My buddy has a hobby farm. He just sends his livestock off to a service that will take care of the ghastliness for him. Birds get on the bus, butterballs come back. Still, even if I did eat meat, I can’t imagine eating a critter I’d raised since birth.
But other problems with sheep may be in local by-laws For example, here we can’t have livestock of any kind within the city limits. I found this factoid when someone on the boards wondered about riding a horse to and from work here in the city.
My parents have about 30 head of sheep on 80 acres in the middle of Ohio. 1.5 acres is a nice rolling park like lawn, that my mother mows on the John Deere. Why would she do that if they have sheep. Because they make terrible lawn mowers. Downsides:[ul]
[li]They over graze; - this will kill areas of your lawn.[/li][li]They don’t eat the grass down to the same length- this will make your lawn look really sloppy.[/li][li]Their poop may be good for the lawn but their urine can burn the grass[/li][li]You’ll need a continuous fence around your property - Very expense [/li][li]They require upkeep-at least yearly vet check ups - Vet bills.[/li][li]In more temperate climates they need yearly sheering - another cost.[/li][li]They will need food supplements - more money[/li][li]Unless you buy only ewes you’ll need to castrate the males - you’ll be paying someone to do this.[/li][li]Sheep are easy prey for any loose dog, coyote or other predator. So you’ll need to be prepared to replace them and bury the remains when killed or get a predator control dog - more money and possibly vet bills and food for the dog.[/li][li]Killing and eating them requires butchering skills you don’t posses you’ll have to pay someone else for that - more money and possibly some meat fit only for stew.[/li][li]If you want to try it on your own, aside from the unpleasantness mentioned above, it maybe illegal in your area to butcher outside of a government certified facility.[/li][li]Even if you don’t intend to kill them for the meat at some point you’re going to need to put them down due to age or injury. You’re going to want to pay a vet for this. Don’t think you can just dispatch this pet with no qualms. It’s very hard to kill something you’ve raised from it’s earliest days. But if you’re going to shoot a sheep, use at least a .32 preferably a .38 with a ball round. They may be domesticated but they still have the thick skulls of their wild cousins. [/li][li]Shooting anything in the head is messy. Cleaning that mess up from your yard or field so it doesn’t attract predators or carrion birds is down right traumatic.[/li][li]Killing a domesticated animal in this fashion may be against the law in your area. [/li][li]Digging a hole deep enough to bury a sheep requires several hours of back breaking work with a shovel; renting a back hoe or buying an attachment for your tractor. You will need to bury it at least 4 feet deep to prevent it from being dug up. This may be hard depending on the local geology.[/li][/ul]
Considering all these financial and possibly emotional costs it is cheaper to buy a good riding mower or just pay someone.
Just for clarification my folks raise sheep for wool (sold to local hand spinners), the meat (we send them to a local slaughter house) but mostly as training aides for my parents kennel of predator control dogs. They raise Great Pyrenees
If they hadn’t been domesticated, how would they recognize their own babies, then? Also, why would they really even have to? Like, why would they have to walk towards their babies–once it gives birth, doesn’t the lamb just stay with it?
I suspect the wild ones are a little smarter in this respect - they’d have to be at least somewhat successful in rearing their own young, versus domesticated where you can always bottle-feed the lamb of a rock-stupid ewe or push the two of them together until momma gets the idea.
As for walking to the baby, I would guess (at first, certainly) the ewe is the one who wandered off blithely after giving birth, while the lamb sat there confused and alone.
Several people have mentioned shooting the animals to kill them… is that how it’s normally done in the US, or normally done by farmers in the US? In Spain both slaughterhouses and small operations (illegal now, but I did get to go hog-butchering a couple times when I was a wee lass and I’ve killed rabbits and chickens, again back when it was legal) involve blades.
As for male lambs, why castrate them when you can eat them? Most baby animals (of any species) that you eat in Spain, France or Italy are males.
Both sheep and cattle can overgraze an area, which kills the grass. Sheep don’t go after the roots particularly. I’ve heard that the cattle ranchers claimed otherwise during the range wars, but if so it was a ducks’ quacks don’t echo thing.
Here is my limited knowledge of how sheep graze, based on an article I wrote 20 years ago (how’s that for a cite? ) —
Sheep were touted as cheap to graze on the same pasture you graze cattle on because they eat the grass closer to the ground. I don’t remember roots being mentioned at all. The theory was, the cows (with their bigger lips, I guess) can only munch so low, then you run some sheep in and they’ll eat it down even lower. So they essentially graze on the same grass.
Caveat: As I said this article was done 20 years ago and I haven’t read what I wrote lately, so the information could be baaaaaad.
I think your best bet is to find someone who will rent you a few of their sheep.
Can’t remember where I saw it, but I think it was on TV. Not sure if it was the US, or some other country, but some entrepreneurial types started a service where they’d bring the sheep to you, let them graze your lawn down, then bring them back to the farm. It’s win-win; the sheep get free food, and you don’t have to handle all the extra husbandry stuff.
Any chance of something like that in the OP’s area?
Sounds like some sort of avian Thunderdome.
Then again, this seems kinda fitting:
Escapin’ through the lily fields
I came across an empty space
It trembled and exploded
Left a bus stop in its place
The bus came by and I got on
That’s when it all began
There was cowboy Neal
At the wheel
Of a bus to never-ever land…
There’s a goat-rental service here in the Bay Area - they use them up in the hills where the terrain doesn’t allow for a lawnmower and there’s all kinds of crap like thistles and poison oak growing. They string electric fencing around, let the goats go and in a few days everything is clipped down neatly and the goats are happy (except when some a-hole decided it’d be fun to drive by and shoot at them).
Regarding sheep stupidity - when I was in NZ (where sheep outnumber humans) I hung out with a professional sheep-musterer and he said that sheep are really much smarter than people think. He worked with “free grazing” sheep though - they let them roam over a relatively large area and he and his dogs are dropped off backcountry via helicopter to bring them in to the mustering station. Maybe they’re a bit sharper than those kept penned up at a station all the time.
My dad used to say cows were smarter than sheep - If a cow walked into water until the water covered his nose a cow would turn back. A sheep would drown.
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