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Summary: Watch a naturalist from the Massachusetts Audubon Society's Drumlin Farm provide important tips about raising sheep in this free online video.
Views: 1,240 | Tags: techniques, wool, types, food, pets, animals, animal, behavior, breeding, shepherd, wildlife, raise, farm, farming, agriculture, sheep, lambs, ewes, rams, husbandry, habits, mutton, biology, zoology, anatomy, farm animals
About the Expert
Tia Pinney Tia Pinney is a Teacher Naturalist and Adult Program Coordinator at Mass Audubon’s Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary in Lincoln, Massachusetts. She is involved ... read more
Comments
Questions & AnswersOkay how to care for a sheep. As I said earlier, sheep don't need a tremendous amount of attention. They are actually a pretty easy animal to care for. There are a few things that you need to do however. One of the things that surprises most people is that sheep are born with a tail. However given all the wool that they have and all the manure they produce, the tail is a detriment. So as soon as they are born, their tails are docked and that is an important thing to take care of and that is done in a painless fashion by putting a very strong elastic around the tail. A little bit of tail is left to cover up the vagina on a ewe just to give her protection but that tail will eventually just die and fall off and that is an important characteristic to take care of. The other thing that they need is because they are living in a soft pasture environment and they are not climbing rocks as their ancestors used to do, they need to have their hooves trimmed. You can see they have this two toed foot with a soft inner pad and a hard outer hoof. They need to have this hoof trimmed. This little lamb as a matter of fact needs some trimming. It's just like cutting your fingernails. Her females have grown so long that they are folding over the pads of her feet so she needs to have her feet trimmed. Also in terms of care, you want to be concerned with what you are feeding your sheep. If they are on pasture and they are grazing. that's fine they eat it well. If you are feeding them grain, you don't want to over feed your sheep. You don't want a fat sheep, you want a healthy sheep. Just like humans, anybody that is too fat is not going to be as healthy as anybody that is in good shape. So keeping them out on pasture is the best way to feed them. Our sheep have ear tags so that we an keep track of them. If you have just 1 or 2 sheep that is not an issue. But that is what you are going to see and in most places where you go, there sheep and there is information on these tags. We keep track of them when they were born and then we can keep track who was bred to whom and all those kinds of pieces of information and that is the important part of caring for sheep on any producing farm.
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