[Jacob-list] counting sheep

[gordon johnston]

It seems to me that it is first time lambers who are the ones sometimes needing help in recognising their second lamb. Far from being candidates for culling, I think this is probably a sensible primitive trait : a young ewe lambing for the first time in a wild or extensively managed system will only have the resources to rear a single lamb - the second can be looked upon as insurance against the first being born dead, so can be happily ignored if the first is OK. Older ewes we find only ignore certain lambs if there is something wrong with them, and then they can be apparently callously rejected - again, the same principle operates, where it is not worth the ewe investing her resources in caring for a sickly lamb at the expense of healthy ones (on a couple of occasions, when we have hand reared the rejected lamb it has died later on, presumably of the condition diagnosed at birth by the mother ???)
We would not cull a young mother simply because she appeared unable to recognise her second lamb as her own - in our experience, and as Trish said, these ewes rear twins or triplets without problems in subsequent years. It could be that you are unwittingly selecting for less primitive and/or intelligent animals, Mary Ellen.
Juliet in Scotland
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.pairlist.net/pipermail/jacob-list/attachments/20030315/253ce5ec/attachment.htm