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
