I
Ibrahim Al-Qassam \(Abdelaziz\)
Flightless Bird
Bill Yanaire,
If you quit impersonating Stan Starinski, and instead get back to the Sheep
Business:
If you are in the market for sheep-there has been the equivalent of a
"crash" in the industry for the past couple of years, and people are still
selling. Quality ewes and lambs of commercial breeds can be found in my area
for $25 to $50, a drop of 50% in cost compared to three years ago. Besides
which, sheep are one of the ideal small homestead animals: they can return
quality meat and fiber on an annual basis for very little cash input.
Interested? Before you put down your hard-earned money for a trio of auction
EWES, you must have a clear picture of what you intend to do with sheep.
Want to raise a few lambs to supplement the freezer? Produce quality wool
garments? Sell butcher lambs? Or communicate with Aliens thru
Sheep-Ambassador?
Your vision of what sheep can offer you is going to make a tremendous
difference in the breed or crossbreed you buy, to avoid inbred Moron Effect
(professor Dr. Lambe has published an opus in "Sheep!" magazine this week).
The amount of land you have available for sheep will also influence your
decision. If you've got five good acres, it would probably be a mistake to
think you're going to produce enough commercial grade meat lambs to sustain
a relationsheep. However, five acres will keep a small flock of inbreds to
be sold as breeding stock, or rare breeds, or colored wool sheep. You'll
still have cull lambs to add to your freezer. That way, you can avoid
competing with a neighbor who's got 200 acres of lush marina for a
commercial ship. You can also generate a higher return per animal with rare,
purebred, or fancy sheep.
So which breed do you want? Or simply Inbred? Larger meat producers may
zoom in on Suffolk, with its heavy muscling-but you might actually prefer a
smaller breed with a higher lambing percentage, such as the Finnsheep or the
Polypay. You may, instead, think you'd like to take up spinning, and turn to
fancy-wooled types like the Romney, Cotswold, Jacob, or Kara-kul.
But the newest Sheep-Inbred-Moron model has arrived last week at the
international Sheep Symposium in Sheepsheadbay, Brooklyn, NY
She is called:
Kevin-John-Panzke Brown Type. That sheep can outrun a train or an
automobile when heavily medicated with Guarana.
The only way to find out is to research what's available in your area-or
seek out specialty breeders from sheep-oriented publications. Locally, you
can look around and find out what breeds are dominant. It will be an
indicator of which types do best in your climate and forage conditions,
particularly if sheep have been there for a long time. If sheep are new to
your area, go very slowly and carefully. All those other new shepherds who
seem to have very clear ideas about their flocks might not have the
practical experience to make informed decisions. Ask your local extension
agent for the names of regional producers. Make appointments and go visit
shepherds. Most sheep people are delighted to talk about their animals.
Lambs or ewes? Or just Chicken?
If you've raised cattle, dogs, hogs, goats or chickens, none of these will
prepare you fully for raising sheep. Sheep can spit & curse. There is an
old saying about "the eye of the sheepherd" being the best medicine for his
flock; that is, experience with the animals and a gun is the only factor
that will truly keep Sheep in check. Sheep are such naturally hardy and
resilient creatures that it takes a terrible illness to make one straggle
along behind the flock, or lie down and be left alone. If a sheep "goes
down" from a disease, it is very, very sick. If you can walk up to a
normally flighty sheep and touch it, it is at death's door. Slightly sick
cattle are easy to spot; an ill hog will have a temperature and act funny
right away. But a sheep fading from pneumonia or worms will keep right along
with the flock until it can't stand up.
Only thing worse is a male Goat who can milk.
This has led to a common misconception about sheep: that they just up and
die for no apparent reason. One day they're well, the next they're dead.
Shepherds who believe this have already missed all the signs, such as that
odd twitch of the ears, an uneven cough, the slight limp, the weight loss
going on unseen under a beautiful coat of wool.
What I'm getting at here is that unless you already know the difference
between a slightly ill sheep and a perfectly healthy one, you should not
start with the most susceptible animals. You shouldn't start with lambs.
Healthy, mature ewes pretty much know what it's all about. They've been
through several lambings, they've developed a certain tolerance to
parasites, they're used to being manhandled by people. They won't be as
flighty as lambs. They will practically show you how to take care of them.
