It Could Happen Here - Sheep!

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

James is joined by Danl, Shereen, and Mia to talk about sheep and why they are one of the best farm animals. Donate to the Burgerville Worker's Union Fund: bit.ly/burgerdefenseSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture

in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Mia. So before we get to today's episode, last Friday, the rank and file of the Burgerville Workers Union, which is the country's first successful fast food union,

went on strike against a campaign of disciplinings and firings of primarily trans and POC workers by the bosses, who are once again trying to crush the union. The strike has worked so far, but they need support from the community to help pay workers and help these people feed their families, so they can continue fighting the bosses' capitalism and building democracy in the workplace. You can go to bit.ly slash burger defense to donate to their funds. We will have linked to that in the description.

And yeah, thank you all so much. And now on to the show. And welcome to It Could Happen Sheer, part of Wool Zone Media. I am one of your hosts DJ Daniel and I am joined by three wonderful people one of which is actually going to lead us to the problem I didn't press record on my own device that is

all over amateur hour I cannot believe that should we all make a new file no no no no no no no no no I'm so no i'm just gonna fucking i'm so fucking stupid it's okay we're gonna do it again it's gonna be just as good but you know what i'm keeping all of this in anyway yes i am uh and welcome to it could happen sheer part of the wool zone media network i am one of your hosts, DJ Danil. But really, I'm just going to be listening as someone else walks us through.

I am joined by three wonderful co-hosts, and I'm going to let them introduce themselves. How about we start with the person leading this conversation? James, how are you doing? I'm wonderful, Danil. I'm very excited. And who are we joined by? Shireen, do you want to say hi? Do I want to say hi?

This is what I sound like today, everybody. I apologize. Not part of the plan, but hopefully this is a fun episode to listen to me sound like this. This is Shireen. Yeah, I'm here. Shireen is doing her plague cosplay right now, and we are joined by one other wonderful person.

Would you like to introduce yourself? Hi, yeah, Mia. Mia is also here. Yay! Knows nothing about sheep. Very excited to learn about sheep. Would you like to introduce yourself? Hi, yeah, Mia. Mia, also here. Knows nothing about sheep. Very excited to learn about sheep. I'm very excited. Even though I sound like this, I need to be here because I learned so much about chickens last time. Now it's sheep.

Yeah. We're so proud that you fought through the pain. By the way, bar, shear, and wool is the full extent of my sheep knowledge. So, you know, we got it all out of the way right there. Great. All right, buddy. Well, let's get going because i've got four pages of bullet points yes oh god it's obviously okay it could be a week of sheep content wonderful all right yeah so talking about sheep uh the reason we're talking about sheep uh is a because it's a passion of mine uh and b because

uh someone on the subreddit uh who, I'm just going to get their username quickly I can't say it, thecative catif? Katif? Yeah, one of those. They posted sheep every day until they guessed the breed of sheep that I had in my mind and when they guessed

the breed of sheep I said I would do a sheep episode. That was two months ago. I think they did it while I was away in the desert. It was like day four. They got it quick, too. They got to day... I just searched sheep on the subreddit. One of my friends, they were like,

oh, I looked at the subreddit for your work stuff the other day and it's just a lot of sheep, man. What do you do? It's just a lot of sheep. Yeah. But yeah, they did very well they eventually picked the sheep which was a scotch blackface um famous for being justin trudeau's favorite sheep uh and gotta get him in where you can well done strike a blow against the canadians

i think it's impossible to say that on a podcast And not try I think But yeah hopefully We've sailed through that one So when we're talking about sheep right When you're thinking of getting sheep The first thing I think you have to ask yourself is why And that is a good question

Because obviously they're a lot of work They are like born Ready to die And at every point in in the sheep owning process you are you can't just say that you can't just say that we are all born ready to die we're just here temporarily postponing the inevitable because they're covered in wool and we dye the wall smart incredible i'm adding i'm adding air horns and bombs right there yeah i was going to say down if you could give yourself like a big old symbol but uh that would be great

um okay so yeah so when you're looking at sheep right um it's a lot of work and um but they're also very lovely i enjoy sheep a lot they can be very friendly they of work, but they're also very lovely. I enjoy sheep a lot. They can be very friendly. They're a nice animal. They're not like cattle. Sheep seem more personable to me. They're soft, which is nice. So when you think about getting sheep, you've got to think, do I want these sheep for meat? Do I want these sheep for wool? Or do I want these sheep for milk? do I want these sheep for wool or do I want these sheep for milk? Those are the three main reasons. There are also a thing called park sheep.

When we're talking about parks here, we're not talking about like they live in Central Park. We're talking about like the, it's a big field in front of a rich person's house. I think this is probably a specifically British thing. Yeah, people are looking at me like it's a British thing. Yeah, people are looking at me like it's a British thing. So big stately homes for rich people in rural England will have a big field in front of the home with a long driveway on it. And that driveway is generally planted with big trees leading up

to the house. And it's like, you've watched Downton Abbey. I've seen that on TV. Yeah, I see. We've seen television. Mm-hmm. Like an estate. Yes, a country estate, exactly. So, like, in that country estate,

my dad, both my parents are in agriculture, my dad worked for someone who had a large country estate at one point in my childhood. They would have sheep in that park, but, like, those sheep aren't really there to, like, make money. They're there just to look fancy. So that's where you get some really crazy sheep yeah yeah yeah park sheep so yeah if you if you want to go ahead and look up jacobs jacobs sheep there's some there's some audience participation so if you guys could open up a tab and google a gig a jacobs sheep um that's that's

a classic like it's called jacob jacob yep yep whoa yeah oh my god called Jacob J-A-C-O-B. Yep, yep. Whoa! Yeah. Oh, my God. Hoo, hoo. It's called a polycerate sheep because it has multiple horns. I don't know if the ones you're seeing have four horns, but that's a classic Jacob sheep, and they're piebald, right?

Wow. Multiple colors. I didn't know horns can look like that on a sheep. Oh, yeah. There are quite a few polycerate sheep, Hebridean sheep, sometimes Navajo churro sheep, if you're in the United States can look like that on a sheep. Oh, yeah. There are quite a few polysert sheep, Hebridean sheep. Sometimes Nahuatl sheep, if you're in the United States, are like that too. So, yeah, that's an option for sheep.

You know, just to paint a picture for anybody who's not also actively Googling this right now. Say you're driving in your car going for a walk with your dog and you can't Google something. This is honestly, this is the sheep image that I think was thought of when people think of like a devil sheep or something like that. I was thinking the same thing. Like these have sheep, like two long horns out the top and horns out the sides. I may just be playing a lot of Diablo 4 right now, but I immediately was like, ah, demon sheep. If you check out Hebridean sheep, they look like a very death metal sheep. They're all black.

