[Big Light]

If you can put them in a pen ( with high sides) for a week feeding them from hand, putting them on halters and generally interfering with them they should improve

[shygirl]

try routine winter feeding and train them to follow a bucket into a small paddock - where you can put up a race. skittish ones do remember in the summer what a bucket is even if there arent hungry.

do manx herd with a dog, or do they split like borerays?

[in the hills]

Not sure if they are generally thought of as 'wilder' than Soay or not but our Soay have become quite tame. When we had our original girls they hadn't really had any human contact and they didn't even come near enough to know what was in the bucket.  We did wonder whether we had made a big mistake.

We spent time sitting in the field with them and found jobs to do in the paddock but didn't pay much direct attention to them and didn't try to approach them. We left the bucket in the field with them.

It took a few weeks but slowly they came round. Some jump up us like dogs and raid our pockets now .... if anything one or two are a little over-friendly. A couple are more 'reserved' but still come into the catching area and are not a problem.

If you like the breed, don't give up. Keep feeding in the catching area daily. I bet they'll get there in the end.

P.S. If they are like our Soay they will be quite intelligent ..... perhaps they've overheard the bbq plans. 

[mab]

Don't know manx, but my easycares were very wild on arrival last autumn(c.f. Eflie the very tame shetland), so I've kept going with the bucket - even now (though not much and not every day) so they'll still follow closely when I need them to.


As IntheHills says if you hang around with them they get more relaxed with you - I've been scything bracken in the field with them and they get fairly close now - guess they just think I'm 'grazing' and not 'hunting'.

[shygirl]

a handreared pet sheep comes in handy as they will usually follow the tame one.

[SallyintNorth]

I can drive all my 'funny little sheep', including my Castlemilks and Manxes, with my dogs - but it takes patience and skill to manage the pressure so that the sheep choose to move away from the dogs in the direction you want, and not vertically!  lol

The problem is, in part, that as Fleecewife says, they are highly intelligent and very expert at reading the body language of potential predators.  As you would need to be to survive as a prey animal!    However, it means that although they may follow a bucket, the instant they realise you are planning to close that gate behind them, they're away.

For me it kind of adds to the charm, but BH has a good saying that maybe applies here.

Buy livestock you like the look of.  You need to want to see them on a wet cold morning, so it's best to have ones you like looking at.  And don't buy anything you didn't like the look of when you first saw it.  You'll never like it.

Which is another way of saying horses for courses.  I love my Manxes and they would be in the running if I had to choose just one breed to keep.  But they are wily, agile, opinionated little monkeys, so if they don't float your boat, don't keep 'em!

[trish.farm]

i stupidly took on 5 SBF ewes a few years ago, they never integrated with the rest of my wee flock, they were a total nightmare!!  They would jump fences, anything to not go where i wanted them to. All my nice tame ewes would come running at the sight of me in the hope of food and the 5 SBF's would leg it as fast as possible to the other end of the field.  One had a problem at lambing and had just a head out, i spent 2  hours chasing the damn thing around at 2am, peeing with rain, in the middle of febuary, ended up getting all my sheep netting out of the barn, setting up a corner pen and race.  Finally caught her when she tried to jump the netting to escape and got tangled up.  Managed to turn her over (still tangled in netting!) and found a front leg and pulled the obviously now dead lamb out.  She had been running around for a good 2 hours with this head bouncing around behind her.  Once i had pulled the lamb out i set about untangling the ewe, still in the rain, pitch black and my head torch flickering!  Once the ewe sensed freedom she was off, with her (obviously dead) lamb at her side!!!!  I honestly couldnt believe it!!  That autumn all the SBF lambs were slaughtered and I sold the 5 ewes to an unsuspecting friend who has never forgiven me!!!  I will stick to my placid old tame ewes from now on!!

[SallyintNorth]

I'm not a fan of Blackies either.  I have no evidence that they can become friendly.  Whereas Swaledales can become perfectly tame, even soppy.  And these characteristics seem to be passed down into their offspring too, so that the Blackie Mule is headstrong and difficult, while the Swaley Mule is very happy to be your friend provided you treat her, and her lambs, right.