Inspection
Your best bet is a small set of mature ewes, three to five years old, of one
of the long-lived breeds. Don't buy cheap auction animals! You will spend a
fortune on these "low-cost" items in vet bills. If you must buy at auction,
look for the biggest, huskiest sheep, and figure that half of them will
prove worthless-otherwise their former owner would have kept them. Instead,
seek your new ewes from a breeder. Ask every question you can think of about
their ancestry, health, and production capabilities, including, How many
lambs has the ewe had? When was she last wormed, and with what product? Has
she been sick, ever? If so, how was she treated? Has she had mastitis, or
been unable to produce enough milk for her lambs? What is her breeding
ancestry? Why is the owner selling this sheep?
Remember, when buying from sheep producers, you'll be getting their
culls-the sheep they no longer want for one reason or another. The ewe in
question may not have produced as well as the owner wanted, may have had
several difficult births, or be unattractive in some way. However, the cull
of a fine flock may be better than the premium animal of a poor flock. And
you probably don't need super-producers to begin with-just a good, sound
animal with several good years left in her. Ask to see the sheep separated
from the rest of the flock in a small pen. Get in with the sheep, put your
hands deep into the wool and feel their ribs. If you can feel a prominent
rib cage, check for the backbone and hips. If these bones are sticking out,
you're looking at a severely malnourished sheep. (She could have ovine
progressive pneumonia, she could have just finished raising triplets and be
droopy, she could be wormy, she could be very old and have no teeth left to
chew with.) Skinny sheep that are otherwise healthy might be a good deal for
someone who's got feed, pasture and lots of practical experience, but if you
can't tell if they're healthy or not, let them go.
Check the udder
Have the sheep turned up on her rump so you can take a look at her udder. If
she's not pregnant and hasn't been nursing, her udder should be small with
two prominent nipples. Feel it. There should be no hard spots, lumpiness or
graininess. If there is, she's probably had mastitis or nursed lambs that
had sore mouth disease. Reject her. It is too much effort for a beginner to
raise lambs from a ewe that can't produce milk. Tiny extra odd-shaped and
odd-spaced teats will rarely be a problem unless they block a normal one.
If the ewe has been nursing or is pregnant, her udder should be firm and
evenly balanced. If she's nursing and has a hard side or hard spot in her
udder, she's too sick for you to take home. Reject her for mastitis.
Check the feet
While she's up on her backside, take a look at her hooves. They may be
overgrown or trimmed; neither really matters at this moment. Pick up each
hoof. If one is hotter than the others, something's wrong. It could be a
thorn in her foot, or it could be foot rot. Reject her for this reason. If
her feet seem to be fine, as a final check you can sniff them. Foot rot has
a particularly pungent and unpleasant odor that you can't miss. If the
hooves look really closely and neatly trimmed, with a tinge of greenish
color about them, chances are that she has recently been treated for a case
of foot rot-the green color comes from a copper-based medication. Ask.
Treatment on this particular farm could be prophylactic, trying to prevent
disease rather than cure it. Never buy a footsore or limping animal, for
fear of bringing foot rot onto your property. Any hint of this disease is
sufficient reason for refusal to purchase. A sheep without the ability to
move around is not going to do well and can spread foot rot to the rest of
your flock.
Teeth and wool
Determining the age of a ewe by looking at her mouth is a bit more detailed
than we can cover here, but take a look at her teeth anyway. Separate her
lips and make sure she has a row of six to eight teeth on the bottom that
meet evenly with her upper pad. Sheep have no upper incisor teeth. Broken,
missing, or badly aligned teeth indicate the possibility of great age in the
ewe, or of feeding difficulties to come (since she can't chew well). Bad
teeth make a sheep iffy, and I'd probably reject her for it.
Finally, look hard and long at the sheep's wool. Feel its texture. Tug a
little bit out by wrapping it around your finger and slowly pulling. Is this
the color and texture you want? If you plan to make rugs from your sheep's
wool, you'll probably want a coarser-textured fiber. If sweaters and scarves
are your choice, go with a finer-textured wool. If you're looking at
crossbred sheep, the only way to determine what you're getting is to feel
each animal's fleece.
