The Boys

The longer I am around sheep, the more I realize that they are a bit like humans. Here are "the boys" - better known as our rams. They are the dads of all the sheep and you can see them on the left side of the photo back by Eeyore, the donkey. There are two Romney crosses, and a Border Leicester. We also have a few more rams that aren't in the photo.


See how they stand around and eat and eat and eat. I suppose they feel a bit useless at this point in the year. Besides eating, they can't do much that is useful - they can't feed the baby lambs. The lambs have no relationship with the rams at all - they are just around. It struck me that the scene was similar to some families when the women are in the kitchen - cooking, washing dishes, doing laundry, taking care of the kids and the men are sitting around the t.v. watching a football game.

Rams can be nasty. We once had a ram named Zeno who would charge us from across the field. I always had to be aware of his whereabouts - otherwise I would end up on my back unexpectedly. I never walked into the field when he was around without some kind of large stick to protect myself with.

One day, my brother-in-law David was taking care of the sheep when The Farmer was away. He knew about this ram - everyone did. David has a prosthesis on one of his lower legs due to an accident. He thought he would have a little fun with the ram. When Zeno came charging, David stuck out his fake leg and the ram butted it. The ram was stunned - he couldn't figure out what he hit that was hard. He backed up and butted him again harder. Poor guy, it must have hurt his head knocking into that hard piece of plastic. He never tangled with David again.

We didn't keep Zeno much longer - he was just too dangerous to have around. Off he went to the slaughterhouse and became ground meat. We enjoyed him more as that than when he was always after us, trying to knock us down.