Fuck yeah. Wait, what's that one? Hebridean. Hebridean. Hebridean. H-E-B-R-I-D-E-A-N. Sheep. Yep. Whoa.

Oh yeah, same thing. Oh, they do look like devil sheep. A real Baphomet looking sheep. Big ass horns. Hell yeah. They're terrifying and cute at the same time. Yeah, that's what you want to strive for in life. That's what I go for every time I get dressed in the morning yeah yeah good um so you're looking at three different types of

sheep right basically your meat breeds so they're going to grow quickly they're going to be bigger which is going to be something you have to take in consideration when you're handling the sheep right and they're going to have more lambs and you got your wool breed so they might be a smaller they may need shearing twice a year though so that's something you're either going to have more lambs and you got your wool breed so they might be a smaller they may need shearing twice a year though so that's something you're either going to have to do or find someone to do and they'll give a more desirable wool right and there are different types of wool for different things so that's something you might want to look into like if you're considering spinning or you know you're getting these sheep primarily so you can go from like a farm to, then you need to look into that.

I don't actually know how you sell wool in the US. In the UK, it was kind of a centralized sale. It's not worth fuck all for the most part, at least unless you've got something like Merino sheep. So don't be getting wool sheep and thinking like, oh, hell yeah, I'm going to make my fortune in the wool market. That ship has sailed uh centuries ago so kind of the classic sheep uh you're looking at for like a lot of the sheep that you're going to see at least in the uk are very often mules so

that's a cross breed of sheep uh it's a blue face or border leicester ram over a hill breed you so hill breed sheeps uh um sheep are sheep are more hardy, right? They're the ones that live out on Yorkshire Dales or up in the Lake District. When you see sheep up there, there's going to be hill breed sheep. One of the advantages of hill breeds is they can often be hefted. Are we familiar with hefting? No.

Never heard of it. Hefting is when a sheep knows where its home is, so it doesn't have to necessarily be fenced in. It will come back there. Oh, okay. So for hefting... Like a pet. Yeah, yeah.

It's an animal that lives out on the hills, but it knows where to come back to. It's not just going to go mincing off to try and explore somewhere new. It will come back. That is not a characteristic of all breeds of sheep like you will talk about fencing definitely most sheep need to be fenced in or they will just get out um some of them are very acrobatic uh but yeah these guys they can be hefted hill breeds some hill breeds can be hefted so um what that means it's passed down the maternal

line so you're going to have to have to retain that maternal line, right? So as you're breeding your sheep, you're going to have to keep the ewe to the ewe lamb. And you're going to have to keep that line because they will teach their lambs where to come back to, basically, right? Can I ask a really dumb question? Please, Shireen. I recognize it's dumb and I can Google it later, but I need to know. Okay. As someone that doesn't eat a lot of meat, okay?

Do we only eat lamb meat? Does anyone eat sheep meat? I've never heard of sheep meat. Yeah, that's called mutton. I've never thought of it. Mutton. What did you say? I have heard of mutton.

That's not sheep. Yeah. Have you heard the phrase mutton dressed as lamb? No. No, I think it's rather sexist. That seems like a British one. Yeah, it's definitely probably a British one, I think it's rather sexist. That seems like a British one. Yeah, it's definitely probably a British one.

I think it's rather sexist. It's used in a condescending way for people who you think are dressing too young for their age, I guess. So you might be familiar with that. I thought it might be a good, but no. I thought I had a way to explain it to you. But no, mutton. Yeah, mutton is the oldest sheep. So there are some breeds that you get for mutton it's not very popular like like americans don't eat as much lamb as british people do

and i think new zealand does eat a lot of it too but um it's not as common here it's relatively common in the uk like if you enter a supermarket you'll see it mutton not so much you have to cook it for longer and such the middle east loves lamb yes they do yeah yeah yeah there's there's parts of china that eat a lot of sheep too interesting yeah yeah um yeah there are lots of it's it's it's a very hardy like you can have sheep in a lot of places where you can't have cattle they're much tougher animals like and they don't need as much grazing right there's just not as much biomass on a sheep uh so like that's why when you go to hillier parts of the uk you're going to see sheep uh and not cattle because that that's the place where sheep can live they don't need as quality of grazing for the most part either um

so uh let me go through a few breeds of sheep and i'm going to go for what what to look for when you're buying a sheep right um so just just some breeds that i've sort of uh gone off the top of my head here um texels uh and you guys can look these up as we go i think that will add add to the entertainment factor for the listeners at home uh so texels um they are big units not as big as some of the other such we're going to talk about they're thick they're they're mostly like a meat sheep, pretty lean meat. Yeah, ugly. They're kind of wide face and kind of the big dominating eyebrows. They kind of look like someone

stuck a sheep pen on a dog. Yes, 100%. Yeah, they're actually nice sheep. We had texels growing up. There is mostly a meat sheep with a bit of wool. Your next one might be a border Leicester, sometimes called a blue Leicester. They're very recognizable, like the blue speckling on their face and then a big Roman nose,

I suppose like a domed nose. Yeah, got a big round one. Yeah, big schnoot on them. So that's a very recognizable sheep. They, again, like a meat and wool sheep with slightly probably more desirable wool than texels. They're also very good mothers. So that's something you're looking at with sheep, right?

Is it going to raise its young? Is it going to stick around and look after them? And borderless is good for that, which is why they're used in those mules that I spoke about. It's one of the reasons that you crossbreed them with a hill sheep to make them more hardy. This one is a clean L-L-E-Y-N. Because you probably wouldn't have got that spelling organically. That's a Welsh word and I'm probably mispronouncing it.

But it's a meat sheep. It's also got desirable wool wool it's also a good mother they are big they're like they're big units uh my mom uh had those and um so when one of the things you're going to have to do when you have your sheep is you're going to have to clip their little feet uh otherwise they grow too long just like just like you have to clip your own fingernails right otherwise you need to do that so and there's a way to do it by sort of grabbing the front leg and sort of dropping your knee a little bit like you're not just suplexing the sheep uh it's a light suplex when you originally talked about hefting i assumed it was something to do with picking the sheep up for some reason

the newer term is rkoing your sheep okay yeah also this lean sheep looks like to me to me the lean sheet is it lean clean clean yeah that double l sound in welsh is uh it comes at you hard it's like interesting yeah clean well either way this sheep to me looks like standard sheep you're like run of the mill sheep when i google sheep this is what i think of yeah that's what once i was sending you some pictures of yesterday sometimes i'll send pictures of sheep to the to the group chat um just for the increase the general sense of well-being that's the only time I like the group chat. Don't tell me. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

Am I? I don't know. It's true. I'll keep it up for you. Just for you, Shireen. I'll keep the sheep content coming. You got the Jacob sheep we've spoken about, right? So that's more of a park sheep.

