Sheep Chat Thread

[MrsFitz]

We have a single lamb that our neighbor got to bottle feed for her kids experience this past April. She was bottle fed and then weaned after we got her. We also got this spring 4 broad breasted bronze turkeys which are a good size by now. We also have 9 red sex link chickens that are 1 1/2 years old and 3 buff orpingtons that about 4 months old. My question is our lamb has been grabbing a mouth full of feathers from the turkeys and eating them on occasion. Last night my mother-in-law saw the lamb butting and pinning the turkeys and chickens against our coop pen.. They free range during the day.. And this morning I found a buff with her lower back bald of feathers and a bite out of her skin. This afternoon we watched a Tom turkey and a turkey hen do a little mating dance and then watched out lamb walk right up to the turkeys and started grabbing the hen by the neck and try to drag her a direction. This behavior is so weird and can't figure it out. Would really love some insight. There is plenty of grass for the lamb to graze on and all the fowl free range and are penned up at night. Please help. This lamb is just psycho I think!

 

[chooks4life]

Some sheep breeds are aggressive and will stomp, bite, etc. My lamb is from a breed that will kill dogs. Even the tiny lambs will help stalk and encircle something they've identified as a future victim.

Bottle fed lambs run a risk of deficiency despite the formula. Different breeds have slightly different needs. Eating feathers is pretty normal for a bottle fed lamb, and so is eating meat. This is a symptom of deficiency. Sometimes their current diet is enough for them but they've lost the ability to discern it due to past deprivation.

I would advise you to supplement her diet with a mineral lick for sheep, and maybe some other ovine-specific feeds. In some countries they have things like 'lamb nuts' which as far as I understand is some sort of lumpy pellet feed for lambs or adult sheep. I give mine Horse & Pony pellets of a sort which are formulated to be fed to everything from pigs to chooks to sheep, as well as equines. I am seeking a mineral lick for her too. In the interim I give her kelp, dried and granulated, and straight lucerne (not lucerne hay or whatever). As a small lamb I made sure she got her dose of soil (as lambs and kids do better when allowed to eat some clean healthy soil). Sometimes people take so many well intentioned precautions that they keep an animal safe from health, lol. There's so much conflicting info out there.

My lamb eats fish and red meat whenever she gets the chance, though I try to prevent her eating red meat, and she will often paw at the dogs and cats. She'll bite onto ears and pull, bites tails and paws too, and the intent is to hurt the other creature, not eat it. She's practicing her feral dog/predator-killing skills. This is natural to some breeds.

She also takes an aggressive attitude with any animal showing it is damaged, vulnerable, or afraid; and if she's afraid or startled by something, she responds very aggressively. She's about 7 or 8 months old now. Thankfully she is not showing these traits to the small children! I've had to cull a lamb for that before. I think your lamb is normal for her breed or mixture of breeds. The breeds which do not have these traits don't act that way, pretty simply. What breed is she? Mine's a mix but you'd never know, she looks almost entirely pure and certainly acts it.

 

[bloonskiller911]

do any of you run your sheep and goats together if you have both?

 

[chooks4life]

I have had both in the past. They don't seem to want to live together, not that they fought but rather just segregated themselves, but for my lone orphan lamb I intend to get a nanny goat of a dairy breed as a wiser companion for Lucy to bond to and learn from, which I can also milk. Or perhaps I'll get a little Nigerian pygmy. Lucy's inclined to be a bully to some animals though so the goat will need to be able to hold its own. But I expect it will, whether normal size or pygmy. They're such characters, and certainly agile enough.

 

[WallabyOfChaos]

Our sheep and goats did not get along when they were kept together. They stayed separate most of the time, but problems arose at "community" places such as the water tank, salt/mineral, and at feeding time. All of our goats had horns, and it didn't take them long to figure out that the sheep were unarmed. Eventually the sheep quit coming to feed because the goats would hook them, they would leave the water or salt when the goats showed up, and it was tough to get them all penned because the sheep didn't want to be anywhere near a goat. Once it became apparent that the goats didn't want to co-exist peacefully with they sheep, they were for sale. I think if our goats had been disbudded or dehorned we probably would not have had so many problems with them bullying the sheep.

 

[WallabyOfChaos]

I finally got a decent picture of our Rambouillets. They aren't exactly gentle, but they aren't as wild as the day the came off the truck.

 

[chooks4life]

Quote: If your sheep had been willing enough to spar with them, hornless goats might have been able to coexist, but if the sheep did not stand up for themselves then even hornless goats can bully them. Have you considered pygmies?

Our goats were always dangerous enough to other animals if they wanted to be, whether the goat in question was horned or hornless. Same with our sheep. It's got a huge amount to do with the attitude of the individual. In general though a goat can beat a sheep, they're just so much more agile than most domestic breeds; a sheep tends to charge and a goat tends to dodge and get stuck in while the opponent's guard is down. Goats often have good horns for stabbing, whereas sheep mostly have good horns for butting. No contest.

 

[bloonskiller911]

Quote:
GREAT PIC!

 

[WallabyOfChaos]

If your sheep had been willing enough to spar with them, hornless goats might have been able to coexist, but if the sheep did not stand up for themselves then even hornless goats can bully them. Have you considered pygmies?

Our goats were always dangerous enough to other animals if they wanted to be, whether the goat in question was horned or hornless. Same with our sheep. It's got a huge amount to do with the attitude of the individual. In general though a goat can beat a sheep, they're just so much more agile than most domestic breeds; a sheep tends to charge and a goat tends to dodge and get stuck in while the opponent's guard is down. Goats often have good horns for stabbing, whereas sheep mostly have good horns for butting. No contest.

We had a herd of 300 Spanish cross range nannies when we had goats. That said, we did not own goats just for the heck of it. People keep sheep and goats together all the time, some never have any problems at all and others are just oblivious to problems. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. This was just our experience with running the two together. We did not sell the goats just because they bullied the sheep. We sold the goats because in a good year they would only pull a 70-something percent kid crop, while the sheep were doing over 150% in the same conditions and would raise heavier offspring. The goats were well on their way out when we bought sheep, the rude behavior was just the last straw.

 

[WallabyOfChaos]

GREAT PIC!

Thanks! Husband says it looks "too hot" in the picture. Lol.