as the ranching association that said, ‘you're not going to participate with us anymore in this,’” said Tom Acker, a friend and partner of Alvarado’s who has visited and advocated for sheepherders since 2006.
In another collective action suit filed against James Craig Bair ranch in 2016, three Peruvian sheepherders alleged violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
“They were doing ranch hand work and were being paid as sheep herders,” said Rodriguez, describing a tactic that has helped ranchers pocket more money.
In 2024, ranch hands made at least $14.42 an hour, Colorado's minimum wage. Sheepherders made about $2,400 a month, which comes down to about $7 to $7.50 an hour for an 80 hour work week, the amount of hours they typically work.
The parties settled in 2017, again on confidential terms.
The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has not cited James Craig Bair Ranch since 2008, when they found 11 H-2A violations against cattle herders.
The ranch continues to bring in workers today. The ranch requested 10-15 range sheepherders during the third quarter of fiscal year 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Labor ‘s H-2A disclosure data.
“We each take care of our independent businesses, but none of us like to see a black eye within the industry,” said Field, who is current president of the Colorado Wool Growers Association.
“If we hear about somebody mistreating laborers, there's not much we can do about it. It's up to the government, to a large degree, to take care of that,” he said. “But I have never had any personal experience with that with any of the folks I know.”
Limited oversight and regulation
Besides Alvarado, the occasional outreach from someone from Colorado Legal Services or a random spotting from a hunter or park ranger, there aren’t regular visitors checking in on the herders. Federal and state oversight is limited.
Across the U.S., investigations by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division plummeted more than 60% from 2000 to 2022, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C.
The division has 810 investigators to cover 165 million workers, including roughly 2.4 million farmworkers. Investigators are now responsible for almost triple the number of workers than they were in 1973, the report stated, with a budget that hasn’t increased much in 20 years.
“You can imagine this completely isolated and powerless group [of sheepherders] are going to suffer more than any other group,” said Acker.
“The government oversight is so poor that bad players recognize they're very unlikely to ever get identified or prosecuted for their behavior or fined,” he said.
Even when labor inspectors are able to make it out to check on herders, they often don’t know where to find them.
Luis Alfonso guides sheep during lambing season in Craig. Alfonso has a brother at a nearby ranch, but because of the isolated nature of the work, he said they haven’t seen each other. Video: Cormac McCrimmon, Rocky Mountain PBS
“Sometimes the herders are in places where you can't get to them by car and the only person who knows where the herder is is the employer,” said Rodriguez. “And so they'd have to use the employer to get to the herder. Obviously that could impact the conversation that the herder is going to have with the investigator.”
A spokesperson for the State Monitor Advocate’s (SMA) office, a federal-state monitoring office for migrant and seasonal farmworkers said the office conducts field visits to H-2A workers only when they receive a complaint or notice of an apparent violation. In the 40 years they have been around, the spokesperson said the office has only received one complaint — about Lazy 3X Ranch located in Mack, Colorado.
The state’s department of labor found a variety of breach of contract violations that included unsanitary living conditions including excessive rodent infestation; unusable first aid kits; expired food given to workers; refusal to supply free-of-cost equipment; refusal to provide transportation to town; excessive work hours and non-payment of wages; and retaliatory remarks given to workers who questioned their conditions.
The state’s department of labor issued a discontinuation of service in May 2022, meaning the employer would no longer be able to utilize the H-2A program to hire workers. The ranch appealed, provided restitution to workers and created a plan of action to come into compliance. However, the SMA received information the employer was continuing to violate the contract and initiated a discontinuation of service notice again in March 2023.
Lazy 3X Ranch is no longer allowed to bring in H-2A workers.
Rocky Mountain PBS found a series of social media videos posted by the ranch showing workers herding and shearing sheep, including September 28, 2023 and March 21, 2024. It is unclear whether or not the herders and shearers are H-2A workers.
In a set of changes, in 2021, Colorado enacted new rules giving agricultural workers more rights, under Senate Bill 2021-087, also known as the Farmworker Bill of Rights. The bill increased worker pay; authorized agriculture workers to have visitors without employee interference; offered greater retaliation protections; and mandated employers take herders to town every three weeks.
The bill faced fierce opposition from industry groups and Republican lawmakers, but went into effect in 2022.
“I think part of the problem is you’ve got one guy responsible for 1,200 head of animals out there, and you don't have another resource you can turn to,” said Acker. “That kind of sets up the whole condition that [ranchers] wouldn't consider asking this guy if he wants to go into town because they just realistically can't afford to have him go.”
Acker believes — and hopes — for new ways of organizing the industry that would afford workers more opportunities to take a break and let someone else fill in.
“What would that look like? I don't know,” he said. “But I think the bottom line is we're dealing with human beings here. We have certain standards in the U.S. that tell us that this behavior is not normal, and it's not healthy, and it's not fair, and we need to address it.”
Since the law was enacted, Rodriguez said herders she’s worked with haven’t gone to town. The herders Rocky Mountain PBS met also said they rarely left the sheep, though Medrano said his boss appeared to be complying with the law.
“We sign a paper. Those who don't want to, don't go; those who do, go,” he said.
While Rocky Mountain PBS was visiting with ranchers John Field and Ernie Etchart in Montrose in August, one of them mentioned they had just received an email from the Western Range Association, a sheep industry trade group, reminding them of the three-weeks-to-town-rule.
“I'm glad to hear it. If that's the case, it's really good news. That's what I was hoping would happen,” Rodriguez said.
The work continues
In an area called California Park, herder Ruben Merecidas Barragan, from Oaxaca, Mexico carries a smile and optimistic attitude. “It’s work. At least I like the countryside.” He walked up to his horse Manzo and gave him a pat.
“When we are at the ranch, sometimes they give us a day on Sunday to go out to do our shopping and everything. But when we are here in the countryside, we can't leave the animals alone,” Ruben Merecidas Barragan said. Video: Cormac McCrimmon, Rocky Mountain PBS
“We Mexicans are like that, we are not going to be bored, we are not going to be sad. There is no reason. Life goes on and you have to try hard.”
Barragan said he’d prefer to work in another job but his visa papers tie him up as a sheepherder. Alvarado gave Barragan his number and said to call him anytime.
As Alvarado continues to get older — he’s in his late 60s now — he doesn’t know who will carry on the work of looking after the sheepherders. “There’s no one who wants to continue this with me,” he said.
For now, he continues to drive his truck into the mountains in the summer and the deserts in the winter, continuing to knock on the doors of campitos. When he finds someone, he offers a hug and handshake and shares his phone number.