The Silly Season

We have had a very busy few days here, carrying out routine tasks and doing extra jobs caused by the bizarre behaviour of some of the animals! A few months ago a friend of mine who also keeps animals said to me "wait until the silly season starts",now I know what she was talking about.

So what is it that is causing this 'silly season'? Hormones of course.  In the last few months Bandit our uncastrated male goat has gone from a reasonably sweet tempered (for a male goat) animal to causing havoc and annoyance wherever and whenever possible. This bad behaviour is aimed at the animals and us. For the last few months Bandit has insisted on showing the girls who is boss, by making a strange gutteral noise at them, pushing them along with his nose or head and kicking them with one front leg. I have been trying to get a video of the kicking because it is quite funny, he doesn't hurt the others, he just seems to be bossing them about. I think we might have to get Bandit a football to kick, perhaps we could teach all the goats and sheep to kick a ball and set up a match between the two sets of animals.

Bandit has also insisted over the last few weeks in interfering in everything I am trying to do, if he could talk I am sure he would be saying "no,you don't want to be doing it like that", sometimes this behaviour is funny, for example I was moving the sheep fence and every time I pushed one of the uprights into the ground he would come along behind me and pull it back out, this was very annoying for me, but would have made a great video for one of those funny shows on tv.

Unfortunately Bandit has also decided to interfere when I am trying to give Maisie her injections, it is difficult enough to give a goat an injection on your own without having another goat sticking his head in the way, trying to get the bottle of antibiotics or worse still  the needle because he thinks it is something nice to eat.  The other  day I turned around to find he had taken my rucksack and was pulling all the contents out and trying to eat it.

As for the sheep, their recent behaviour has been even more bizarre because they are usually so placid and well behaved.  Last week they escaped from their fenced area about three times so I thought they needed to be moved to new pasture. I moved them and within hours they had escaped again, admittedly the fence wasn't electrified but we haven't needed to use electric for months because they have been so good. I rounded  them up and put them back in. A few hours later I rounded them up again, this time I noticed that two of the rams were pushing into each other quite a lot.  The next morning Steve and I went down to find Col our largest and oldest ram completely tangled up in the fence, very strange as he is a very wise sheep, he is very good at getting the other horned ram to pull down the fence getting tangled in it in the process, then Col just steps over it. We untangled him fixed the fence and went off to do other jobs.  At this point I decided that we ought to connect the electric fence equipment, although I knew we wouldn't get time that day. When we went back in the evening the sheep were gone again, we found them up on a ridge (some of our land is terraced because it is so steep), as we went to retrieve them, we could see Col and Mint running along the top of the ridge smacking into each other with the other three sheep standing watching, in my imagination the three viewing this scene were shouting "fight, fight", like kids at school do. This amusing thought didn't last very long because just at that moment Col rammed Mint off the top of the ledge and he fell 2 metres, luckily his fall was broken by the huge bramble bushes that grow in this area. Immediately after doing this Col decided to attempt suicide by throwing himself off the ledge, he also fell into the brambles. By this point it was dusk, but we knew we had to get the two rams out of the brambles and check they hadn't injured themselves seriously.  If sheep get stuck they stop moving around and can die quite quickly, particularly at night and in the cold. I moved the spectators  back to their enclosure then went back to the top of the ridge to direct Steve to the area I had seen them go over, Steve hacked his way through the brambles, these are no ordinary brambles, they are thickets that have been growing unchecked for many years, they are taller than us.  By this point it was semi darkness and I was struggling to see anything, both sheep weren't moving, but eventually we heard a slight movement and Steve located Mint, cut him out and amazingly there was no damage.  Another twenty minutes later we managed to locate Col and cut him out.  What had caused these normally placid sheep that usually get on so well together to behave in such a mad way....Baabara was on heat and they were fighting for the lovely ladies affections. I am hoping when they got back to their enclosure she told them how stupid they both were, I am guessing she did (or they frightened themselves when they fell) as the next day all was calm in the sheep pen. We did put the electric fence back on though just in case. I now know why shepherds only have one ram in each flock. I now have to decide which is ram to spare from going to the abattoir. Personality wise I would choose Mint, he is much friendlier and easy to manage. Col is a much bigger and stronger ram so it makes sense to keep him if we want strong lambs, I am just not sure I want my lambs to have his miserable untrusting temperament.

So hormones, in particular testosterone seems to be causing us an awful lot of extra work at the moment. Anyone know how long the silly season lasts?