Mystang's Homesteading Circus

[mystang89]

Maybe I should post a picture of the hay string loop that held the wire gate closed of the pen he used to be in. In another few weeks he and two ewes will go to a pasture with a real gate. But I don't have a night pen in that pasture, so we are going to put up a small pallet fence pen and attach it to the Hawg Hut. Maybe I can come up with another really cool gate for that and hold it closed with a...…..rubber band maybe?

So, quick question. What animal phycologist do you use that does such a great job with hypnosis and makes you Rams think they are rabbits?

 

[Baymule]

Ringo is just an outstanding individual and he passes his laid back personality to his offspring.

We brought him home in the back of the truck, almost 700 miles, an 11 hour drive. I fed him animal crackers through the sliding back glass.

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This is one of the reasons I wanted him so much.

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What's not to love about Ringo?

 

[mystang89]

I DEFINITELY think that personalities are genetically passed on to offspring. I never would have thought that the way an animal behaves mentally would be something which was passed from parent to baby but Sunny acts EXACTLY like his father, Bruce. The other ram we have, Dueuy, is nice and laid back... So it seems anyway. It could be that he's just not the alpha and just seems to be mellow. Who knows what he'd do it he was the alpha?

I've even seen Tina, the ewe from Bruce, headbutt my 2 year old who was doing nothing more than walking around the pasture.

 

[Mike CHS]

There is a major difference in the ewes that were sired by Ringo and the lambs that were sired by Max (our current ram). Max will never be tame although he has also never been aggressive toward me or the ewes so that's all I expect from him. He is getting better though.

 

[Bruce]

Maybe in a few years you can get one of Ringo's ram lambs since his genetics in your flock will be well diluted by then

 

[Baymule]

The two ewe lambs we are keeping this year are calm. One of them comes from a wild mom, that will come eat out of my hand, but otherwise runs from me.

This is the high security closure on Ringo’s pen.

This is the elaborate closure I designed to keep Ringo in his proper place, before he was moved to high security.

 

[Ridgetop]

 

[Ridgetop]

One year we kept our two rams (Yearling crossbred Mufasa and big Hampshire ram Killer) in adjoining horse corrals with plastic horse fencing attached to the bars. Killer didn't like Mufasa and tried to butt him through the corral bars. After Mufasa went to the butcher, we moved Killer to a breeding pen, and when we went to reconfigure the stalls realized that Killer had bent the horizontal bars in the horse corral panel. Rams are very powerful! No matter how gentle my rams seem, I don't turn my back on them.

 

[Bruce]

2 of my gates are 12' corral panels. I think it takes a might wallop to bend those pipes!

 

[farmerjan]

Disposition is definitely a "heritable trait".. It is one of over 20 heritable traits listed in the bull stud catalogs that come out once or twice a year for dairy cattle. Didn't used to be listed; but when I was taking some college courses back in 1988-89, the instructor back then said that although it was thought to be ridiculous.... he was a firm believer that disposition was very heritable. I agreed.
The big ole duroc boar hog that we used to borrow off and on for a couple of years back then when I only had 2-4 sows, was the best, quietest dispositioned boar and his pigs and the gilts we kept for breeding were much nicer than the ones I kept later on from a different boar.....
There was a real good typed Holstein bull, whose daughters did well in the show ring and milked really really good.... but they were all high strung like that bull was. It was a well known fact that the daughters were all "looney" if they got upset.... which anything that changed their routines would set them off. To this day, anything out of that line will often be commented on about the high strung attitudes......
So YES, disposition is VERY important if all other factors are somewhat equivalent. Sometimes you have to use what you have... or you use one that has very definite reason for improvement in the herd/flock..... but you will spend several generations breeding out the undesirable attitude if you are not real careful.