But it could just be the flocks that I've known

[bloomer]

I have 2 thoughts;

1, I have an empty freezer if it helps :-D

2, Will a nice sedate Zwartlbe gent be able to catch the hell spawned hooligans you claim to own? (Personally they sound mor like cats and actually they own you!)

[Pundyburn Lynn]

How interesting!


I'm certainly not experienced in sheep keeping BUT have recently taken on a ewe and ewe lamb (soay) from what is effectively a wild highland herd.  With consistent morning and evening feeds they have become quite tame and now baaaa through the window for attention.  They particularly love digestive biscuits and oat heavy muesli (cheap).  Despite no previous human contact, within eight weeks they have tamed to the point of eating out of our hands.


Lynn

[Womble]

Well, ours were fairly tame until the grass started growing, but then they weren't interested in coming for nuts any more. They'll greedily eat them from a trough, but they're not hungry enough to overcome their fear of me and eat from a scoop or bucket. (For instance, they won't put their heads in a bucket when any 'predators' are within 40m, as it blocks their view of them).

I found tonight that they'll eat from a trough as long as I'm safely the other side of the fence, and don't move AT ALL, so that's progress.

"Horses for Courses" is exactly right, and yes I do rather like the Manxs really. They're lovely intelligent, graceful animals (rather like deer  ). I also like the Zwartbles, though you could hardly get two more different breeds - the Z's think they're a cross between a donkey and a Labrador puppy, and follow us round like cade lambs (which they're not). They're also going to be the size of Shetland Ponies once they've finished growing!

The question is, will the Manxs change their behaviour enough for me to let them stay, and will our Zwartbles suffer from the same troubles that others seem to be having with them?

Watch this space to find out! 

[SallyintNorth]

I also like the Zwartbles, though you could hardly get two more different breeds - the Z's think they're a cross between a donkey and a Labrador puppy, and follow us round like cade lambs (which they're not). They're also going to be the size of Shetland Ponies once they've finished growing!

Look closely at the 'ponies' pulling the chariot at 1:08 in the video on this page 

[Fleecewife]

Brilliant     I love the ponies too, so happy.

[nimbusllama]

Womble I must thank you for starting this post.... I have been sitting here with tears streaming down my face reading your post and the various replies regarding wild sheep...brilliant!  I haven't laughed so much for ages....
On a more serious note I had a few Zwarbles a few years ago and they went to the ram as lambs with no problems.  I recently used a Zwartbles ram lamb (who had no weight or foot problems btw) on some Badgerface ewes as shown in the photo... they were good lambs, but I sold them with their mothers at this stage due to my health problems.
I hope I don't soon post a similar report, as I have just started with Castlemilk Moorits (who I love!) and the shearling ewes will eat out of my hand in the field atm.


 

[Womble]

Nimbusllama - if reading this thread made you laugh, you really ought to have seen me trying to catch them two nights ago!  I ended up standing outside the catching pen on the other side of the fence, rattling a bucket to draw them in to a trough full of nuts. (I had the Zwartbles inside the adjacent wee pen as decoys and everything, though that was mainly to stop them from troughing all the nuts themselves!).
 
When they were safely eating, I pulled a cunningly concealed rope which knocked a spade out from in front of the entry gate, allowing it to swing shut.  I'm telling you, Wallace and Gromit would have been proud!!
 
It's good to hear you had some nice cross-bred lambs from a Zwartbles tup. I'm going to stick with the Manxes for at least another year, so my big dilemma just now is what tup to put them with. I think my options are:
 
1) Zwartbles - makes life nice and easy, and allows me to breed the Z lambs pure and keep the girls. However, would using such a big boy on wee first-timer primitives give problems lambing?
 
2) Another commercial breed - I can easily borrow a Beltex, Texel or Blackface tup lamb, but would that be any better? My neighbour recommends Beltex for easy lambing (apparently the lambing problems with the breed are all on the maternal side?), and at least the lambs would be ugly enough to eat with a clear conscience  .
 
3) Another primitive tup lamb who we would then eat - easier lambing for my first timers, but slower growth and the potential of all hell breaking loose with the neighbours if he jumped the fence and got in with theirs!
 
I do like making life difficult for myself, don't I?