Sheep or Goats Part II - Long rambling about Sheep.

 

Before I begin I was notified that I completely left Milk production out as a benefit of keeping goats. That is important and shame on me. Supposedly Sheep are also good milk producers in some breeds but I think it is an easier task with goats. I maybe wrong there but goat cheese does seem more prolific than sheep cheese if that is worth anything. I can't say I have ever milked a goat but I have milked a couple ewes when they rejected a lamb and I forgot or was out of artificial colostrum. It wasn't fun or easy for either me or the ewe so I try and avoid such things if at all possible.

Another important point here is there are somewhere around 1000+ breeds of sheep (experts differ) and many are quite different from each other. I imagine you could find a specific breed of sheep to tailor fit any local conditions you have. Now how much that breed would cost to start keeping yourself, well that could be a big factor. There are sheep that don't need shearing, sheep that are custom bred for milk production. Sheep that stay on deserted arctic islands and leave their wool stuck on trees and brush to be hand collected later, There is no end to the variations. Sheep however as so closely tied to humans that most of them (not all breeds) are totally dependent on humans to survive in some manner.

My experiences with Sheep run almost exclusively with two breeds. Romneys, known as a marsh sheep breed, and Blue Faced Liecester or BFL for short, mostly a long wool breed from the lowlands. As I understand Romneys are like the most populated breed in New Zealand and BFL's have the softest and best spinning wool around. The last is debatable of course. They have their differences but generally speaking BFLs have thinner and softer wool, are more prolific and very gentle by disposition even for the Rams. BFL's also have a totally open face long "Roman" nose and short haired legs. Romney rams can sometimes be difficult. My first Romney Ram was a master at fence destruction and would destroy things just for fun. I built all the sheep hay feeders that would hang on the fence of gates and he literally destroyed everyone I ever hung in his paddock. Both breeds are naturally polled in both sexes but Romney's will grow very thick wool and often if not always wool on most of their face and legs too.  Romney sheep also have resistance to hoof rot from wet pasturage and will eat almost anything and will graze as well as browse (even though they are still considered grazers) They especially LOVE broadleafed weeds which can cause issues with burrs and sticktights if they manage to bust out of their more well kept pasture at times.

Nothing is worse than shearing a sheep filled with those big brown sharp cockle burrs... trust me.

Now at one time I did have a Chavoit and Marino or two around but the Chavoit's are just too wild and nervous for my comfort, while the Marinos (which was a Spanish/French cross sub breed) had very nice champagne colored wool but proved very susceptible to BarberPole Worms. More on those nasty things later.

Romney and BFL are supposedly good breeds for Meat, Milk and Wool production. All we ever did with em was wool, the occasional Wether or three we would have processed for our own consumption and then sell off the excess lambs at market keeping the best ewes for breeding later.

I never allowed a lamb to be bred before she was at least 16 months old. Some breeds can be bred earlier and the standard for Romney and BFL is 8 Months or older. Waiting an extra year though always seemed to make the ewes much stronger and more able to deal with pregnancy and nursing.

I have read studies that claim sheep are of average intelligence to other ruminants and domesticated animals, about the same as an average dog. I don't believe them. It has been my experience if you have one sheep out of fifty that can look at a hole in a fence and realize it is a gate they can use to get though, you have found the Einstein of sheep. Keep them to show the other idiots how to actually get back home when needed. 

Temperament can vary by breed of course as I mentioned  but generally speaking the Ram's can get kinda mean while a mean ewe is rare. Wethers can go either way but generally seem to be more ewe-like. The exceptions are when they get too familiar. Sheep that have been hand raised need to be watched carefully. They are not mean usually but they never understand how dangerous they can be to a human. I keep a very close eye on even our very old bottle babies cause they do remember faces and they will decide a playful headbutt is an order. Especially when you are doing something like picking up a bit of trash, fixing a fence or just carry something that might be a bucket. If you ever bend over without paying attention then bottle baby or not, you will become a target. That being said I can remember patting my original BFL ram on the neck while a vet lanced and squeezed almost a half pint of ingrown wool out of him and he did not even bat an eye. 

