[Jacob-list] crow for dinner

[Penelope]

Sometime around 04:55 PM 6/20/2004 -0400, Linda typed:
>Why did he ram me?  Maybe because for all his mellow personality, he is 
>still a ram - guess that's why they call them
>rams!  He was raised being handfed from the time he was a lamb (not by 
>me).  Perhaps, he didn't care for metal snaps
>and wanted an apple. Maybe he's carried over his teaching Joe manners to 
>me.  He is a very nonaggressive animal and the
>mellowest ram I've ever seen, but something clicked in his mind.  If he 
>had wanted to back up and charge, or if he had
>wanted to charge a second time, he could have hurt me.  As it is, he just 
>barely hit a knuckle on my left hand and it
>was swollen and sore this morning and I couldn't move until just a few 
>hours ago.


I raise goats that are of equal or greater size to the Jacob sheep.  Our 
breeding buck and the rams are buddies, but the buck out masses and out 
muscles the ram without even trying.  Many of the does are very 
tame.  However, if they feel like it, for whatever reason, they will butt a 
person.  I think it's an attempt at changing their place in the butting 
order.  Just checking to see if they can move up into your spot.  It 
doesn't stop me from going in with them, or for letting my child in with 
them.  But it does remind me that I need to be ready to  hold my place on 
the butting order if the need appears.

My spouse, reading over my shoulder, adds that it sounds like a "head 
thrust" rather than a ram.  He says that would be the most delicate 
offensive move a ram could do.  Perhaps he was spooked by the snap.  Spouse 
adds, that having been rammed, he's had to fight the ram once he has the 
horns, work to hang on until he is on the other side of the gate from the 
ram.  Perhaps he thought you bending over was an offer to play head butting 
games.  Sheep body language is different from human body language.

Spouse says go back to being proud of your gentle ram, who is also always 
going to be a Ram.






--
"...Shine my life like a light..." (the indigo girls)
Penelope Jacob pcj at efn.org  penelope at dreamsandbones.net

The circle is open but unbroken.

http://www.dreamsandbones.net/blog