Gideon is a happy boy. He’s back in the weed patch pasture with all his girls. It’s that time! We’re hoping for a little ovine hanky panky in the next few weeks and that will result in a lovely crop of little Shetland lambs in the spring!
As you can see, Mama Noel has found her spot as head ewe of the little flock. She is standing with her man all the time, just a little clingy, but hey, she digs him. He’s just happy to be able to hang with the flock again after his summer of being a bit of a bachelor…. Holly, Noel’s 2 year old daughter, is just upset and confused by the whole situation. She just wanders about and baaaas a lot. She’s not very happy about Gideon and her mom. After all, she’s been the apple of her mother’s eye for her whole life and now this big fluffy stepdad is in the picture and she’s not digging it at all. She’s even head butt him a few times, mostly in the side and rump as little digs and he just ignores the little brat. She’ll get better with it as the weeks go on I suppose.
What’s kind of interesting, is that even though Gideon likes the ladies, he’s still super selfish about feed.
I had given them a little scoop of sweet feed and thought everyone would share. No. Gideon stood over the dish and wouldn’t let anyone near. In fact, he was head butting very hard and pretty much shoving the ewes away. He even tipped the dish ( a hard rubber livestock dish) and then spilled it all over, standing on it as he nibbled it away.
So I got a flake of hay and put it over nearby. Of course, the girls were all into that, making these lovely little sheepie noises of delight. I really think they were playing him for a fool. And of course, he took the bait. As soon as he was moving in on the hay, and shooed the girls away from it, they rushed over to eat all the sweet feed!
Silly sheep. They ate as much sweet feed as possible before he figured out that it was just plain old hay and that he’d been duped. And then he rushed over to scare them away from it. And of course, they rushed over to the hay and began AGAIN acting like it was the best hay in the world! You could see his confusion as he would stop, look at them, look at his feed, then look back and them and rush over to push them away from the hay and they would rush over to the feed again! Poor Gideon. He has to deal with 5 girls that just know how to push his buttons for sure.
Today I’m going to move the little blue feeder into the patch, because I don’t really like to feed hay on the ground, or feed for that matter. It’s just wasteful and with the prices of everything livestock related this year, don’t want to waste any! There is still a lot of green grazing left in the weed patch, so they are fat and sassy at the moment, but I do like to give them a little extra to keep everyone happy and healthy.
Fergus and Angus are heartbroken. They have to bunk with Cody pony for the time being and just are not happy. Angus bawls like a baby, sitting by the gate and just unhappy. Fergus has kinda mixed feelings… he will join in the baa-fest with Angus now and then, but he’s also enjoying the competition-free hay feasting that goes on. It’s funny to see the little weird herd of pony and two whethers wandering about the middle yard, looking a little forlorn. It’s just got to be. The two fixed boys will still cause some competition and rivalry with the head ram. And their posturing jousts could hurt one of them, and that would be bad. And I’ve read that if a breeding ram has to do too much fighting and such, he can loose track of his purpose as he works hard to defend his ewes… and we sure don’t want that.
So, the boys are on their own for awhile. I’m glad there are two of them because a single sheep is a very unhappy sheep, for the most part. Especially those that are used to a flock. Gideon is pretty cool about being in his paddock and grazing alone, because he’s pretty much done that his whole life. And he sees the others, and they hang with him, eating hay with the old ram and all. And he has his chicken friends. But, still, my two little whethers are having a hard adjustment period and miss their ewe friends. There is one place that they can meet and the boys will go and call to the younger girls and they meet and touch noses and whisper little sheep friend things. But Iris and Ivy will have nothing to do with that. They would rather smooze around Gideon and flirt and bump his side, all these little sly moves that must mean something in the language of sheep love. I swear, they are just being terrible teases!
I don’t think anything has happened yet… we’re still in the waiting period. Ewes cycle in the fall and early winter, and do so in 19 days intervals. I’m not exactly sure how long they stay in heat, but it’s not long. I’ve heard that you need to run your ram with the flock at least a month, and 6 weeks is better, as to catch the ewes in two cycles at least. The mere act of putting the ram in the flock is suppose to trigger the cycles to begin. Right now, there is just a lot of test peeing and sniffing going on. Haha…. this is probably TMI for most folks, but in the sheep world, this is what date night means! The ram will approach the ewe from behind and bump her, usually with his head, though Gideon likes to use his front leg, and then the ewe will squat and pee a little. He then sniffs the offering and stands there for a moment or two with this weird upper lip move and a little huffing and he tests to see if she’s in heat. There’s a term for it, it’s called a flehmen response. Horses, goats, deer, and many other hooved animals do this. If things are not good, he’ll just wander off and graze or ignore the ewe. If she’s in heat, he’ll probably pursue and keep a tight distance with her to make his moves.
