Meet Lenny

Lenny

For the past year, I have been thinking about the situation with my sheep.  Ramuel Jackson is now the sire of half of my ewes.  Opinions differ on whether inbreeding fathers over daughters is okay.  It seems to be a standard practice in some areas, or ignored until lambs start showing deficiencies. 

I have issues with this.  I personally find such inbreeding distasteful and try to avoid it.  I know that the sheep probably don't care, it's my issue.

The first and obvious solution is to get a new ram. 

But what to do with Ramuel Jackson? I could try to sell him, but I can't give many details at all about him.  I don't know his age. I don't know his breed for certain, the best I can do is go by my shearer's guess that he's a Romney.  And not that many people are interested in a coloured ram.  I'm too much of a soft touch to have him slaughtered for dog food.

It had occurred to me to split my flock.  Ramuel could continue to service my older ewes.  They're all white and not related to him.  While his daughters could run with a new ram.  This would mean the new ram's flock would continue to grow every year but I would have to find another solution for the new ram's daughters as they'd be Ramuel's granddaughters. 

I have dithered, undecided for far too long.

Then recently I saw a post on facebook offering two young rams for sale.  They're two out of a set of triplets, purebred Suffolk and fine looking boys.  I did some quick research about the Suffolk breed.  Good hardy sheep, mostly meat producers and their wool is approximately mid-range for fineness, rating better than Romney.  I enquired, we chatted and a week later, Lenny arrived.

Lenny is friendly and has been almost a pet.  His previous owner was a little sad to see him go, although she accepted that she couldn't keep him.  Both he and his brother Benny had been showing interest in their ewes, all of which they were related to.

I think she felt a little hurt at how he ran to the fence, calling to the ewes in another paddock and wouldn't come back to say goodbye, but at the same time I think she was relieved to see him so happy to meet some new sheep.

We hadn't split our flock before his arrival.  So while we kept Lenny in the paddock he arrived in, we ran the others through our new yards. We also separated last years wethers from the others to make it easier when we call the homekill man in.

Lenny and his girls

Lenny was ecstatic with his new girls, doing his job before we'd even started moving them into their paddock.  By the time we had Lenny and his little flock in their paddock, he'd already formed a special friendship with Beyonce.

We're looking forward to seeing what kind of offspring we get this year from Lenny.

Lenny and Beyonce