The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: melholly on September 06, 2013, 09:47:58 pm
-
Evening all,
This evening I witnessed a first in my huge amount of years experience with sheep (3!) ;) One of my Dorsets went full on for a Bexel X. Then Dorsets Mum came over (3 years gap mind!) and joined in! It was real ears back, heads together full on butts and trying to upend each others body. The Bexel had a bit of blood from her mouth too. The Dorset was definitely the aggressor. I left them to it after another of my Dorsets just came up and gave one of the labs a hefty butt in the ribs! Completely unprovoked and totally not the norm!
These sheep have always lived together, their lambs are all separate in another field and have been since July!
Curious behaviour - certainly for my small flock but maybe this starts to happen as they age?
-
Are these all females?
Was there any feed involved?
Could there have been anything upset them shortly beforehand - a strange dog in the field, for instance?
-
My Soay do it on occasions for no reason that I can see and 5 minutes later are grazing peacefully again. This is the ewes that have always been together and last years wethers.
Establishing/challenging positions in the "pecking order" ...... maybe :-\ . Or just in a bad mood ;D
Always sorted itself out.
-
Some of mine had it about them last night too - I think it was just hormones!
-
Sheep do have familial ties so I can understand the mother getting into the fray but as to why - who knows? You'd have to speak 'sheep' to understand the perceived offence I guess. Keeping a closed flock might be the reason I've never seem this in 20 years, most aggression seems to come from the males here. Wethers can be coarse with lambs that get into their field and the tup knows he is boss of the wethers.
Ps; is Bexel a local name for what we call Beltex up here, Belgian Texel, or is it a different breed?
-
Wilts Horn ewes can be pretty snarky to each other at time, dunno why though.
-
Yeah I reckon they were just in a foul mood or psychic as last night we had police helicopter over our land for 20 mins or so, low with its beam which freaked them out! The torch is bad enough with them!
Mx
-
Mine are scraping a little bit atm, I've got a shearling who has little horn buds (not a proper set of horns) and shes been fighting and has knocked the cups off and is covered in blood!
I think it may be because they are starting to cycle, Its suddenly like Autumn and maybe they are feeling grumpy!
-
Yeah I reckon they were just in a foul mood or psychic as last night we had police helicopter over our land for 20 mins or so, low with its beam which freaked them out! The torch is bad enough with them!
Mx
We must have some natural sedative growing in our pasture, lol, mine don't give a hoot even when the military jets do a low pass right over our house. I know hubby encourages them, as he waves at them so they come back to show off :excited:
I used to think we had tons of chamomile in the field until I was told it was pineapple weed, I wonder if it has similar properties, it sure smells like chamomile.
-
mine often get a bit fighty and run around when theres rain coming. animals can sense it before humans I think.
sometimes they just like a good scrap if ones gettting ideas above her station
-
I went and looked up the pineapple weed thing and sure enough, it's in the asteraceae family and does possess the same qualities as chamomile ..... also explains why I got a fantastic yellow dye from the yellow heads. My sheep are probably all lounging around spaced out on pineapple weed.