[Jacob-list] vets

[SharHill at aol.com]

I wonder what the deal is with vets too. There is only one in the area who 
treats large animals, and they no longer makes house calls, except for 
horses.  They don't know a lot about sheep either.  They are very nice though 
and treat them if I cart them up there, only 10 miles so it is not too bad.  
I know only 3 other people around who have sheep, and mostly we rely on each 
other for help and advice.  One woman has a lot of experience and is quite 
good.

Also, there is a book called "Managing Your Ewe and Lamb" ( or maybe "newborn 
lamb) which has a flow chart with the symptoms.  I have a copy, but I haven't 
had the need to use it yet.  The others around here rely on it alot.

On an interesting note, my husband's father is a rare book dealer.  He gave 
us a copy of a book called "The Shepherd's Manual" written in 1864.  It is 
facinating to see what the attitudes about sheep and methods of caring for 
sheep were over 100 years ago.  The big 3 sheep of the era were Cotswold, 
Leicester and Merino... interesting in that the Cotswold are now rare.  I was 
wondering if the "Leicester" is the same thing as the "Leicester Longwool", 
which is also rare.  Another tidbit of information is that Long Island and 
Georgia ( of which the greatest proportion of land was uncut or second growth 
forests) were considered to be prime places for raising sheep.  Also "On the 
Atlantic seaboard there are millions of acrea of land now useless that would, 
if cleared and cultivated, make excellent sheep farms...".  Wow how things 
have changed.

Something else that caught my eye, considering that some people on the list 
were calling last year the "year of the ram" is a study they did to test the 
question of breeding for sex.  One flock of ewes was placed in good pasture 
with young rams (15-18 months old), and another was put in poor pasture with 
rams over 4 years old.  The flock served by the young rams had 35 ram lambs 
and 76 ewe lambs.  The flock served by the older rams had 55 ram lambs and 31 
ewe lambs, and not one twin birth.   They don't claim that this is conclusive 
about anything, but interesting and maybe worthy of further study.  I was 
wondering if anyone on the list has noticed if the age of the ram had an 
effect on gender.  I wonder why they didn't put both flocks on the same 
quality of pasture.

Got to go.  Melanie, I hope your ewe pulls through.

Sharon