It's a rare breed. So if you're interested in like a rare breed, it's a good thing to do, right? If you're just a person who's like, yeah, it'd be cool to have some sheep, I have some pasture, maybe you want them on a horse field because horses will mess up the grass on their own. Horses will shit in an area

and that will kind of sour the grass and horses will then not eat that grass. Horses are not really, you know, great. They don't shit where they eat. Sheep, on the other hand yeah the horse knows the sheep doesn't so uh sometimes you have a few sheep in the horses they can be companions as well they can be nice companions you know that's where the phrase um get you know the phrase gets your goat something gets your goat oh yeah oh yeah that's where it comes from keeping a goat with a horse

to keep it company nice oh wait is a sheep a goat no different different animals similar i'm sure there's some kind of genus species thing i don't understand there may be a different species probably somewhere yeah in the same the same tree. Yeah, they're not a million miles apart. So you've got Dorpers. I think that's a cross between a Dorset and a Persian. They're raised for mutton. So if you're looking for your mutton, that's where you get that.

They have multiple lambs a year. So some of these sheep can lamb more than once a year. Herdwick is a good hill breed. They're very hardy um a lot of those are up around my dad where my dad lives um like i said there are some rare breeds um which if you're interested in like having rare breed sheep just to preserve like a type of sheep um because obviously like the the more heritage breeds are not as commercially viable so sometimes they get lost, right?

Because they don't give you a better, a same return on investment. So if you're interested in having sheep just because it's cool and it looks funky, the Rare Breed Survival Trust is a place to look. I used to enjoy going there as a kid and seeing different sheep and learning about- But that's not a good reason to get a sheep.

Well, if you decide you want to have sheep anyway right let's say you're um like i i don't know what a calf dispersion so i was going to say a horsey person uh a person who owns horses um you know like if that is your thing and you enjoy yeah yeah a horse person yeah like a centaur if you're a centaur precisely If you're a centaur, a centaur, precisely. If you are half horse, then you want to have sheep maybe to improve your pasture or to not let the horses sour up all the grass.

That makes sense. Then why not, right? Why not? Because if you get a meat sheep, it's going to be bigger, it's going to be more work. If you get a sheep that produces a lot of wool, you're going to have to shear that a lot. So maybe you just a meat sheep, it's going to be bigger. It's going to be more work. If you get a sheep that produces a lot of wool, you're going to have to shear that a lot.

So maybe you just want a sheep that can kind of cruise and be by itself. Then, you know, why not? Yeah. So we're going to talk very briefly about what to do when you buy a sheep. And then we're going to pivot to some other things that you can buy which are not as rewarding as sheep.

Yeah, which is, that's an ad break that we'll do after that, Daniel. Thanks, buddy. Got it, understood. Sorry, I missed that part afterwards. I was like, wait, no, James, don't move on quite yet. But yes, I understand now. I understand now. Very well done.

Thank you, Daniel. So when you're buying sheep, I think probably what you want to do is buy some ewes that have already been bred or a couple of ewes with twins. They're a flock animal, right? Sheep, they don't want to be on their own. So you don't just go and buy like one sheep and be like, I've got a sheep now. That's not very nice.

They'll be insecure and anxious. So they like to be with other sheep. So I think the way we used to do it when i was a kid was to get orphan lambs and so like uh the the mother either rejects the lamb or or she dies um give giving birth right well uh which can happen um and we used to uh then bottle feed those lambs uh and like you know when they're very little if you go out on the hill do people have argers in america sorry you're looking at no okay uh like it's a type of oven that like it's always on it's a range cooker oh no people have people no okay yeah i can remember like i don't know what

sheep are if they're goats or not you want me to know whatever the fuck you're talking about no it's good it's so much learning it's type of oven that like is in old houses

and also rich people's houses now it's become like a trendy thing but like way back in the day I can remember like putting lambs in the bottom oven which is like warm

but like not cooking warm just like warm warm when they were very little and they uh needed to warm up um so with orphan lambs right you're going to bottle feed them uh you're going to do the stuff that their mother does for them so that's a lot of work um but you know it's a way to get going but they are more fragile when they're young so what i suggest is buying a couple of ewes that have been bred. And then you just want to either, like, if you go locally to somewhere,

then you'll know that this is a type of sheep that can survive and the type of pasture that's near you. This is a type of sheep that can survive in the climate that you have with the food sort of available where you are. So that's probably a good thing. And then you just want to check that the sheep has some weight on it, right? And you want to check its teeth, of course. Like any livestock, you want to be checking their teeth when you're buying them.

And then a thing I've run into... What are you looking for on the teeth? If they're all fucked up, like that sheep is not healthy, right? Like receding gums or like kind of if it's much older, you can normally age an animal by looking at its teeth right like if you find a um if you find a the remains of an animal it's one way to see the age of it so yeah you you go to the auction right and you do want to check the vaccine status as well um i've only really come across this in the united states uh recently some

people were rage posting on the uh the place I go to to buy chickens because I didn't want to buy vaccinated chickens, which is just fucking mind-melter. The animal anti-vaxxers. Oh, wow. Yeah, because Bill Gates wants to know what your chicken is thinking, right? Which is why he microchips it.

Yeah. Absolute pricks. Yeah, if you don't want to buy a vaccine, I don't know. If you're listening to the show, this is not a concern of ours, I don't know if you're listening to the show then this is not a concern of ours I don't think but yeah check the vaccine status

just in case you got some Wahoo trying to sell you some sheep which are more likely to get sick so yeah what if you I can't fucking come up with an ad I don't know

if you want to buy something that's no use to you and won't give you joy instead of sheep here are some adverts welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter nocturnal tales from the shadows presented by iheart andora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors I know you. Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry

and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.

Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so we're back and we're still talking about sheep. We probably will be for quite some time, so we're on page one. So sheep are actually, they're quite clever um sheep can recognize human faces they'll know who you are um they've definitely definitely know that um like especially the sheep that we bottle fed

from when they were babies right they definitely knew who we were um and they can be very friendly yeah it's nice it's nice they'll come up to you and they'll sort of nuzzle you and you can rub them our sheep were polled that's another thing to think about when you're getting a sheep, right? A polled sheep doesn't have horns, whereas some people have horns, some people have more horns. So yeah, they can recognize your faces. They can learn names.

