AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes: We tend to give all the praise and attention to our ewes as they give birth to and mother their lambs, taking for granted the not inconsiderable efforts of our ram, Suleyman, the Magnificent. Obviously, considerable energy and expertise on his part goes into producing the twenty some lambs a year he has been siring in the last few years. But, unfortunately, he has to go this season. He has to go not because of any problem with him. Indeed, we do not want to let him go. But to avoid inbreeding we need to bring a new ram in to increase the genetic diversity of the herd. I say his going is unfortunate since he has been the best ram we have had in a string of rams that has included a significant number with aggressive and, in some cases, downright dangerous personalities.
Suleyman is that rare ram who has been gentle—a quiet, dutiful presence who has never seriously challenged us. We are hoping we can find another herd for him to join. Only one of his predecessors, Dudley (aptly named), who was aging and near the end of his breeding days, was a similarly benign presence. Suleyman has many good years of breeding ahead of him, but despite his virility, he continues to be a benign presence. Our first ram, Ryan, had a demonic look from the beginning and was not at all people friendly. We did not know enough about rams at the beginning to realize that he was problematic. Not until, out of the blue, he knocked me down several times did I sense any danger. In both cases I was standing near him holding the feed bucket, which I could, fortunately, use to bash him off.
Then I began hearing stories from other sheep raisers about ram attacks. In the typical attack apparently they knock you down to the ground and then go for your head. We heard of one woman being knocked to the ground by her herd's ram and being unable to get up. Only the presence in the pasture of her pet horse, who came and stood over her, saved her from worse. Once we realized we had a serious problem, Ryan was sent off to market, being too aggressive to pass on to anyone else. And so he left us, but not before he smashed through fences, galloped through our cold frame, and demolished one of the barn doors. The worst aspect of such rams is their unpredictability. While we could see problems with Ryan from the beginning, we were really surprised at what happened a few years ago with Murat, a beautiful ram who had become almost a pet. One morning in the barn just after I had been stroking his muzzle, he, with no warning, charged and knocked me to the ground. It was as if a switch had been thrown. From that point on he became increasingly aggressive, necessitating that I carry a heavy oak stick for protection. His attempted attacks finally forced us to get a leather ram mask that essentially blinkered him so he could not look directly ahead to charge. But one morning, his mask having been somehow pushed askew, he saw his opportunity as I was in the pasture crouched down checking out a limping lamb. The first thing I heard was his rapid hoof beats approaching: I quickly rose and swung around to see him, over 250 lbs of ram with a large boney head and huge curled horns, galloping at me full gait.
Not taking my eyes off him, I began carefully backing up slowly in the direction of the open barn door. As he neared with his head lowered in charging mode, I swung the oak stick and cracked him across the nose, and he veered away. But he then galloped back to his starting point, turned and came at me again full tilt. I continued slowly backing to the open barn door, and as he was almost on me, I cracked him across the nose once again, and he veered away. This was repeated four more times as I continued ever so carefully backing towards the barn door. He would have tried a seventh time, but I stepped inside the barn and quickly slid the door shut—greatly relieved to be inside. There was no doubt now that he was out to kill me. The next day Murat was hogtied and carted off to auction. Suleyman is not only the perfect ram temperamentally, but he has been, for our purposes, the right one genetically. Before he joined the herd, we had somehow gotten into our herd’s gene pool a look I did not like: ginger colored sheep with virtually no ears lacking the black face and legs that are the classic characteristics of the Karakul breed. To my great satisfaction, Suleyman has consistently produced totally black lambs, all of them with ears, some of them long indeed. He has gone a long way to remaking the herd in his own image. Even the small-eared ginger colored ewes we have entrusted to him have all produced black lambs with floppy ears. So, like his namesake the Ottoman Sultan, Suleyman the Magnificent, who took his empire to its greatest heights, our Suleyman has similarly achieved great things with the Turkana Farms herd. He will be greatly missed and very hard to replace For the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
