Don't Give Up the Sheep

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Some of them will display all of the vocal output of their elders, and they also run wildly around looking this way and that as the unfamiliar—and thus doubly distressing—feelings affect them. Don't panic and call your veterinarian; they'll all recover in a day or two.

Shepherds manage breeding according to their goals and needs. Many commercial sheep raisers just put a bunch of rams in with the ewes and let nature take its course. This method is fine in some ways, but it leaves the shepherd pretty much in the dark as to the parentage of the lambs. It also eliminates any possibility of identifying the characteristics of any individual rams, such as fertility and transmission of genetic traits. I am not saying that this method is no good, but it is not my cup of tea. Since I am curious by nature, I want to know what an individual ram can do rather than what a committee can do.

A difficulty can arise with the use of a group of rams: the problem of the dominant ram. If, in a group, there is one ram that is very aggressive and is constantly trying to exercise his dominance over the others, two problems may surface. First, the dominant ram will repeatedly emphasize his superiority over his colleagues by fighting with them. This results in injury, even death, and all of the participants expend energy on fighting that should be spent on breeding ewes. The situation encourages competition among the rams—not what the sheep breeder wants at all. The breeder wants the ram's entire attention given to the ewes. Many a human female has encountered similar problems with a man who does his dominance sparring with other men in the form of bowling, softball, tennis, or some similar ritual instead of paying attention to her.

Second, the dominant ram may prevent the other rams from mounting any of the ewes in heat. Having done so, the job is left to him, and he has problems. First, having fought all of the other rams, he has expended much more effort than any one of them. He's pooped.

Worse, if he does have enough energy to mount and impregnate all of the ewes he has fought for and won, then he expends a tremendous amount of semen. His sperm supply and fertility may have been fine at the outset of breeding, but because of his servicing every ewe, his sperm count begins to fall, with the result that there are fewer settled ewes and fewer multiple fertilized ova among those that do settle.

If things are this bad, you ask, how do some breeders get away with it? They do if there is not a strongly dominant ram in the bunch. If they are all a group of fairly easygoing characters, they will spend their time with the ewes rather than trying to prove how tough they are. It helps in a ram pool to have all the rams of about the same age and breeding. The more equal they are, the less they will feel obligated to prove themselves. I don't mean to imply that rams stand around thinking all this over and make reasoned decisions as to whether to fight or not. However, a mixed group means mixed personalities. Different breeds of sheep have quite different psyches, as do rams of different ages. A fun-loving young Lincoln is a far cry from a grouchy old Karakul, especially if the Karakul has a shortmale complex.

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