I started out with 9 ewes I bought and picked out at
the Livestock Auction.
These ewes were around 7 years old and were
being culled
from a large ranch herd.
I paid $9.00 per head for them.
The breed of these sheep were Columbia. I found that after buying these sheep
that one of them was
blind,so I had to keep her separate
from the others,as
sheep are very aggressive towards one
another when it comes
to eating and you can't herd a blind sheep.
I kept all my ewe lambs for breeding .
The next thing I had to do was buy a Ram,
so I purchased a Suffolk Ram
from one of the local Ranches that were
culling Rams.
This old Ram was mean so you had to be careful
around him as he weighed
250 pounds
and would run over you if cornered and would
bunt you if you turned your
back on him.
One year I was asked by a sheep rancher,if
I would like to help move his
sheep across the desert to summer range.
My job would be camp tender.
A camp tender is a person who moves the
sheep camp up the
trail to the next bedding area for the sheep.The herder is
the person who moves the sheep up the trail.
When you graze sheep across the desert range,
you are usually
headed for the mountain range to graze the sheep there
during the summer months.
It took 1 month to get to the base of the mountain range
where the herder would be feeding the herd for the summer.
This is where my job would end as a camp tender.
The sheep camp would stay in one area for a week or so before it had
to be moved to the next grazing location.
There are a number of different theories regarding the
origins of domestic sheep. However, most sources agree
that they originated from mouflon.
There are two wild populations of mouflons still in existence: the
Asiatic mouflon which is still found in the mountains of Asia Minor and southern Iran and the
which the only existing members are on the
islands of Sardinia and Corsica.
These two species are closely related with the only difference being the redder
coloration and different horn configuration of the Asiatic
mouflon.
Some sources even hypothesize that the
mouflon actually developed from the first domestic
sheep in Europe being allowed to become feral and that all
sheep are actually descendants of the Asiatic mouflon.
Sheep were among the first animals domesticated. An archaeological site in Iran produced a statuette of a
wooled sheep which suggests that selection for woolly
sheep had begun to occur over 6000 years ago.
The common features of today's sheep were already appearing in
Mesopotamian and Babylonian art and books by 3000 B.C.
Selection for wool type, flocking instinct and other
economically important traits over the centuries has
resulted in more than 200 distinct breeds of sheep
occurring worldwide.
Modern breeding schemes have also
resulted in an increasing number of composite or
synthetic breeds which are the result of a crossing of
two or more established breeds.