I met with two friends the other day to catch up on local news (gossip).
Friend #1 happened to see a farmer’s sheep lying in a field with its 4-legs up in the air on one of our rural roads surrounding Westmeath. He stopped to alert the farmer who was grateful. The farmer explained the situation: “The sheep are now pregnant and along with a heavy winter wool coat they can topple over. This can lead to them getting stuck on their backs and eventually die.”
Friend #2 said, “Many people claim sheep are stupid and many people are too.” Friend #1 expanded on that, ”Let’s just say sheep have no sense of direction–at all. In fact, they will follow whoever is leading them.”
Sheep quickly became the talking point. I only thought of sheep as being rather cute but passive. I was to learn that when sheep are frightened by noise, they will run away together. They feel kind of protected in a group whereas, individually, they are defenseless.
Female sheep are called ewes, male sheep are called rams, and the process of giving birth is called lambing. A group of sheep is called a flock. Within only minutes, newly born lambs can stand and are walking with the flock almost immediately.
One of the guys knew a farmer that had a sheep grid. They are scarce around this area but very popular in Scotland for instance. Sheep grids are structures placed over a depression in the ground. They prevent sheep from crossing an enclosed piece of land leading to another area. They are typically placed between private and public lands and often laid over roadways where a fence is not appropriate.
These grids have evenly spaced bars close enough together that a car or a person can cross them, but wide enough apart that sheep cannot. They are effective in keeping them out of dangerous areas. Grids are a terrific alternative to gates, which require management and regular maintenance. Whoever thought of the application of these grids was very clever indeed.
If you own sheep, chances are high that you’ve experienced the time-consuming task of wrangling them back onto your property to avoid accidents, or to simply prevent random grazing. You should probably consider sheep grids and be done with it.
U.S. Professor Charles Roselli who studies sheep brains at Oregon University estimates that one in twelve sheep are gay or about 8% – a situation which causes headaches for farmers trying to breed the animals.
Roselli also reveals how homosexuality has been reported in over 1,500 species around the world – even by the Ancient Egyptians thousands of years ago.
One commercial sheep breeder stated that, “Some of my rams are exclusively homosexual and have to be sent to the slaughterhouse for their meat after refusing to breed with ewes.” He continued, “Commercially it’s a big issue for us because we need our rams to cover lots of ewes. They unfortunately go into the food chain.”
Accordingly, an investigation showed a ram being put into an enclosure with 30 ewes. It ignored all of them and instead tried to enter a nearby pen full of other rams.
There are over 1000 distinct breeds of sheep worldwide. With all of these different breeds, there exists some very unique characteristics. Some breeds of sheep, like the Hebridean and Navajo-Churro, possess a particular gene giving them the ability to grow 2, 4 and even 6 horns!
Sheep have great memories. Another study revealed that sheep can recognize up to 50 other sheep faces and remember them for two years.
Sheep are capable of experiencing a wide range of emotions, just as humans can. Many studies have highlighted the ability for sheep to feel afraid, angry, bored, sad and happy. Not only are sheep able to feel basic emotions, but their feelings can be very complex and include interactions between emotions and cognition. For example, scientific studies have shown that sheep can be pessimists or optimists.
Professor Volker Sommer, an Evolutionary Anthropologist at University College London (UCL), said: “In most cases animals will have sex with members of their own sex and with members of the opposite sex. It’s a wonderful world.”
When you sleep tonight, count your blessings rather than sheep.
