A few days ago, Mr. Big Food came across a dead sheep in the Pond Pasture. It was not the first.
A while ago, I saw buzzards going back & forth between the ground and the almost dead gum tree in the pond pasture. Upon further investigation, I discovered a dead sheep corpse lying between the fence and the path. I wondered if it hadn’t gotten its head stuck in the fence. I texted my County Supervisor and asked that he text me back Doug’s– the owner of the sheep and a County Sup from a different district– phone number. Turns out they– the County Supervisors– were in a meeting and Pat (our Sup) had just shown my text to Doug. And sure enough, when Doug came out to collect the corpse, that’s what he said had happened. Head stuck. Dehydrated.
This most recent dead sheep was in the middle of everything. When Doug came out to collect her corpse, he pronounced her dead in child birth. She was too young. Just up and couldn’t do it & died.
Doug came this evening with his wife to give the sheep some minerals. Doug’s wife dotes on the sheep. They are such dotable stupid critters. I am in awe. I raise stupid vegetables (I’m looking at you PSChurchland) but she raises animals. She cares for them. She knows their habits. She– and everyone else in the known universe– understands that young females often die when giving birth. But she still has the common decency to to be sad that a young female was not able to birth a lamb.
“…she raises animals. She cares for them. She knows their habits.”
But you found the corpse…and she died birthing? Hmmmm. She didn’t know that the ewe was due to lamb? Said ewe maybe should have been closer to home under observation… or at least she should have noticed she was missing…
Maybe I’m being hypercritical…but … yes…you lose some when they give birth. And you should be watching out for them for that very reason.
Although…sometimes they fool you. And my critters don’t have pasture…so I see them twice a day. I’m sure pasture feeding makes a difference as well. By the way…this is sort of the wrong time of year for lambing. Usually Jan to June.
Well– they own about 150 of them and the ones that they have on their property are right outside the back door. They check on these ones once a week. The ones we have are in about a 5 acre area. Unless they are way down in the way down part of the pasture, we see them all the time.
When they brought them here we asked if there was anything we needed to do in terms of looking after them and they told us a handful of things to look out for, one of which was obvious difficulty giving birth. This poor thing was found way down where we just didn’t see it.
I thought that too about the timing but we’ve been seeing a new one every couple of weeks since they arrived.
I remember thinking how odd it was when I saw a just birthed fawn in late July. But I looked it up and though they probably don’t fair as well those born earlier, it is not uncommon around here. Wonder if the same is true of sheep?
Anyway– they are coming to get the male out this week and also a couple who are hobbling. Until last week it was really dry and she said that can really mess up their hooves.
It’s all been very interesting. I used to think I wanted a calf out here but maybe not!
If you’re not familiar with them, it’s hard to keep track of who’s who. Breeding period for sheep (and goats) is generally considered to be between August and January, making birthing period to be between January and June. Of course, there are always the odd balls. If this was a yearling, she must have been bred in March – which is late – and possibly not sooner if she had been born a bit late herself…let’s say maybe July – Sept. of the previous year. It’s hard to say.
My project at present is to breed for polled (meaning naturally having no horns) dairy goats. I got started (making a long story short) by Edwardo’s Alpine doe(that’s dairy breeding) being bred to his polled Boer (that’s meat breeding). Generally, dairy breeds originated in Europe, and their breeding period is supposed to be between August and January. Boers, on the other hand, will breed all year. So they say. So…now consider that with dairy, the product is milk. Kids are simply a requirement for more milk. Breeders look for a long milking duration, but usually it’s about 10 months without birthing new kids. Boers, on the other hand, originate from South Africa, and of course, their primary product is the meat produced in the kids. Milk is a by-product so to speak. So…do the Boers produce two crops because they’ve been selected that way, or because they’ve been bred closer to the equator? Do dairy goats produce one crop and have a limited breeding season because they’ve been selected that way or because they’ve been bred in Europe which is significantly further from the equator???? I wish I knew!
And that hasn’t even begun to address the polled issue!! Maybe tomorrow!!
So … why a calf? dairy or beef? Male or female?
The problem is … dairy is guaranteed to be a _lot_ of work. Milk production in a Jersey (the lowest producing milk breed, generally) still produces about 40 lbs or so per day.That’s about 5 gallons. That’s a _lot_ of milk! and they have to be milked twice a day. No vacations. Meat on the other hand, is much easier. Turn them out and let them eat. You’d have about a year to 15 months. _Then_ comes the hard part. You either butcher them at home,or send them out for the hard part. Either way is hard – guaranteed. Even if you don’t really work with them.
Like kittens – they all grow up!!
Did a long response this afternoon…hit send, and it disappeared. Oh well…
These are hair sheep. I’ve been told the products are meat and leather. I never took the time to learn more about them except that they shed their wool (?) in the spring and early summer and just have hair like a short-haired dog.
They came last evening and took away the big male and all of the little males. But given what you’ve said about mating seasons, that doesn’t seem right. I am confused. And yet– Doug (their owner) has had sheep for years so he must know what he’s doing.
I bet the answer to your questions is a combination of genetics and environment and human interaction in terms of purposeful breeding.
And good lord! That does seem to be an awful lot of work. And then what do you do with the milk? Cheese, I know. But that’s a lot of work, too.
I got started on goats because I had 4 boys and they were going through a gallon of milk a day. I already had a couple of horses, and actually, the chores involved gave me a bit of “me” time every day. Goats – really good milkers – produce about 1/2 to 1 gallon of milk per day. Milking only takes about 10-15 minutes, so not a big deal. We never went on vacation anyway, so that wasn’t a problem. If the two goats were bred several months apart, one in Aug/Sept and one in Jan/Feb, we pretty much had milk year around.
The other thing is horns. Dairy goats have collars, meat goats have horns. This is because dairy goats have their horns burned off at about 3-5 days old. I found this really hard to handle – hence my interest in the polled genetics. If you’re the average person, you use a milking stand. Goats are trained to get up on the stand by using it to feed them grain. Then when it’s time to milk, goat gets up on the stand, you sit and milk. On the other hand, if you have one that hasn’t been handled from infancy (which means they’re sort of wild) you can milk like my young hispanic friend. Boggles my mind to watch him. He used a collar, ties goat by the neck to a fence/wall, then squats, puts the near hind leg under his arm and milks away. I couldn’t do that in my prime!
The approved method is to take the kids from the doe as soon as they’re born and bottle feed them. They then look on people as their moms and are very docile. They follow you around, and can easily be tied to something solid as necessary (like moving them from here to there in a vehicle).
“They came last evening and took away the big male and all of the little males. But given what you’ve said about mating seasons, that doesn’t seem right.”
Well….maybe. If you assume that now is the beginning of breeding season, they might be removing the father/brothers to reduce likelihood of inbreeding. I’ve just sold a _very_ nice buck and his really cute son for that reason. I have to start looking for another buck for next year – one that’s unrelated to the daughters we have.
Other than that… who knows!!!
Lots of people have goats around here. The little kids are just hilarious to watch. But I’m happy to just have someone else’s sheep and grow my veggies.
Trying to picture how your friend milks with the leg under his arm. Must be a funny sight. I’m pretty agile but I’m also pretty sure I could not pull that off.
How cool are the winters? Do you have to so anything special for them?
FYI– I saw 7 comments when I pulled this up. ??