If they have a name, they can learn the name. They also know that they're sheep. So I know my mom would just go out and go like, sheep, and then she'd feed them and they'd come. I know my mum would just go out and go like sheep and then she'd feed them and they'd come you know they got a positive reinforcement mechanism you can train sheep to go on a lead so another reason you might want to get sheep is you're getting into into showing right a nice thing to do if you if you you know a strange like me I suppose is go to like an agricultural show and look at different types of sheep I like to do that um it's it's they can be really expensive now because it's also the county fair and so like people are going in to eat like deep fried stuff um which it doesn't

interest me as much but uh if if you want to go and see yeah yeah we could go together dan i'll get a super perfect we'll like split up and then meet back at the end be like how was your day i'm gonna be like what was bad it was bad hey you won't be saddled with regret if you look at sheep and indigestion so yeah consider yeah but it's nice to go right see the breeds that are popular in your area see different types of sheep and what people will do at least i i've never been to like an actual sort of showing sheep. I'll just go to the, to the San Diego County fair and look at the animals, but I've not been to a show where you walk around with them in the U S but I used to do that when I was a kid.

I think of, you know, go to the village show or whatever and take the sheep and walk it around. And then they'll judge your sheep, right? If it's up to the breed standards or what have you. So yeah, they can go on a lead.

They like more of like a halter, like around the nose. So like more of like a halter like around the nose um so not not like a collar um so that's the thing that that you can do that's that interest you if you want to get into sheep showing if that's the case you're going to want to get like a a pedigree sheep right and really get into it you're going to drop some money uh it it's not really like i we i was never a very serious sheep shower, to be clear. It's just a thing for your child to do when you go up in a rural area. They, like I said, they like to be together in groups. They're pretty docile.

Sheep aren't going to fight you. Definitely, definitely. Like when I was at university and stuff, friends would come home and they'd be very scared of the sheep. There's no reason to be scared of sheep. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone being hurt by a sheep yeah i mean what they're gonna come at you a bit sometimes they're angry or whatever but like it's a sheep like it's fine you know like i would back you shireen if it came to it okay thank you yeah like uh yes and their horns horns are mostly not pointed towards you. I have been gored by a bull, right?

Like I've experienced livestock-related injury. Sheep is definitely on the list of animals I'm pretty sure I could take. Yeah. Pretty sure. This next fact is fascinating to me. Can we get to this fact? Yeah, sure. So definitely, if you're thinking of breeding and getting rams,

about like 8% are going to be gay. It's just a thing that's going to happen, right? Gay sheep, gay sheep. Yeah, you wait till we get to the next one. It's just a thing, right? You're going to get a sheep that's gay. It's a natural part of the diversity of any species. I kind of definitely know people who've spent a lot of money on pedigree rams and they've turned out to be gay.

It's what it is, right? I love that. It gets me about this weird, stupid American, it's not just an American thing, but this like, oh, it's not natural or whatever. Like, I don't know. Anyone who's worked with livestock in their life for a number of years will tell you that they've come across a gay sheep or cow or what have you. You're also going to get

sometimes some sheep are called Fremartins. It's a transmasc sheep for the most part. It actually has some biological differences. How? What it is is it's a female that's been accompanied

so like they're twins or triplets or quads sometimes, that has been accompanied by a male fetus in utero. So they behave in a masculine way and they might lack functioning ovaries. Yeah, you're going to get those too, right? So they're going to be a bit more aggro, like a ram, a bunion stuff. But it's just a thing. It's part of natural diversity in species. You're going to be a bit more aggro, like a ram, a bunion staff. But it's just a thing. It's part of natural diversity in species. You're going to see it.

You know, you might have a gay sheep. Lucky you, right? You know, cherish it. Take it. You know, be nice to it. So white fleeces, right? Generally, we think of sheep, but Dana was saying, you're going to think of a white fleece.

While sheep are often brown, right? Being white, it's not a great camouflage trait so when we see a uh when we see a white sheep that's because it's generally been selected right so when you looked at the jacob sheep they were piebald right they had bits of brown on them on the white fleece being white however appears to be a dominant trait so it's very quickly um and then if you're looking at the wool of a sheep you want to consider if you want fine medium or coarse wool long wool sheep right if you're looking at the wool of a sheep, you want to consider if you want fine, medium, or coarse wool. Long wool sheep, right? If you look up sheep with long wool,

there's some amazing breeds out there. Those are mostly for breeding to get more desirable wool characteristics. Like long wool sheep, it's going to be quite hard to look after that sheep, right? Stop its wool getting matted and stuff. So now we're going to get to fencing. It's an important topic. So you want your fencing to be about chest high obviously that depends on your height

like if you're a smaller person a bit higher whatever uh but like we would generally use post and rail fencing and you don't see that as much in in the u.s but uh the name's pretty self-explanatory right bang in a post rail post, rail across the middle, bang in a post, rail across the middle. And then you're going to want some netting. You don't have to use, like with chickens, we talked about using construction netting, right? Like very thin wire, just so that things like snakes and rats don't get in.

With sheep, you don't need that. You can go with a wider mesh, maybe four or five inches across. And that's going to be cheaper for you as you're building the fence. You can also use electric fences and you can use those to rotate the pasture, which is a good idea. So the sheep kind of graze one area, then you move them across to another area. That area recovers. You move the sheep to the next area. They graze that area while the other areas recover. Okay. You learned about this in school, surely, right?

Yeah. Yeah, surely. I'm curious, how does the electric fencing do that? Are you constantly moving it? And is that just like when the sheep touch it, they're like, oh, not that way, and go back? Like, what is electric fencing? Okay, well, they're not thick. They'll touch it once, and then they won't go, maybe twice. Oh, yeah, no, precisely.

But so how is it doing that? So the electric fences are like plastic posts that you stick in the ground, and then it has a metal spike on the end. And it's got this it's about that wide about an inch wide it's a it's a ribbon with little metal bits in it and you the post has a way of securing that ribbon to it so you can move that fencing around okay cool so so the reason i mean it being electrified is kind of like secondary it's mostly that it's a movable fence post. That's why you're using it for the grazing purposes.

Yeah, it doesn't have the same structure as a normal fence. So it has gaps which a sheep probably could slip through if it was just wired. Because it's electric, it's not going to try and nuzzle its way through because it's going to get shot. So if you're using electric fence, just like the classic way to tell if it's on,

is you pick up a piece of grass and then you just touch the fence with the grass um because because the grass is a poor conductor you're going to feel a little bit of a shock are you trolling right now no no no for real this is what you do uh like uh yeah no you touch it with a piece of grass and that's gonna you're gonna get like a slight like tingle but you're not going to get a full whack. Growing up, we had electric fences all over the place. I've run into them when I was a kid and taken a whack. The posts have a big spike on the end, so that's very fun to throw at your friends if you cause lasting injury.

But yeah, electric fencing is handy. You just hook it up to a car battery, basically. Perfect. Yeah, no, it's a good way to segment your field. If you have one field, you know, if you're not rotating the sheep. Did you really not learn about field rotation? Sorry, I'm constantly amazed by the things that I did in school that Americans don't do in school. Not at all.

