We’ve needed to sort out the parenting issue for the sheep. That is, no father figure.

When we took over the farm the sheep were pregnant, and the ram had been and gone. Ten months on, and the cycle starts again, but for that to happen, we need a ram.
I’ve been asking around for a few months. I didn’t run into anyone who had a Dorper ram (our sheep are Dorpers) they were willing to loan.

There’s lots of good reasons for not loaning out your ram…disease being one…so I didn’t take that personally. But I wasn’t keen on spending a lot of money to buy one.

But we got lucky. Ross is part of a big farming family, lives nearby. A mutual friend introduced us, and he cheerfully told me that they had missed castrating a would-be wether. The young yam showed up, intact, when they were mustering their large flock for a maintenance run. Ross was happy enough to take a small payment for his unwanted ram, and I went and picked him up this week.

“He’s pretty feisty”, was the assessment when we were getting him into my caged trailer. Ross knew what he was doing and cornered him while we closed the gates. “He’ll settle once you get moving”.

Which he did, but as we drove through town and stopped at intersections he got to his feet and sniffed the air. What I didn’t want was him attempting to hurdle out of the cage and either injure himself or take off.

But we made it home and introduced him to his new harem. He seemed to know what he was doing, and seems to be working the crowd.

I’ve marked the calendar. We might be seeing new lambs in August.