MOTs for rams

Newly shorn rams sniffing each other 

I had an amazing experience last week.  I went to a talk by a vet on ram health and saw a ram have a vasectomy.  Yes, like humans, some rams are vacestomised.  I’ll explain why in a minute.  The talk was by Maarten Boers from The Livestock Partnership.  The sheep breeding season is coming up so now is apparently the time for checking your ram.  Maarten gave a short presentation on what to check to make sure the ram is in ‘tip tup condition’.  A tup is a ram and tupping time is the time when the rams are busy serving the ewes so I loved the pun.  I’m not sure if my international readers will know the expression but here people say something is ‘tip top’ if it is in the best condition.  

I knew about the three T’s:  teeth, toes and testicles but it appears pre-tupping checks involve much more than making sure your ram doesn’t need dentures or has raging foot rot.  Giving a ram an MOT (an MOT is a legally required annual check of a car to make sure it is road worthy) is mostly common sense however you do need to know what to look for.  It’s obvious a lame ram wont spend his days running after ladies.   Now I am not a vet so if you have landed on my blog looking for advice on ram care please check with a qualified vet.  Maarten went through a checklist for the MOT, including checking the ram’s eyes.  It made me chuckle when  we got to checking the eyes are healthy as the ram needs his eyes in good working order to see  where  the ladies are! 

After a short presentation, Maarten collected a semen sample from a ram, this is done by sticking an electric probe up the ram’s backside – ooh!  Semen was caught in what looked like a giant condom on a stick.  You can see a photo of the procedure and find out more on the Livestock Partnership’s website.  It is a very quick procedure but not one the ram seemed to enjoy.  The vet had a microscope in his van so fertility testing can be done on the farm.  We all got to have a look at the semen sample under a microscope.  Fortunately the ram turned out to be very fertile. 

Apparently you can get a certificate confirming the results of the test so when the ram is sold the buyer knows he is a fertile ram.  Buying rams, the sheep farmers assured me, is always a worry as you can’t be sure the ram will do his job but with these tests the buyer can have some peace of mind. 

After the fertility testing, the vet performed a vasectomy on another ram.  The ram was sedated first and given a local anaesthetic so he didn’t feel any pain.  Rams that have been vasectomised are known as teaser rams.  They are put in with the ewes before the fertile rams to bring the ewes into season.  Using a teaser ram means all the ewes come into season at the same time.  This makes for a shorter lambing time, no one wants to be up all night for six weeks or more with a spread out lambing.  The vet explained it is better to use older rams as teasers because they are smellier and waft more hormones around than young inexperienced rams.  

Another good idea was to use a ram which stands out in the flock, in this case the ram having the snip was a Black Welsh Mountain, a black sheep with big curly horns, he will be put into a flock of white sheep with no horns so it will be easy to tell which ram is the teaser.   After all, it would be terrible to muddle up the fertile rams with the teaser, which is all too easily done if they all look alike. 

The good news for this ram is he is now ensured a long and happy life, he has an important job to do on the farm for many years to come.  Whereas if he was still fertile he would have to be sold and may have gone for meat because he cannot be bred to his own daughters kept on the farm.  The ram will never know he’s had the snip, unless of course some insensitive soul whispers in his ear, he will feel just the same and will still be able to serve as many ewes as he fancies, he just wont get them pregnant.   All in all, the life of a teaser ram is not a bad one.

Washing dog fur with Power Scour

I'm back to report on my progress with Alaska's fur.  I weighed out a precious 20g sample, put it in a net bag and washed the fibre in Unicorn Power Scour.  I think I have tried most methods when it comes to washing raw fibre.  My first  Black Welsh Mountain fleece I naively bunged straight in the washing machine without removing the daggings.  Daggings are what happens when sheep use the wool on their tail and back end as toilet paper.  Amazingly, the fleece didn't felt, Welsh Mountain fleece is forgiving,  but the poo was well distributed and for a while, no longer dry. 

I had a run of washing fleeces in washing up liquid, cheap and good at removing grease.  However, when I finally got around to digging those fleeces out of storage to spin, the fibre was brittle and useless, whether or not that was the fault of the  washing up liquid I don't know but they were good fleeces when they left the sheep; I think washing liquid is best left for dishes. 

After that unpleasant experience I acquired a load of stinking angora goat fleece.  Deciding this was delicate hair not greasy wool, I used baby shampoo.  This seemed to work but took so many washes to remove all the dirt.   I discovered the Unicorn range at Fibrefest, Coldharbour Mill in Devon.   I was so relieved to find a specialist product designed for washing raw fleece, it's not exactly the kind of thing you find on the shelf in the supermarket.  Now any fibre I wash at home, including shop bought wool jumpers, I use a Unicorn product.    

With the sample of dog fur, I did one wash, rinsed a few times, then gave the fibre a second wash in Power Scour.  The fibre has a tendency to clump together into balls which resist water penetration.  Has anyone else noticed this?  Has anyone tried to wash a huskie?  Is it hard to get them wet?  I wonder if this is a defence mechanism, with a thick woolly coat like a husky's I can imagine there would be a danger of becoming waterlogged if the dog was submerged.  If a sheep falls into water the fleece gets wet and heavy and the sheep can easily drown.  Also I guess when you live in a cold climate, taking a long time to dry out is likely to cause hypothermia.  I don't know, I'm just speculating. I ended up pulling the clumps apart in between washes so the water could do its job.  

The hardest part of washing fibre, I find, is leaving it alone.  I want to feel like I'm doing something, which generally means giving the fibre a jolly good rub, the way housewives did their laundry before the days of washing machines.  Rubbing is the worse thing you can do, felting occurs when you bring together heat, soap and friction, and felting is irreversible.  With sheep's wool, felting happens when the barbs along the fibres become tangled up and locked together, although hair doesn't have those barbs, a version of felting can occur with hair fibres.  The machine washable wool jumpers you buy in the shop are made from wool which has been stripped of its barbs, how they do that I don't know but it's another process the fibre has been through and no doubt a load more fossil fuel burnt. 

The best way to wash fibre (or a finished garment) is to leave it to soak.  All you have to do is keep changing the water.  It is important to keep the water at a similar temperature as fibres are 'shocked' by sudden changes of temperature and this can induce the dreaded felting.  This time of year especially, the cold water straight from the tap is really cold so even when rinsing you need to use warm water.  I think I'd protest too if I was enjoying a hot bath and someone took me out and plunged me into icy cold water.       

After washing, I put the dog fur, still in its net bag, into a pillow case and gave it a short spin in the washing machine on the slowest speed.  That first sample is now dry.  I am happy to report, the fibre no longer smells of dog!  The conclusion to this scientific experiment is that Power Scour is effective against the smell of dog.   

I am now working my way through the rest of the dog fur, I found washing small amounts in separate net bags one way of combating the clumping tendency.  Once all the fibre is washed and dry I will be back to report on the carding and spinning!