Agriculture in any capacity. Yeah, there was no agriculture training. I mean, at least in my school. The only farm I saw was on like the tub of butter yeah like that's literally what the mic so i drove past farms i think i think i grew up closer than you two did was i had a corn for my backyard and they were okay i we didn't have agriculture education at like my school but like there were schools that like i went to to do like play chess discoloration i was i was a nerd nerd. Hell yeah. But there were lots of schools

that did stuff like that because they were in more rural parts of Illinois. So that is a thing here. I think it's just we didn't grow up in the agricultural relations. I think I learned it

in the context of the enclosure of the commons and the four-field rotation and using legumes to fix nitrogen in the soil. What? Again, blank. You learned all of that?

Blank faces, yeah. I think I learned that in college. Okay, well, yeah. Different strokes for different folks. You know, at me on twitter.com if you learned about legumes in school. To be clear,

would have preferred to learn about that. Just to be clear. Like algebra two, forget it. I would much rather learn about legumes. When have you used algebra? Not Don. Someone else is using it, but you know, think of what you could be doing with nitrogen right now

if you were growing some peas. What if? Incredible things, yeah. peas yeah what if incredible things yeah um so with your sheep depending on the breed you're going to need shelter right so that shelter could be something like a copse uh a little copse of trees um that's a small it's big smaller than a wood uh it's a copse uh so you're going to need a decent amount of trees for them to shelter some will need more shelter than others right depending on how hardy they are um some of them will want to lamb inside um and some of them are able to lamb outside uh but they they all will need some shelter in foul weather right um you'll see that they're very good at like knowing where to shelter but

you've got to you can't just leave them out like when i'm in agricultural states in america where these giant prairies you know that you don't have hedgerows in the same way that we did where i grew up um then you if you are there and you're trying to have some sheep you're going to need to build a little shelter for them um is it a question about the shelter yeah yeah is it what's what's the shape of the shelter is it kind of like is it like a house is it more like barn like it's depending on the breed no not like barn you have a barn to bring them in like so we used to lamb inside right and then you just use pallets to divide it up and the pallets you put each of you in there with her lands um okay and we'll get on to that all cops are barns joke is not gonna happen okay sorry daniel no that's okay i've let you down again that's okay

it's not on you but yeah you'll see all kinds of things you'll see thanks you'll see it like people just put little stone shelters um you know if you have a if you have a prevailing wind that's like rips through and it's cold wind then you know you might want to build something just to shelter them from that prevailing wind. But if it's like a big, undifferentiated prairie, and especially lambs, right? They're more fragile because they're younger. And sometimes you'll see the lambs wearing the little coats,

little jackets that they can wear. Love that. Yeah. You can Google that. Just Google lambs, orange jacket. You can get these little plastic jackets for them. But you do need to be cautious with lambs when they're young. Sometimes, like I say, you'll have them inside.

The thing with sheep regarding feeding is that they are ruminants. Do we know what ruminant animals are? No. No. Massively failed by your educations. A ruminant, it's absolutely massively failed by your educations and it's a Ruminant it chooses a cud and so when it eats a food right it goes to the rumen and then It holds the food the foods regurgitated Cow has like multiple stomachs. Yes. Yeah. Yeah

In like the first stomach. Yeah, so rumen's a big stomach right and it's in there that uh it's like a storage space really uh so the food goes in there chills for a bit and then it's regurgitated chewed back up and then re-swallowed and that is the cud that's that process is called chewing the cud yeah chewing the cud now is the right so so is that entire process chewing the cud. Chewing the cud. Right. So is that entire process chewing the cud, like it going into the ruminant and then being regurgitated, or is it strictly just the chewing that happens before they eat it again? It's a chewing that happens when they eat it again, right? So the first eating, it's just eating.

The second eating, Shireen's having a physical reaction. That's freaking gnarly. It is g a physical reaction it's freaking gnarly it is gnarly it's extremely gnarly that's how they get the most out of like this relatively lean pasture right it's a very clever adaption um yeah so yeah that's how uh that's how sheep eat so that means that they need to have access to pasture um they also need lots of water. So again, if you're in a desert place, I should ask Navajo folks. I know Navajo folks. I should ask them how they do with their churro sheep because it's not a densely watered place there. But generally, they need access to water. I'm sure they have places where they have good access to water. And then, like I said, you do want to rotate them around, right? You can feed them. You can supplement with hay or haylage or silage, stuff like that.

But you shouldn't rely... You can't keep your sheep in a place where there's no pasture, really. You don't want to be feeding them all year. They need varied pasture, right, with different things, you know, clovers and grasses. There's stuff that's poisonous for them, so there are different weeds that are poisonous for them. You're just going to want to...

It depends where you live, right? If you're listening to this in the UK, it's different to North America, probably different to South America. So you'll want to check that out. Again, when you're buying a sheep, you can ask these kind of questions and go ahead and pull those out. So you can feed them grain, but you really only want to do that sort of during or just before lambing. It can lead to overfeeding. It's too rich for them, right? Like they're designed with this ruminant system to, you know, have these green leafy things.

People can use bagged feeds too. You know, again, you don't want to rely on those the whole time. They're expensive. Don't use cow food. Like bagged cattle food is not going to work for sheep. And they need like a mineral lick too um so you like i'm sure you're all familiar with salt licks uh yeah that's yeah that's it's a similar thing right oh yeah they'll just come up and lick that they know when they need the salt or the minerals so they just they they know so they'll just come come and lick it um so you just put that out in the field.

It's pretty chill. So a big problem we had was like, we had some sheep in the field next to our house. They were our sheep. They were someone else's sheep, but like forever getting into the garden, mainly because I'm terrible at closing gates and doors. And so they would get into the garden.

You do want to be careful. They will go ham. Like it is the time of their lives when they get in your garden you do want to be careful they will go ham like it is the time of their lives when they get in your garden and they can eat all your plants but um you do want to watch out for things like rhododendron which can be dangerous to them and they can be poisonous so if you've got stuff in your garden either don't have stuff that's poisonous to sheep or or be aware um you know if they're getting in there head to the rhododendron some head them off at the pass um shireen would you like to insert your well just as you're just the shepherd and we are the herd following you and so to everyone that wants to be a sheep listen to these ads.

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We're back, my sheeple. We're back. Unparalleled. Yeah. We need to download more podcasts. this kind of energy is magical um so yeah shearing right shearing sheep a very important part of having sheep um so this can be hard to master if you're trying to get the wool off in like a full fleece which is ideally how you want to do it right you don't you're not just like it's not like when you go to the barbers you know and they just go at you and there's hair on the floor you're looking to take it off as a complete fleece and there's a technique to that

um it's it's you're just not gonna fucking get it straight away like you're gonna have to learn or you're gonna have to pay someone to do it i don't really know how that works in america again because like there's not such a density of sheep so maybe there's not someone who does it and lots of this stuff like getting your ewes ultrasounded when they're pregnant. Not sure how you go about that in an affordable manner in the United States. If you have a large animal vet, you can ask them, but you do want to do that, right? To check how many lambs you've got and stuff. Of course. I guess you're just going to have to learn or give it a try. As long as you're not hurting the sheep, if you're taking it off in clumps, I suppose it's not that bad.

