Time up for Davy

Today Davy’s time was up. Davy was our ram who we’ve had for three years. Over the summer it will be time to introduce new blood into our flock with a new ram ready for tupping in the autumn. I would have liked to have sold him on as he still had two or three years tupping potential in him. On the negative side, as he has got older he had become increasingly assertive (though not overtly aggressive) with a propensity for head butting and I could never risk turning my back to him. 

As there were no takers we took Davy to the abattoir early this morning and he will be enjoyed as mutton instead. This is an inevitable consequence of eating meat, but in this case Davy lived an unpressured existence in his patrician role to our small flock of Wiltshire Horn sheep.

During those times when Davy had to be kept separate from the ewes, he had a companion wether (a castrated ram) who was in fact one of his sons. Now Davy is gone the wether has joined the ewes and all the adult sheep are back together with last year’s lambs. We currently have five breeding ewes, three ewe lambs born last year and the wether - 9 all told. It’s a small flock but near to our limit for the amount of grazing we have available. 

I’ve started to give them additional feed as the adult ewes are due to lamb in mid-March. It’s in the last four or so weeks of gestation that the prospective lambs put on a lot of growth so the ewe’s nutritional needs are greater. It won’t be long before flock numbers rise again.