Re: [blackbelly] Re: ram behavior (was New to list)

[Carol J. Elkins]

I don't have enough experience or information to answer your question, 
Mitzi, but I do know that most animal behavior results from an interaction 
between genetics and environment (nature vs. nurture). If you were to 
castrate a 2-year-old aggressive ram, in all likelihood the testosterone in 
his system will have already "hard-wired" his aggressive behavior. But if I 
were in your shoes, I'd want to keep my options open for as long as 
possible. Therefore, I would not castrate the bottle rams unless their 
behavior got bad enough to justify it. I'd breed them for as long as 
possible. Also, those ram lambs could be fertile as young as 4 months; 
certainly by 6 months.

Carol
At 10:00 PM 7/6/2004 -0500, you wrote:
Carol, if a ram were neutered at that age after that sort of testosterone 
related behavior had begun, would the behavior stop?
Or is it a learned behavior that becomes a habit? (In your opinion)....I 
had thought the testosterone mediated behavior started at a very young 
age. If it takes several *years before the "ram behavior" starts I'd 
dearly love to leave one of them intact just long enough to breed 1 or 2 
of my girls.
Carol Elkins
Critterhaven Estate
Registered Barbados Blackbelly Hair Sheep
(no shear, no dock, no fuss)
Pueblo, Colorado
http://www.critterhaven.biz
T-shirts, mugs, caps, and more at the
Barbados Blackbelly Online Store http://www.cafepress.com/blackbellysheep
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