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Sunday, November 15, 2009

Amourous Sheep

I bought a fifty pound bag of carrots yesterday to try out on the sheep...the price was right at $4.5o so figured I didn't have much to lose. Turns out that the sheep will eat them IF you are holding the carrot, and then they ALL want to take a bite out of that particular carrot. Petrucio, the mature shetland wether was being a bit of a butthead to Deja in particular and ramming her as she was trying to get a bite of carrot. I pitched a couple of the big honking orange beasts at him (they are carrot culls of course and HUGE), but my aim was bad and they just went bouncing around the pasture. Finally I gave up and went in to deal with Mr.Cranky Pants.

He just wouldn't leave poor Deja alone! Followed her around, rammed her, sniffing her backside....oooooh, I get it now. But wait- he is, to put it delicately, not correctly anatomized anymore...he does have a bit of sac left from what I assumed wasn't the worlds best banding job (or he was neutered another way perhaps) but I THINK all the parts are gone. Right? Then Will told me he saw him mounting some of the girls...

He didn't behave this way last fall with the other three girls, is Deja just a particularly hot sheep? Does anyone else have this going on in their flock?

2 comments:

  1. Is it possible that a burdizzo emasculator was used? We use the burdizzo here, i have read that it is less painful on the sheep opposed to the bands. The burdizzo leaves their 'parts' there, but crushes the cord -leaving them unable to reproduce. I have heard though that they might still act like a ram- however, I haven't found this in writing? Also, there is a possibility that the cord /s might not have been crushed properly and that would leave them able to reproduce. (We started using the burdizzo when we had a ram lamb that took a while to 'drop - by the time he dropped, i thought he was too old to band.)

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  2. Hi Tonya,

    Yes, I suppose that is possible! I haven't had much experience with emasculating rams so I wasn't sure what anything other than banding would leave...thanks very much for the comment!

    Sherry

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