Just, you know, you don't want to be nipping and hurting the sheep itself when you're shearing, right? And that's just like if you're a person who shaves or, you know, cuts her own hair or what have you, and it's not pleasant if you nick the skin. Yeah. Do sheep need to get rid of the hair? Yes.

But then how, if we didn't exist, how would they do that? Well, we wouldn't have bred them selectively To have such dense and long fleeces if we didn't exist So there are hair sheep Which have hair instead of wool And those sheep don't need to be shorn But because for centuries we've bred them to be woolier, because we like the wool, then now we've made our bed

and we have to lie in it, right? The sheep depend on us and we depend on the sheep. It's like the yin and yang of sheep husbandry. The yin and yang that we created without their permission. Yeah, the sheep have not leaned into this.

The yin and yang that has been forced upon them. Yeah, maybe it's not a uh not a uh consensual relationship um right so yeah what will happen shireen if you don't share them and some some you'll need to do twice a year some once a year some you weren't at all if the hair sheep right but um they'll get like matted wool so like the the like the poo and other things will like kind of, just if you don't wash your hair for a long time, you know, it gets kind of knotted and matted. Got it. Got it.

Yeah. Yeah. And also they can get overheated. Say no more. Say no more. I understand. You want me to go further? No.

Yeah. That makes sense though. That makes sense. Yeah. I don't know how you sell wool in the USA. You know know just get on etsy and do something with it if you want to sell that i suppose um you know learn to learn to spin you get a spinning wheel you learn to card card the wool and then spin it and then uh knit

it and then sell it i suppose or keep things for yourself it'd be fun you know if you have free time what is carding yeah It's when you're like, like taking the wool and like, like combing it. Uh-huh. Like pulling it. Uh-huh. I'm not super familiar

with stuff. I remember, again, see, it's just a different world, isn't it? See, we would go to like

the Black Country Museum when I was a kid in school. Uh-huh. Not a racial thing. It's just a bit, it's a part of um it's part of britain where uh there was a lot of industry and one of the things they would do was like oh this is how people used to do wool um you know like the spinning uh jenny and like before that like in cottage industry when people would make it at home okay or like when you go to the rabbit survival

trust i bet i bet they'll let you do some spinning or carding when you're going there i got a quick explanation for you got a quick explanation for you so uh if for those folks at home who have uh hairy animals you know those kind of like brushes that have fine little metal bristles on them and you're brushing you just take off like a huge clump of hair. Now imagine that you take a, imagine you take a fresh piece of wool straight off of the sheep and you put it on there and then you just kind of tease it out to form it into what looks more like, like raw wool that you're used to,

as opposed to looking like it was just taken off a sheep. You're turning into the raw wool that will then be spun. I'm looking at it right just taken off a sheep, you're turning into the raw wool that will then be spun. I'm looking at it right now, and it looks absolutely exhausting. Yes, fun. Sorry, yes, fun. Yeah, fun. Good thing to do.

Once Twitter inevitably collapses, we can return with a V to tradition and do this sort of stuff instead. There you go. Yeah. I'm sure Elon Musk masking on the alpha videos male return to tradition people already do it um it's nice for your hands it's very nice for your hands just generally handling because they have lanolin right lanolin this kind of natural i think it's like a soap thing like it makes lathering but it's very good

for softening your skin so you'll see you'll notice it's nice for your hands when you're handling the sheep right um you'll notice that's nice hand feeling um it's not expensive like hand cream uh you're gonna have to make sure that you trim your sheep's hooves so depending on your size and the sheep size and your sort of skill um handling sheep uh you might want to get a sheep flipper. We got one for my mum a couple of years ago. It's just a device that helps you turn the sheep so that you can clip its hooves

instead of just getting in there with the knee. There's a way to do it. And a lot of this stuff you can learn on YouTube. Like I checked before this, and there's definitely videos on how to turn them over and clip the hooves. So yeah, you can give it a try that doesn't work you can get a sheep flipper um you you sort of yeah you sort of drop your knee into it and turn it over um i'm so happy that there is an advice that exists called the sheep flipper i think this has made my day measurably better oh yeah yeah yeah i'll send you some videos um

some good videos of me uh trying to turn my mom's sheep like so we can clip their hooves and it was like wet and slippery and me just fetching myself on my ass instead and sheep just like making a bid for freedom um so yeah you watch a couple of videos you can work it out and if that doesn't work for you you can get a sheep flipper you can work it out and if that doesn't work for you you can get a sheep flipper you're gonna have to do things like dipping and deworming your sheep too right so you're um the wormer you just put in their mouth it's like a little it goes in the mouth and you squeeze um it looks a bit like a gun i suppose or like a it's like a little tiny pipe like maybe a quarter of an inch size your pinky, and it goes in and you press the thing

and it dispenses a dose. It kind of just gets it behind their tongue so they don't spit it out. Dispenses a bit of wormer. Gun was the perfect word to use for my Americanized brain. I'm totally with you on that. Yeah, I thought, yeah, yeah. I was thinking gun, hot dog, bald eagle,

what reference would you understand? Right. So you're going to also have to dip your sheep to prevent things like scab. And so that's literally when the sheep are dipped in this stuff that sort of cleans them, right? So there are mobile sheep dips, or you can just go to a sheep dip,

take a sheep to a sheep dip and do it there. Again, I've never seen one in the US. I'm sure there are some um but i'm not sure how you do this i think you can also spray them for this um and you'll want to check obviously what kind of dips are legal legal um and you don't want to be dipping them with cuts so like if you have just been through your shearing and you've cut them up that's not a good time to do it and you don't want to dip thirsty sheep either uh for obvious reasons right because what they're going into is not something you want to be drinking um so predation predation's an interesting topic uh

sheep are not really great at defending themselves and they just kind of big floofs they can sort of butt a little bit with their heads and then they do do that um and they'll defend their their their little lambs and when we were little and we had dogs if the dog when it was a puppy would chase sheep you could put the dog in a little pen with a you and her lambs and the you would be like okay get away get away get away leave my lambs alone and that then the dog would would be less likely to chase sheep again because it's had this, probably not great to give the dog a traumatic experience and the ewe, I suppose.

But they'll defend their lambs like that. But when you've got, especially if you're in North America, right, you've got like mountain lions, you've got coyotes, you've got bobcats, all kinds of bigger stuff than I'm used to. So a couple of options there. You've got guardian animals, right? So something like a llama, a donkey, or like a livestock guardian dog.