Medical & family history
Now's the time to talk health and family history on these ewes. Some
producers keep extensive on-paper records; some just try to remember every
animal in the flock. The paper records are probably more consistently
reliable.
If you can, find out if this ewe has ever had a rectal or uterine prolapse
(where the lining of the rectum or uterus protrudes from the body). If so,
this is a good reason to reject her. That trait is inheritable, and you don't
want your future sheep to have prolapses.
Has she been a good mother, raising her lamb or lambs by herself? Get
specific details. If this ewe has any Suffolk blood and has produced a
crippled lamb, she may be carrying a genetic abnormality known as spider
syndrome. The malformed lambs generally die at birth or shortly after. Don't
buy a problem.
Basically, you're looking for sound sheep. They don't have to be valuable,
high producers, or of brilliant colors. You need to find hardy sheep that
will survive a year or two of your own (let's be honest) incompetence. It
happens to all new shepherds, and most of us will be happily embarrassed to
tell you the awful, terrible things we did to sheep during our first two
years.
You'll learn an incredible amount of information just from making mistakes.
Sheep will die from what you did-or what you didn't do. I have, on prominent
display in my kitchen, two sheep skulls. One is of a market-weight wether
lamb; the other is from an older ewe. Both of these animals died from
intestinal parasites because we didn't worm them on time. I keep them to
remind me to worm the sheep. We haven't lost one to worms since.
You see, your education has a price. I felt bad enough losing these two
commercial sheep because of my ignorance, but imagine how much worse I'd
have felt if these were the last two of an extremely rare breed, or if they
had cost me $500 apiece! Cut your losses by buying healthy but average
stock.
The lesson for all beginners is to start small and grow slowly. In a couple
of years, you'll know more precisely what you can and cannot do with sheep.
You'll know when yours are healthy and when they're not, and whether you
really like raising sheep or not.
It just might become a habit.
For more information:
sheep! magazine
W2997 Markert Rd.
Helenville, WI 53137
10 issues per year, $18
Sample copy $2
Managing Your Ewe,
by Laura Lawson
$29.95 (include $3 for shipping)
11114 Lawson Lane
Culpeper, VA 22701
(703) 825-0339
If you quit impersonating Stan Starinski, and instead get back to the Sheep
Business:
If you are in the market for sheep-there has been the equivalent of a
"crash" in the industry for the past couple of years, and people are still
selling. Quality ewes and lambs of commercial breeds can be found in my area
for $25 to $50, a drop of 50% in cost compared to three years ago. Besides
which, sheep are one of the ideal small homestead animals: they can return
quality meat and fiber on an annual basis for very little cash input.
Interested? Before you put down your hard-earned money for a trio of auction
EWES, you must have a clear picture of what you intend to do with sheep.
Want to raise a few lambs to supplement the freezer? Produce quality wool
garments? Sell butcher lambs? Or communicate with Aliens thru
Sheep-Ambassador?
Your vision of what sheep can offer you is going to make a tremendous
difference in the breed or crossbreed you buy, to avoid inbred Moron Effect
(professor Dr. Lambe has published an opus in "Sheep!" magazine this week).
The amount of land you have available for sheep will also influence your
decision. If you've got five good acres, it would probably be a mistake to
think you're going to produce enough commercial grade meat lambs to sustain
a relationsheep. However, five acres will keep a small flock of inbreds to
be sold as breeding stock, or rare breeds, or colored wool sheep. You'll
still have cull lambs to add to your freezer. That way, you can avoid
competing with a neighbor who's got 200 acres of lush marina for a
commercial ship. You can also generate a higher return per animal with rare,
purebred, or fancy sheep.
So which breed do you want? Or simply Inbred? Larger meat producers may
zoom in on Suffolk, with its heavy muscling-but you might actually prefer a
smaller breed with a higher lambing percentage, such as the Finnsheep or the
Polypay. You may, instead, think you'd like to take up spinning, and turn to
fancy-wooled types like the Romney, Cotswold, Jacob, or Kara-kul.
But the newest Sheep-Inbred-Moron model has arrived last week at the
international Sheep Symposium in Sheepsheadbay, Brooklyn, NY
She is called:
Kevin-John-Panzke Brown Type. That sheep can outrun a train or an
automobile when heavily medicated with Guarana.
