Sheep Chat Thread

[chooks4life]

The conversation reminded me of a mustang mare I used to have. She was a Super Mom! None of the adult sheep DARED share her feed bucket or risk a stomping but she would let the lambs eat with her.

lol I can picture it now.

Our mare was great at pretending she was a harmless pensioner dozing away until the chooks dared roam past her, as she usually parked herself outside their cage doors which they roamed in and out of during the day... Then without looking, using any foot, she'd suddenly plant a hoof onto any unwary chicken. She also used to help herd the poultry and other animals too, if we were rounding them up she'd take and hold a place in the line. While she hated birds in general, she was a fine character, taught many children to ride, used to be a great worker.

 

[The Farm]

Hey I have a herd of goats. And want to get a few sheep.
Can goats and sheep cross bred?
I am asking cause I want to get some sheep but I have close to 30 goats.
And I have been told that they can.
If so are they healthy?
Are they sterile???

 

[WallabyOfChaos]

It is possible, but quite rare. Just like horses and donkeys, sheep and goats have different numbers of chromosomes which means that any chance at fertile hybrid offspring would be slim to none. Simply being a hybrid should not be a cause for health problems. We have kept sheep and goats together with no reproductive issues, and we know many other producers who co-mingle sheep and goats and have never had a hybrid. The only thing I would caution about is that during breeding time if your breeding rams and billies start seriously fighting, your billy is probably going to get killed. Structurally speaking, the ram has the advantage and should a big, strong breeding ram go head-to-head with a billy goat the goat is liable to get his neck broken.
Lots more reading about sheep here: http://sheep101.info/index.html

 

[The Farm]

Okay thanks!

 

[chooks4life]

Quote: Some sheep are more goatlike than others and I suspect hybridize more readily. With some breeds of sheep, the lines between what is 'goat' or 'sheep' -typical are very blurred, for example some sheep have beards like some goats, and hair not wool, some sheep have goat like tails rather than typical sheep tails, etc.

Some issues people have had with keeping both species together include of course aggression. It's interesting that WallabyOfChaos mentions a billy being likely to lose to a ram, as I've always been told the opposite is true, but there's always the exception to the rule so best to be as aware as possible of all potentialities you may encounter, and ready to counteract it. If you don't have separate paddocks to separate a billy and ram who hate each other, for example, you can be in a bit of an unfortunate position and may lose one or both.

Female goats in particular are pretty commonly aggressive to female sheep and may prevent them feeding or watering, or even kill some. Some will get along just fine though. Just potentialities again. What happens to some doesn't happen to all. Different breeds and family strains are more or less aggressive. Different circumstances can bring about aggression or lower it. Complete nutrition tends to soothe the savage beasts, lol.

My sheep and goats have always gotten along fine, though they preferred to keep to their own kind in general.

In a pretty recent agricultural newspaper I read of a supposedly purebred pedigreed Merino ram who when mated to a supposedly purebred Merino ewe produced a sheep-goat hybrid, and it was subsequently determined to have been due to a billy kept in with a Merino flock five generations back. Hybrids may not show their mixed ancestry, apparently. In old historical accounts some people claimed sheep and goats hybridized frequently and with high ratios of fertile young but in other places the opposite was claimed. I personally do think there's some viable overlap between different families, like Moufflon type sheep and goats.

 

[The Farm]

Ok thank s I will keep that in mind!!!

 

[TwinWillowAcres]

I disagree. I think it is highly unlikely that sheep will hybridize with goats.

Also, I cannot think of a SINGLE breed of sheep whose tail goes 'up' like a goat.

It is also likely the ram will kill the buck because as a buck is up their hind legs getting ready to attack, a ram will be running at full force right into their belly.

 

[WallabyOfChaos]

Some sheep are more goatlike than others and I suspect hybridize more readily. With some breeds of sheep, the lines between what is 'goat' or 'sheep' -typical are very blurred, for example some sheep have beards like some goats, and hair not wool, some sheep have goat like tails rather than typical sheep tails, etc.

Some issues people have had with keeping both species together include of course aggression. It's interesting that WallabyOfChaos mentions a billy being likely to lose to a ram, as I've always been told the opposite is true, but there's always the exception to the rule so best to be as aware as possible of all potentialities you may encounter, and ready to counteract it. If you don't have separate paddocks to separate a billy and ram who hate each other, for example, you can be in a bit of an unfortunate position and may lose one or both.

Female goats in particular are pretty commonly aggressive to female sheep and may prevent them feeding or watering, or even kill some. Some will get along just fine though. Just potentialities again. What happens to some doesn't happen to all. Different breeds and family strains are more or less aggressive. Different circumstances can bring about aggression or lower it. Complete nutrition tends to soothe the savage beasts, lol.

My sheep and goats have always gotten along fine, though they preferred to keep to their own kind in general.

In a pretty recent agricultural newspaper I read of a supposedly purebred pedigreed Merino ram who when mated to a supposedly purebred Merino ewe produced a sheep-goat hybrid, and it was subsequently determined to have been due to a billy kept in with a Merino flock five generations back. Hybrids may not show their mixed ancestry, apparently. In old historical accounts some people claimed sheep and goats hybridized frequently and with high ratios of fertile young but in other places the opposite was claimed. I personally do think there's some viable overlap between different families, like Moufflon type sheep and goats.