If ya wanna know ingrown wool looks a whole lot like squeezing out mayonnaise from a bottle. Almost exactly, even has the same consistency  and holds the shape of the opening when it comes out too.

I  know yummy thought.

Pests and parasites can devastate sheep. Now I say my goats are hardier on average but honestly I have never bred goats nor looked after a nursing Doe. Goats maybe as effected as sheep under those conditions. I just have not been brave enough to find out. Nursing lambs are very hard on ewes but until the barberpole worm epidemic I never lost a Ewe at all but once those worm eggs got into our pasture somehow everything changed. I was doing 3 and 4 or more welfare checks a day. Sometimes I would check a ewe who looked fine and come back no more than 3 hours later and she would be dead. Basically the barberpole worms would suck the copper platelets out of the ewes but giving sheep copper, even trace amounts can build up and turn toxic. So that was no option for building up a tolerance. For many years there was no answer to these things and it severely limited my enthusiasm to breed the sheep at all.  Sometimes they would show what I called "worm Sign" in reference to the Dune novels (which was a swollen lower jaw and neck) but just as often they showed no signs at or you had to check their eyes, which is if the ewe in question is a bit wary or wild.

If I did manage to catch one with worm sign then the treatment meant isolation and dry lotting the entire flock limiting them to hay and grain only. I then had to begin a dewormer routine that changed the actual wormer medication each time until all eggs and nematodes were destroyed. The reason was as soon as you used one wormer type the eggs and nematodes became partially immune to that wormer and would start the process all over again so you had to use a different type like Ivermectin the first dose followed by Zimecterin the next day (if they still lived) etc. 

It was a nightmare and basically what killed any motivation I had for continuing to breed sheep. I had a ewe and ram combination which consistently lambed a pure chocolate brown wool that was much coveted by local hand spinners. She just fell over dead right in front of me one day while nursing.

If you are wondering finding a brown strain in wool is rare and both sets of sheep, ewe and ram must have the trait in their dna to throw a true brown wool color. Almost impossible to find a ewe and an unrelated ram with that DNA strain at least in the English breeds. This ewe even lambed a number of badger faced lambs with that brown color and a cream offset that a few people came from a long way off to buy one of her rams. The badger faced brown lambs she had seemed to almost glow. 

Lastly there is shearing. I know this is a long rambling post but there is a lot of information on sheep to cover. Kudos if you are still reading.

Shearing is in my opinion the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Trying to roll those huge old sheep around, holding them with your feet and legs in such odd positions, shearing the wool off with one hand on the shears and the other pulling the wool tight.

Sheep have flesh almost like a cat, you could probably almost cut them with a fingernail so you have to pull the skin under the wool or the shears could hurt them bad and even make them bleed to death right there.

bending over the entire time. In the heat. I know I have seen 90 pound girls do it without hardly breaking a sweat but as my professional shearer told me it was much easier when you sheared your 1000th sheep. I would have never made it as a pro sheep shearer. He always said it was odd that I was large enough to catch an almost full grown yearling like a big fuzzy football in mid air but could not last shearing more than one without a rest. I think it was just the use of muscles I had never used before that got me.

I know there is a lot of small details and such I have left out but my final analysis is that both Goats and Sheep have a valid place in Homesteading and long term survival. 

Both animals have contributed more to human civilization and survival than either has been given credit for. Sheep can feed and sustain people same as goats. Sheep can also clothe thousands while Goats can survive in situations Sheep cannot. In the end I would say if you are planning for more of a small family type survival setting Goats would be better over all but if you are thinking more a downward spiral where local communities and the like are the norm Sheep would be better for trade and supply a larger community with raw resources in the long term. 

Sheep require more work and a younger back overall in my opinion though.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!