The only way to find out is to research what's available in your area-or
seek out specialty breeders from sheep-oriented publications. Locally, you
can look around and find out what breeds are dominant. It will be an
indicator of which types do best in your climate and forage conditions,
particularly if sheep have been there for a long time. If sheep are new to
your area, go very slowly and carefully. All those other new shepherds who
seem to have very clear ideas about their flocks might not have the
practical experience to make informed decisions. Ask your local extension
agent for the names of regional producers. Make appointments and go visit
shepherds. Most sheep people are delighted to talk about their animals.
Lambs or ewes? Or just Chicken?
If you've raised cattle, dogs, hogs, goats or chickens, none of these will
prepare you fully for raising sheep. Sheep can spit & curse. There is an
old saying about "the eye of the sheepherd" being the best medicine for his
flock; that is, experience with the animals and a gun is the only factor
that will truly keep Sheep in check. Sheep are such naturally hardy and
resilient creatures that it takes a terrible illness to make one straggle
along behind the flock, or lie down and be left alone. If a sheep "goes
down" from a disease, it is very, very sick. If you can walk up to a
normally flighty sheep and touch it, it is at death's door. Slightly sick
cattle are easy to spot; an ill hog will have a temperature and act funny
right away. But a sheep fading from pneumonia or worms will keep right along
with the flock until it can't stand up.
Only thing worse is a male Goat who can milk.
This has led to a common misconception about sheep: that they just up and
die for no apparent reason. One day they're well, the next they're dead.
Shepherds who believe this have already missed all the signs, such as that
odd twitch of the ears, an uneven cough, the slight limp, the weight loss
going on unseen under a beautiful coat of wool.
What I'm getting at here is that unless you already know the difference
between a slightly ill sheep and a perfectly healthy one, you should not
start with the most susceptible animals. You shouldn't start with lambs.
Healthy, mature ewes pretty much know what it's all about. They've been
through several lambings, they've developed a certain tolerance to
parasites, they're used to being manhandled by people. They won't be as
flighty as lambs. They will practically show you how to take care of them.
Inspection
Your best bet is a small set of mature ewes, three to five years old, of one
of the long-lived breeds. Don't buy cheap auction animals! You will spend a
fortune on these "low-cost" items in vet bills. If you must buy at auction,
look for the biggest, huskiest sheep, and figure that half of them will
prove worthless-otherwise their former owner would have kept them. Instead,
seek your new ewes from a breeder. Ask every question you can think of about
their ancestry, health, and production capabilities, including, How many
lambs has the ewe had? When was she last wormed, and with what product? Has
she been sick, ever? If so, how was she treated? Has she had mastitis, or
been unable to produce enough milk for her lambs? What is her breeding
ancestry? Why is the owner selling this sheep?
Remember, when buying from sheep producers, you'll be getting their
culls-the sheep they no longer want for one reason or another. The ewe in
question may not have produced as well as the owner wanted, may have had
several difficult births, or be unattractive in some way. However, the cull
of a fine flock may be better than the premium animal of a poor flock. And
you probably don't need super-producers to begin with-just a good, sound
animal with several good years left in her. Ask to see the sheep separated
from the rest of the flock in a small pen. Get in with the sheep, put your
hands deep into the wool and feel their ribs. If you can feel a prominent
rib cage, check for the backbone and hips. If these bones are sticking out,
you're looking at a severely malnourished sheep. (She could have ovine
progressive pneumonia, she could have just finished raising triplets and be
droopy, she could be wormy, she could be very old and have no teeth left to
chew with.) Skinny sheep that are otherwise healthy might be a good deal for
someone who's got feed, pasture and lots of practical experience, but if you
can't tell if they're healthy or not, let them go.
Check the udder
Have the sheep turned up on her rump so you can take a look at her udder. If
she's not pregnant and hasn't been nursing, her udder should be small with
two prominent nipples. Feel it. There should be no hard spots, lumpiness or
graininess. If there is, she's probably had mastitis or nursed lambs that
had sore mouth disease. Reject her. It is too much effort for a beginner to
raise lambs from a ewe that can't produce milk. Tiny extra odd-shaped and
odd-spaced teats will rarely be a problem unless they block a normal one.
