[blackbelly] Unruly/Dangerous Ram

[Hill County]

Title: Need Advice on Unruly/Dangerous Ram

MIKE, TYPICAL, NORMAL BEHAVIOR, GROWING WORSE (MEANER) WITH AGE, NEVER BETTER...... NEVER, NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON A RAM.  WE WOUND UP HITTING OUR RAM WITH A 2X4 AND GRABBING HIS HORNS AND PULLING THEM TO THE GROUND.  BETTER TO DO THE LATTER WHEN THEY ARE YOUNG.  HEARD THAT HELPS MAKING HIM LEARN YOU ARE THE BOSS.  KNOW WHAT YOUR ARE GOING THROUGH WITH THAT RAM.  WE HAD TO RID OF ONE A FEW MONTHS AGO.  WILL ONLY KEEP MY RAMS, AS MANY OTHERS DO, UNTIL 9 OR 10 MONTHS, THEN EAT THEM OR TRADE THEM.  AFTER 2 YEARS OR LESS THEY BUTT EVERYTHING INCLUDING EACH OTHER.  MY FORMER RAM CHARGED THEIR SHELTER CONTINUOUSLY FOR HOURS EVERY AFTERNOON.  SOUNDED LIKED SHOTGUN BLASTS HITTING THE METAL  HE KNOCKED DOWN A SMALLER SHELTER POLES AND ALL TURNING THIS INTO A HEAP OF RUBBLE.  I PUT UP HIGH LOG TREES INTO THE EARTH TO BE RAMMING POSTS FOR HIM.  HE KNOCKED THESE DOWN ONCE A DAY AND CONTINUED TO RAM SOMETHING ELSE. HE ATE A GOOD PART OF A BLACK CREOSOTE POLE.  WE THOUGHT THIS WAS THE END OF HIM.  DIDN'T EVEN GET SICK FROM EATING IT.  WE DID NOT COUNT THE NUMEROUS TREES HE DESTROYED BY RUBBING THE BARK OFF WITH THOSE HORNS.  IN TIME, THESE TREES DIED. HERE' ONE I KEPT ON TREE DESTRUCTION.... Barbados Blackbelly sheep as cedar eaters. They have several 20- to 25-ft dead cedars standing near their beautiful family farm house to prove it. At a recent meeting of the Blackbelly Barbados Sheep Association, 25 other sheep growers happily reported that they have no live cedars left in their pastures, either. After the meeting, I went directly to a one-acre lot on which I started pasturing my sheep only three years earlier. I gathered up nine cedars that were dead and broken off just below the ground. The largest was 5� inch in diameter and 10� ft tall. Having observed my sheep as they worked on those cedars for three years, I will describe how they accomplished this wonderful job. The sheep began by eating most of the needles in easy reach. The big horned rams love to rub and twist the branches with their horns. All the sheep push in under the branches for shade and to escape flies. Standing on their hind legs, they cleared all the greenery within 4 feet or so of the ground. Then they chewed the bark off the trunk until the trees were completely girdled. The trees were dry dead within three years. The sheep continued to rub on the larger lower branches and trunk after the tree was dead until it was broken off just beneath the soil. Our Blackbelly Barbados sheep clear all underbrush from our property. They seem to eat almost anything the GOAT eats and they don't smell bad, climb, or jump out of the pasture. A light field fence works best to keep them in, but an electric fence will do fine. HERE'S ONE I REMEMBER.... DID NOT KEEP MANY OF THE COMMENTS ON THE LIST SERVE.  ONE OF THE WORST HEARD ON THE LIST EARLIER THIS YEAR.  .................REMEMBER ONE MAN, WHO IS HANDICAP, BEING IN WHEELCHAIR.  HE SAID THIS RAM CAME FROM BEHIND AND KNOCKED HIM OUT OF THE WHEELCHAIR, HURTING HIM. ************************************************************************************************** ANOTHER ONE I FOUND............. My ram, Ghost fathered his first offspring at about 9 months. So, sexual maturity comes much earlier than 2 yrs. It seems that rams don't get aggressive until about that age. Possibly because eariler than that, they aren't big enough to "battle" for the females. So those instincts don't come to light until physically larger and stronger. I had a very aggressive ram, and was advised to try the "ram shield" from Premier One. The shield lets the ram see sideways but not forward, seems not to be cruel, and had a powerful tempering effect on his behavior. Check it out at www.premier1supplies.com.&cat_id= ************************************************************************************************** I guess you just learned a valuable lesson. Lesson 2 NEVER turn your back on a ram. No matter how 'sweet' you think he is. But they do like to play hell with any manger or other fixtures in the pen. Usually, breaking them. I don't have a problem handling them, I always have a cane with me and make a point of bossing them around. I keep them scared of me. There is no such thing as a PET RAM. HOPE MY EMAIL HELPS, HAVE TO RUN, STEVE TS HILL CO. TX ************************************************************************************************** ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael J. Bernier To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 10:29 PM Subject: [blackbelly] Need Advice on Unruly/Dangerous Ram I am simultaneously posting this message to the Blackbelly Barbados listserv and the Barbados Blackbelly Sheep Yahoo! group, so if you are a member of both groups like I am you will indeed be seeing double! We purchased a ram lamb and three ewe lambs in January 2002.  After some initial failures, we finally were able to coax out a half-decent breeding cycle from the group this past spring (one ewe had twins, another a single, and the third was barren).  We are preparing to breed them again, but are running into a serious problem with keeping the ram under control. The ram is kept in a separate pen next to the ewes and their lambs; he is extremely food aggressive when placed with the ewes for breeding, and we feared he would hurt or kill them or their lambs if we left him in there.  He was listed as a polled ram when we purchased him, but he�s anything but that now � two years old, and has a very solid rack of C-shaped horns.  Lately, he�s learned how to use those horns on us and the 6-foot chain-link fencing of his enclosure. Today was the worst � my wife was feeding him, and he decided he wanted to use her as a punching bag.  She tried to get out of the pen and close the gate, but he managed to ram the gate twice � the second time was so hard that it knocked her to the ground, picking up some nasty cuts and scrapes along the way.  She at least had enough presence of mind to get back to her feet and slam the gate shut before he could finish backing up for another charge at her.  When I went to the pens to see the sheep this evening, he tried coming at me the same way � but this time the fence stopped him. I�m of a mind that most of this behavior is sexually motivated, and we�ve seen him get somewhat worked up at other times (which we assume was when the ewes were in heat), but he�s never, ever been so aggressive toward us.  We�re not planning to expose the ewes to him for another month or so, but the damage he�s inflicted on us and his fencing are making us wonder if he will be even worse when that time comes.  Perhaps our greatest fear is that he will actually break through the fence and go after one of our children (our 6-year-old in particular is always eager to jump in and feed the ewes and lambs � sometimes without our asking). I�m trying to figure out what our options are in this situation � do we turn him in with the ewes early, and hope that he calms down once he has his �harem� again (and if we do, would we ever be able to get him out of there again before the lambs arrive)?  Do we find someone else who might have better facilities to hold and handle him?  Or, do we turn him into leg �o lamb and mutton chops?  Obviously, it�s not the best of choices in front of us.  Any advice you have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Mike Bernier Lucky G Ranch Denison, TX