Mia's enjoying the idea of a guardian donkey. But a couple of different benefits to each one. Llama can be pretty mean. I'm sure you guys have seen them like i've been spat on by a few llama and they'll spit right and they'll kick yeah then they're bitey and it's just really sort of obnoxious um creatures but uh that yeah that they don't mess about so those are decent uh you know it looks like one of the sheep has just wildly deformed if it's

running around with the sheep um you can get donkey donkeys also quite defensive and very loud so you know if your sheep are in in a field near your house and you have a donkey it's going to kick off at night something happens making its characteristic donkey noises and that will give you a chance to uh to uh respond and then you've got your livestock uh guardian breeds right like pyrenees um this is a great example um people will probably have seen my pictures of the stacious unicorn ranch they have uh pyrenees dogs um very helpful actually when you're being attacked by bigots uh because the dogs dogs will bark um but guardian dogs are like inherently they want to guide your sheep.

So they'll just go out there and they'll move among the flock and they'll bark and run off any attackers. And they're very, it's entirely in their breeding to do it. It's very funny actually because chuds have this like, I'm a sheep dog thing,

when they walk around with like five knives and two guns and a pepper spray. And then they always have a picture of border collie border that is not what a border collie dogs a border collie is like a dog with extreme anxiety that is obsessed with collective security and uh will just like border collies naturally heard things right so i'm sure like you've seen uh people seen like one and His Dog, the TV program? Nope. Again. It used to be on on Sunday nights when I was little.

It's a competition, a sheep herding with dogs competition. That rules. Yeah. Perhaps one of the more, I've met American people who do this competitively, but I think it's more of a hobby than a way of life. But yeah, so you can Google one man and his dog and watch different competitions. Obviously, it's not gendered,

and it can be a person and their dog. But yeah, that's what Border Collies do, right? They herd the sheep. And when they're little, you can start them out with herding chickens or ducks in your, like if you have a farmyard, they'll go out there and herd ducks just by themselves. They want to do it.

They're just in their breeding. But a guardian dog does not do that. It just protects. But I think this is one of the things that we spoke about with chickens, right? Like if you want to have sheep you're probably going to have to either like well if you're not willing to defend them from predators you probably shouldn't have them because it's a bit mean to just put them out there as like

coyote bait um a lion bait or whatever uh like you might have to shoot something that looks like a dog if you don't want your sheep to die and like it's just how it's going to go down you know like uh it's uh like not everyone has to have livestock i'm not a person who eats animals so like it's i mean i think similar to chickens most people shouldn't have chickens or sheep you know what i mean the vast majority of in my opinion, are better off not doing that just because I don't think people realize the responsibility, even with all this information. I think some people get too... They jump the gun, for lack of a better fucking term.

You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. Don't be rushing into getting livestock. It's very... I've seen people do that before. I've seen people do the whole like um you know i'll quit my job as a banker and come and live on a farm thing and like i don't know just don't go go work on someone's farm right if you want to do that you learn uh if you didn't grow up in this like there are a million things that i'm not

telling you and i'm forgetting to tell you that i take for granted uh And like, it just, it takes time and it's complicated. And sometimes it's very sad, right? Like I said, sheep get sick and they die and that's sad. And they get predated and that's very sad. Lambs get predated. It's really sad. So like, I don't know, it's not for everyone. It's certainly, having a flock of sheep is quite a big thing.

And you can't, you know, you can't just be like, oh i'm off to um well you need to land too right i don't think a lot of people have the land even necessary for that so i don't know yeah anyway a few acres i'm so passionate about this that i actually have to go now um okay i'm kidding believe it I have to record something else with this voice so until next time keep on podcasting bye Shireen talk soon

bye we're going to briefly cover lambing and then we can be done so like I said you can pick up orphan lambs good way to add to your flock briefly cover lambing and then we're, uh, we can be done. Uh, so, uh, like I said, you can, you can pick up orphan lambs.

It's a good way to add to your flock. Um, the thing with, uh, little baby lambs is when, when a firstborn, right. If the mother is either won't feed them,

sometimes she won't feed them, uh, or she dies. Um, they're going to need what's called colostrum. Um, familiar with colostrum. You familiar with colostrum? That name sounds more familiar. I feel like I've read that.

Briefly, it was like an athletic performance supplement tread, but it's the milk that comes in the first 24 hours. It's extra rich. Oh. Yeah, from whatever animal, right any mammal i would imagine um milk produced by the mammary glands of humans and other mammals immediately following delivery of the newborn yeah yeah that's a better summary than i made thank you daniel thank you wikipedia yeah always um so they're gonna need about 500 mils on the first day I think that's about a pint it's you want it to be warm so you can buy frozen colostrum you can buy powdered

colostrum but you don't want to microwave it the colostrum has some antibodies in it which help the little sheep's like stomach I suppose get ready for the world so that's why you don't want to microwave it um so generally they're pretty easy to bottle feed like if you stick your finger in the lamb will just like start sucking on that and it's a good sign that it's you know it's ready to bottle feed it's easy to bottle feed uh so like you can sometimes do that it's kind of a way to lure them in and then start bottle feeding them sometimes you have to sort of rub them a bit to get them to feed um and then uh they they like to have their milk powder if you're doing powdered milk right with these orphan lambs about every four hours um you're just going to

gradually increase the amount you feed them uh and you know they'll need things like a heat lamp right uh to keep them warm because they don't have that big heat sink of their mom embedding in water and um you know a bit later you can it's a bit easier right you can get a bucket with teats so you just you're literally screwing the teats that go on a milk bottle onto the onto the bucket instead so they can drink out of that um but um it's a lot of work getting off the lamps they go they'll want to eat about every four hours it doesn't matter if you're sleeping they still want to eat so like i can remember doing that a lot when it's a lot of work getting orphan lambs. They'll want to eat about every four hours. It doesn't matter if you're sleeping. They still want to eat. So I can remember doing that a lot when I was little.

You can get, once the lamb gets a bit older, you're going to want to do things like, you might want to castrate it, depending. You might want to dock its tail, depending. You might want to vaccinate it, or you do want to vaccinate it. But also, they need time to be social with other sheep. So you can't just get one orphan lamb and raise it like some kind of sheep person. They need to play with

other sheep. They need time to run around. They can be quite fun. They'll follow you around often, the little orphan sheep. You can sort of run around and they'll follow you around. So that's kind of fun. And then you do eventually, especially if you're raising a lot of orphan lambs, you're going to have ram lambs, right? And so you're either going to have to castrate those or sell them because you're going to create an issue of inbreeding within your flock otherwise. If you just keep all the lambs, right? And so that's the thing to think about. If you're going to have sheep, at some point you're either going to need to buy more or

breed them. And if you're going to breed them, what are you going to do with the ram lambs? So you can castrate them. They become weathers. And that's generally where meat comes from that people eat. You don't want to participate in that. You're just going to pass it on to someone else, right? Unfortunately, this is commercial agriculture.