If the ewe has been nursing or is pregnant, her udder should be firm and
evenly balanced. If she's nursing and has a hard side or hard spot in her
udder, she's too sick for you to take home. Reject her for mastitis.
Check the feet
While she's up on her backside, take a look at her hooves. They may be
overgrown or trimmed; neither really matters at this moment. Pick up each
hoof. If one is hotter than the others, something's wrong. It could be a
thorn in her foot, or it could be foot rot. Reject her for this reason. If
her feet seem to be fine, as a final check you can sniff them. Foot rot has
a particularly pungent and unpleasant odor that you can't miss. If the
hooves look really closely and neatly trimmed, with a tinge of greenish
color about them, chances are that she has recently been treated for a case
of foot rot-the green color comes from a copper-based medication. Ask.
Treatment on this particular farm could be prophylactic, trying to prevent
disease rather than cure it. Never buy a footsore or limping animal, for
fear of bringing foot rot onto your property. Any hint of this disease is
sufficient reason for refusal to purchase. A sheep without the ability to
move around is not going to do well and can spread foot rot to the rest of
your flock.
Teeth and wool
Determining the age of a ewe by looking at her mouth is a bit more detailed
than we can cover here, but take a look at her teeth anyway. Separate her
lips and make sure she has a row of six to eight teeth on the bottom that
meet evenly with her upper pad. Sheep have no upper incisor teeth. Broken,
missing, or badly aligned teeth indicate the possibility of great age in the
ewe, or of feeding difficulties to come (since she can't chew well). Bad
teeth make a sheep iffy, and I'd probably reject her for it.
Finally, look hard and long at the sheep's wool. Feel its texture. Tug a
little bit out by wrapping it around your finger and slowly pulling. Is this
the color and texture you want? If you plan to make rugs from your sheep's
wool, you'll probably want a coarser-textured fiber. If sweaters and scarves
are your choice, go with a finer-textured wool. If you're looking at
crossbred sheep, the only way to determine what you're getting is to feel
each animal's fleece.
Medical & family history
Now's the time to talk health and family history on these ewes. Some
producers keep extensive on-paper records; some just try to remember every
animal in the flock. The paper records are probably more consistently
reliable.
If you can, find out if this ewe has ever had a rectal or uterine prolapse
(where the lining of the rectum or uterus protrudes from the body). If so,
this is a good reason to reject her. That trait is inheritable, and you don't
want your future sheep to have prolapses.
Has she been a good mother, raising her lamb or lambs by herself? Get
specific details. If this ewe has any Suffolk blood and has produced a
crippled lamb, she may be carrying a genetic abnormality known as spider
syndrome. The malformed lambs generally die at birth or shortly after. Don't
buy a problem.
Basically, you're looking for sound sheep. They don't have to be valuable,
high producers, or of brilliant colors. You need to find hardy sheep that
will survive a year or two of your own (let's be honest) incompetence. It
happens to all new shepherds, and most of us will be happily embarrassed to
tell you the awful, terrible things we did to sheep during our first two
years.
You'll learn an incredible amount of information just from making mistakes.
Sheep will die from what you did-or what you didn't do. I have, on prominent
display in my kitchen, two sheep skulls. One is of a market-weight wether
lamb; the other is from an older ewe. Both of these animals died from
intestinal parasites because we didn't worm them on time. I keep them to
remind me to worm the sheep. We haven't lost one to worms since.
You see, your education has a price. I felt bad enough losing these two
commercial sheep because of my ignorance, but imagine how much worse I'd
have felt if these were the last two of an extremely rare breed, or if they
had cost me $500 apiece! Cut your losses by buying healthy but average
stock.
The lesson for all beginners is to start small and grow slowly. In a couple
of years, you'll know more precisely what you can and cannot do with sheep.
You'll know when yours are healthy and when they're not, and whether you
really like raising sheep or not.
It just might become a habit.
For more information:
sheep! magazine
W2997 Markert Rd.
Helenville, WI 53137
10 issues per year, $18
Sample copy $2
Managing Your Ewe,
by Laura Lawson
$29.95 (include $3 for shipping)
11114 Lawson Lane
Culpeper, VA 22701
(703) 825-0339