So far, we have a lot of peeing going on, but no one seems ready. Apparently, Shetland sheep (and many others) prefer a bit of privacy and it’s not uncommon to miss seeing any of the final action with your flock. So much so, that it’s recommended that your ram have a breeding harness with a marking crayon attached so that you can see if the ewes get a love rub on their rears from the marking crayon on the ram’s chest. I considered getting one and all, but then I thought, no… Gideon is well reported to be good at his job, as he has many beautiful babies on the ground already. I will trust that he knows what to do. It’s not that our livelyhood depends on a crop of lambs. If we get a handful this year, I’ll be very happy! Hopefully, we will catch sight of the actual deed, but if I keep them all together for the six weeks, we should be good to go in the spring.
I’m still not sure about whether or not to keep Gideon after this time. He’s really a handful. You should see the gate to his paddock where he’s been pounding it with his head. It’s all bent and funny. He’s hitting the posts so hard, he’s got one cracked. (We puts some pallets up before it, wired in so he’ll stop hitting the post actually, seems to be helping.) He loves to be petted and talked with, but he’s just getting big and strong and he can no longer be trusted loose around people. So many people will not keep a ram after 2 or maybe 3 years. It’s clear to me that his paddock will not last long. Of course, after the mating season, he will calm down considerably.
I’m considered selling him to someone with a larger operation, that has a more secure holding area and perhaps other rams that he can chum around with on the off season. With just a small flock, I’m not sure that I need to keep a full time ram. I certainly do not want to cull him, he’s a beautiful example of a wonderful Shetland ram, super nice pedigree, just everything nice you would want. His fleece is gorgeous. That alone makes me want to keep him around. And his babies… well, I’ve seen nothing but the nicest lambs from him and doubles and triples nearly every time. His feed needs are not bad, he’ll eat a flake or two of hay a day, so, that’s about a bale, maybe bale and a half a week. Normally, about $6 to $10 a week, with summer grazing, more like $4 or $5 a week on average. So that makes his “cost” about $250 to $300 a year. If I can get 4 or 5 decent lambs to sell at $150 to $200 a lamb, that is not a bad deal. And his fleece each year will raise more money as well. Not that everything has to have a payoff, but still, it’s something to consider when you have to house and feed an animal all year long.
I suppose I have a little time to ponder it all. If I get a nice ram lamb from the breeding, I can always consider keeping him for the years to come. He might not breed in the coming fall, 2013, but he would be ready for the 2014 season. I could always rent a ram for 2013, since I’ll still only have the 5 ewes old enough for breeding. (Any ewe lambs born in the spring of 2013 shouldn’t be bred in the fall, since they will only be about 6 to 8 months old.) I could keep Gideon for one more year, and then find him a new home. But then, that means making him a better and stronger enclosure. Which is more cost. Ah! The decisions of a small shepherd!!!
I think what I am going to do… is try and sell or trade him for a nice yearling ram. Or even a 2012 young ram. One that will be ready for the 2013 season as a yearling. A young 2012 ram I could keep with Fergus and Angus and any whethered lambs that I get from this first crop. He won’t need a new enclosure, in fact, he can run with the flock for most of the season. I’m hoping that someone will want Gideon’s fine pedigree to add to their flock and I will not have the worry of caring for a much more mature ram. That would be ideal! We like things easy and simple here at the homestead. And worrying about a mature ram is not really easy or simple. Even trying to figure out how to safely enclose him, is a challenge. Where the ram paddock is now, the ground is SUPER hard to dig in There is an old foundation there with a rubble field… gosh, is it hard to dig in. So setting new posts would be difficult to say the least. And he will need some good solid heavy set posts. And then I really think I’ll need a solid fence, probably cattle panels and those are not that cheap. $25 a panel. Probably need about 6 panels to make a reasonable area for him. And he’ll need some sort of run in shed or shelter… This is all adding up to just too expensive for a small holding like ours.
I really hope that trading him to an operation that can better handle him is really the best option. And getting a nice young ram out of the trade would be ideal. I can still continue my idea of a keeping a small breeding flock without having to add on and deal with a mature ram. Lots of folks do it this way, it’s safer really. It’s why so many rams have very short lives! Most of them are considered over the hill at two or three years old. Gideon will be four in the spring!
Well, all will work out, because in the end, we’ll keep him if we can not make other arrangements. And I figure a inner layer of hard pallets will protect the outer fence of his paddock at the very worse case. And there are these hoods that you can buy for a ram, it’s really more like a shield, that blocks their forward vision. This means they can eat and graze and be all that a ram needs to be, but will be much less likely to ram things because they can’t see forward. There are more than one set of tricks to make it all work out. There are even these weird hobble things that you put on him that makes it hard for him to get a good running start! A mature ram is not a new thing to the universe! Man has been dealing with these hard headed dudes for thousands of years!!! We’ll figure something out that makes sence for us… Any suggestions out there????
Very stylish, don’t you think? I’m sure Gideon will LOVE a ram shield!
Okay, maybe not.
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