Even if you don't eat meat, it's about killing animals, which is why I don't like to do that. Yeah, so with lambs, when you've got pregnant ewes, you'll want to scan them, see how many lambs there are. That helps you make feeding decisions for the pregnant ewe. That's sort of when you can look at how many lambs are coming, how much does she need to eat. And then once you've done this,

you want to get your barn ready for lambing just put we used to use pallets you know pallets things come on when you buy like a lot of sheep food for instance you know it comes on a pallet the forklift can get under you can just use those to separate out little stalls and to lamb in put some straw in there um and then when they lamb uh just because, they've been bred selectively for so long, they can sometimes struggle to deliver. If you're of the means to do so, having a vet, of course, is lovely, right? Like a large animal vet. But generally, people who are farming commercially don't have the resources to do that.

It just doesn't fit with the cost of doing that. So you mostly do it yourself. i've done it a lot you um you'll want to get yourself a full arm glove like a full plastic glove uh i guess like a sleeve glove and then you can you can do a lot in terms of like turning the lamb around if it's coming out the wrong way or helping the delivery um i'll leave you to google that uh on your own time um but you just need to google that one no it time. I think I'm not going to Google that one. No, I think, yeah. It's a miracle of life, Daniel. Then you just... Beautiful in its own ways.

Beautiful in its own ways. Yeah, it's really sweet when you get the lamb out and you're like, oh yeah, I turned it around and it pops up and it does a little shake and it stands on its little feet. It's very sweet. It's kind of amazing compared to human babies human babies come out and like i've seen a few human babies and they're just like not particularly

useful or capable in in their early life but lambs come out and they like they get up and they can run around and they can suckle and like you know within 24 hours they're like a functional tiny sheep and so that's kind of nice so you do want to when they're born you just sort of get into their little nose and mouth area and just clear that from anything that might be blocking it just so they can breathe you can use a bit of straw to get into their little nostrils

just to sort of get any mucus or whatever out and then you cut the umbilical cord obviously and disinfect that just with some iodine I think you can see actually though I sent you one picture of a lamb And then you cut the umbilical cord up and disinfect that just with some iodine. I think you can see, actually, though I sent you one picture of a lamb last night where you can see where it's been disinfected and its umbilical cord. Sometimes you just want to strip a couple of, like, you just want to check that you can give milk.

Sometimes the teats can get plugged up when they're pregnant. You just give it a little squeeze. Yeah, so then within a week, I want to do things like docking tails and castrating. Some breeds can lamb outside, but some can't. So again, this is all stuff to consider when you're trying to buy your sheep, right? The last thing I've got about lambing is

sometimes the ewes will reject the lamb. You can either try and hold the ewe in place so the lamb can suckle or if she's really hurting them, then you take them away and then you have to look after them yourself. And then they become your little friends and you can give them names.

Yeah, it's very sweet. Fine. Like I said, unfortunately- A little sad but then also sweet. Yeah, yeah, right? This is a thing with commercial agriculture, right? Like, it's the nature of the... Like, if you have cattle,

what are you going to do with any male offspring of any species, right? Even if you just had the sheep and you want to have them for milk, cool. But they're not going to continue lactating for their whole life. So they're going to have to have lambs. And if they're going to have to have lambs, you're going to have to decide what you want to do with the ram lambs and so it's a difficult thing it's not for everyone but yeah sheep wonderful creatures very friendly uh you know if you're walking past you could you could see if someone's trained them to to come to the

word sheep just by shouting sheep at them uh and if not you know passers-by will think you've correctly identified the species so big dub for you either way uh yeah the sheep is a wonderful animal uh they're very friendly of all the farm animals i think they're my favorite and just growing up around them if you're small like you know only do it if you're a very little human probably not old enough to listen to some of the content we broadcast. If you're aged one of being like single digits, but you can ride them. You can sort of sit on them, fall on their shoulders and ride them around.

Wow, really? It's not a controlled experience. Like it's just going to run because it doesn't want you on its back. And it might not be very nice for the sheep thinking about it. But yeah, there are many, many wonderful things you can do with sheep. They're very rewarding to have, I will say. But yeah, it's sad. It's also a difficult thing.

So yeah, it's something to consider. If you do milk them, they make good cheese. I think that is the primary reason that people dairy sheep is for cheese. I don't think many people are drinking sheep milk. You know, please don't let me know if you are. It's fine. I'm happy for you. There's no need to share.

No. Yeah, sheep. Every wool pair of socks, every wool jumper that you have, every sheep's cheese that you eat comes from these wonderful animals that now you know a little more about. And you eat comes from these wonderful animals that now you know a little more about and you can get sheep soap too that's my last plug for this uh sheep soap looks like a sheep uh but in the middle of it it's so cute yeah it's very good for washing your hands and maybe one day we will have cool zone media sheep soap for you to buy

yeah i saw pictures of it and it was uh that's a pass for me, but you know what? There's a lot of people out there who love merch, so more power. More power to them. Yeah. Disappointing, Daniel. Anti-sheep action. Yeah, post pictures of your sheep

and tag me on various social media. Some people already do, but yeah, that's about all I got on sheep. Any sheep questions before we go? I mean, you know, I will say each new sheep fact brought up another sheep question, but I think you did a great job of explaining owning sheep, taking care of sheep, rearing sheep, lambing. I mean, I've come away with a whole bale

full of knowledge about sheepies. Mia, what about you? Yeah, I've learned there's the sheep flippers. I can't get over you turn the sheep sideways. Yeah, RKOing your sheep to shoot them is great. Yeah, we can do one where you teach me what an RKO is, Daniel. I will teach you by showing you as opposed to performing it but yes I will definitely teach you

that's our next live show but yeah enjoy the stuff that you now know about sheep everyone it could happen here find us on the internet at coolzone media or it could happen here pod right i never do this happen here pod but i know it needs to happen happened here pod that's what it is thank you yeah yeah put it put it into the search engine of your choice it'll come up uh do you guys want

to plug anything before we leave me you go first go first. Oh, I got nothing. Elon Musk got me, so I don't have social media anymore. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. I guess if you're in the U.S., check out Navajo Churro Sheep. They're a very cool Navajo Churro Sheep Association. It's good to support indigenous folks.

The rest of us will be sheep farming on stolen land. Facts. It's all stolen. Everything we're doing is all stolen land. Facts. It's all stolen. Everything we're doing is all stolen land. You can check me out on Twitch. I'm twitch.tv slash DJ underscore Daniel. That's it. Magic.

Thank you, Daniel. Cool. All right. Let's end it. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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