Just because Mouflons "look" like goats to some people really doesn't make a difference. They are a species of sheep none the less, Ovis musimon to be exact for the European Mouflon. It hypothesized that every breed of sheep in the world is descended from the European and Asiatic Mouflons. The only real difference between the Asiatic and the European is the color and some even speculate that the European Mouflon is nothing more than an Asiatic Mouflon that was allowed to go feral - thus making every sheep a descendant of the Asiatic Mouflon.

The origin of goats has been traced back to the Bezoar goat with great certainty. So sheep are sheep and goats are goats and neither one came from the other or shares any relation.

I am also a quite skeptical of the supposed hybrid born of purebred Merino sheep. I don't see how it could even begin to be possible for a Merino/goat hybrid to get missed. A hair/wool breed cross is incredibly obvious to a seasoned sheepman (or woman), and that's just a crossbred of the same species. And how is a hybrid supposed to just crop up after several generations of documented pure breeding? Half-goat genetics don't just lie in wait for several generations and then.. Bam! A hybrid from purebred parents.

Here is more reading about the social heirarchy of comingled sheep and goats, as well as just a mention of hybrids.
http://sheep101.info/sheepandgoats.html
http://sheep101.info/sheepandgoats2.htm
That website is written by Susan Schoenian. Besides raising commercial and purebred Katahdin hair sheep, she is the Sheep & Goat Specialist at the University of Maryland's Western Maryland Research & Education Center and has B.S. and M.S. degrees in Animal Science from Virginia Tech and Montana State University. I would say it's a pretty credible source.

I disagree. I think it is highly unlikely that sheep will hybridize with goats.

Also, I cannot think of a SINGLE breed of sheep whose tail goes 'up' like a goat.

It is also likely the ram will kill the buck because as a buck is up their hind legs getting ready to attack, a ram will be running at full force right into their belly.

It is very incredibly unlikely that it will occur naturally, but it can be done and has been done artifcially in labs (not that lab work really counts in this situation). Like donkeys and horses they are just close enough, but differing chromosome counts make fertile offspring ridiculously rare. How many fertile mules are running around? Not many.

2X on the tail thing. Even naturally bob-tailed individuals within breeds such as the Royal White (Dorp-Croix) have tails that lay down. Also, I have never seen a breed or sheep with a true beard like that of a goat. Many hair breed rams will have a cape or mane down the front of their necks and chest, but I haven't seen anything with a beard under the chin like a goat.

 

[Penny Hen]

I disagree. I think it is highly unlikely that sheep will hybridize with goats.

Also, I cannot think of a SINGLE breed of sheep whose tail goes 'up' like a goat.

It is also likely the ram will kill the buck because as a buck is up their hind legs getting ready to attack, a ram will be running at full force right into their belly.

Well maybe she was thinking about the Northern Shortailed family of sheep (Shetlands, Finns, Icelandic, Manx, Hebredian and some others). Their tails are short and pointed with a hair tip but are held low unless they are pooping or fighting or in heat. My goats soon learned not to go head to head with my horned Shetland. Any horned sheep has a skull twice as thick as a non-horned sheep. Even horned goats don't have skulls as thick as a horned sheep. My Cashmere goats learned not to rear high when my Shetland ram started crap with them. Mighty Moe was a large tall long haired Cashmere goat of gray and white coloring. His horns were very unusual for a goat in that they didn't sweep back or form a bow but instead curled horizontally from to the sides of his head. He had a three foot span horn tip to horn tip. He learned by the second head impact that Hutton, the ram, had a harder head. But Moe was mature and wily. He would take his horns and sweep the ram's legs out from under him, spilling him on the ground. A few butt bustings and Hutton would quit courting the does for the day and go back to the ewes.

I got a junior billy because Moe was getting old. He was 3/4 Boer, red-brown and though short stapled he had lovely cream colored cashmere. He was named Benjamin Franklin. (The big forehead, brown clothes. Just look up a picture of Ben.) The last summer that Moe was alive he began to train Ben. I mean that. The were sparing. There was no animosity between them. The last kiddding had all been Ben's. Moe was shooting blanks. He knew he didn't have much more left. All summer he trained Ben. Ben mastered all his techniques except the horn sweep which was impossible for him because he had the Boer style swept back horns.

Breeding season was upon us then and of course Hutton had to challenge Ben. I heard them scuffling about from inside the house and suddenly I heard Hutton bellow in pain. I came running out to find that Ben had discovered his own signature move to pull on Hutton. He had lowered his head and scooped up Hutton's forefoot between his horns just above the pastern joint. He had it locked in the narrow cleft of his horns and stood up to his full height and was twisting. Hutton couldn't pull free and being shorter couldn't rear out of it. I broke them up for fear that Ben might break Hutton's leg but didn't chastise Ben because I knew who always started this. Moe stood by watching and seemed to be quite satisfied that he had a capable successor. It took a few more rounds to convince Hutton to quit challenging Ben but it finally got there.

Moe died that November. He got down and couldn't rise. It was a warm sunny day for November and I put a blanket on him so he could spend his last day in the sun.

Maple Ridge Hutton
Might Moe's skull. You might think it strange but he was bigger than life and I wanted to keep his skull to remember that by.

 

[CaraBY]

I hope this is ok to post here. I am seriously thinking about adding Teeswater sheep to the farm. Is anyone selling any?