[Jacob-list] Rams

[sbennett]

I leave my goat buck, Scotty, with the does all year long. To alleviate 
the "butting during feeding problem" he gets fed seperately in his own 
dish. We trained him at this by dragging him to his own food and then 
patting him on the rear if he went to the wrong place to eat. It took a 
few weeks. Now he automatically eats where he is supposed to and doesn't 
bother the girls. The upside is that he is a very happy buck, never 
interferes with humans in his pasture (we always watch, but even when we 
are attending a difficult birth, he takes the others and guards them at 
the far side of the pasture), and is an excellent father. He plays with 
his kids and even babysits while the moms go off to graze. He will accept 
an extra buck in his pasture (eats next to Scotty, but has his own dish). 
They butt each other, but never seriously, just enough to come to an 
understanding that Scotty gets the majority of the girls (survival of the 
species instincts? If I put three rams in there, would one get killed?). 
Harnessing them tells us who and when. 

I've been wondering lately if the Jacob rams are smart enough to be 
trained in this way. The ram we used over the majority of our ewes this 
year always ate seperate from them - he couldn't get his horns into the 
majority of our feeders, so he didn't have a choice. And he behaved 
himself all through breeding, but then we never tried to catch and do 
anything to his women.

Just some thoughts,
Debbie Bennett
Feral Fibre

>
>This year when we bred we left our ram in with the
>girls thinking all would be well. NOT!  Right after
>the first of the year we finally had to get him out of
>there because when it came to graining time he began
>to butt the pregnant ewes. That was all she wrote. He
>was out of there. After reading the posts we have
>stopped his grain. 
>
>With the first ram we had, that was what we practiced,
>when he started to get to feisty, we would stop his
>grain.
>
>Abigail Brown
>Shiloh Farms
>Indiana
>