[Jacob-list] Wild sheep

[Debbie Bennett]

>  
> My experience with showing Jacobs is fairly limited. The young ones are 
> so small that I seldom can keep a halter on them, opting instead to 
> carry them to their place in line. This has the additional advantage of 
> preventing them from escaping and doing laps in the ring.[Glen Eidman 
> once asks me why I had failed to dock a lambs tail. His mood brightened 
> considerably when I explained that " this was the first chance I had to 
> catch her."] Oddly, The 2year old ram broke to lead the most easily of 
> any animal that I have worked with. This may be due to his sheer 
> arrogance. Rams do not perceive everything as a threat.
We often carry our lambs into line, as well. We make our own rope 
halters, commercial halters are too large for Jacobs. Most of our rams 
seem calmer than the ewes and some of them just like to go for a walk, 
occasionally.
>  
> I find that Jacob ewes do not readily accept grafted lambs. Some 10 
> years ago, one of our original ewes lost a lamb at birth. I had found 
> her immediately after she had given birth, [probably a rear delivery] 
> with the lamb plugged with mucus and trying to breath. I had read in 
> sheep magazine that you could sometimes unplug a lamb by holding it by 
> the rear legs and swinging it in a circle. I tried this and, amazingly, 
> it seemed to work!...until the old ewe walked up behind me to see what 
> the heck I was doing to her lamb and I smashed the lamb very hard on 
> her horns. I decided to try and salvage the situation by grafting a 
> spare lamb from a Finn's quads on the old girl. After spending 2 weeks 
> with her head tied in a corner, she would still trounce the poor lamb 
> unless I held her pinned against the wall while the lamb nursed. This 
> got old. I relented , turned the old ewe out and resolved to feed the 
> lamb on the bottle. Imagine my surprise to find the ewe in the barn 
> bleating for the lamb. So from then on, twice a day I would go out to 
> the sheep shed, turn the lamb out, the ewe would beat it up and then 
> let it nurse. At least ONE of us learned something.
>                                                 Neal Grose
We had a ewe lose a lamb this year. She fixated on another ewe's lamb, 
followed them around for two days. About the time I figured I was going 
to have to milk her, my neighbor called, she had a rejected twin 
(Romney/Jacob cross). She brought it over and we penned them up 
together. The ewe didn't want the lamb, but she wanted something to 
nurse. Needing to be nursed overpowered the desire to hurt the lamb. 
They were bonded in 24 hours.
Debbie Bennett
Feral Fibre
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