Why do sheep need so much help?

A sheeps goal in life is to either escape or die and they're bloody good at it.

It could be worse. We adopted rabbits recently. The rescue lady looked me straight in the eye and said 'if you do not get them to eat the correct amount of long stem fibre within eight hours, it's an emergency'

The list of emergencies was four pages long.

or else they'd know they keep breaking through the fence into my garden.
The grass is always greener on the other side 😂🐑

My neighbours don't spend much time checking on their sheep or else they'd know they keep breaking through the fence into my garden. Harrumph.

They seem to hurt their legs a lot. I saw one with a horribly deformed leg recently that must've been broken and been left to heal wonky.

I've had to re-right a few that laid down in the rain and got waterlogged and stranded. I've never seen that happen to a horse or a cow!!

This thread has really made me smile. I’ve only ever had cade ( orphan lambs to hand rear ) but even then I’ll always get three cos one was bound to die and I didn’t want the other to be lonely.

honestly, they get up one morning and just decide todays the day they’re gonna die. I’m had roast lamb for my tea tonight. No regrets at all 🐑😀

I grew up on a farm.

Sheep are incredibly dim. They deserve to be eaten.

There's a theory... and I'm not saying it's true, but it's a real scientific theory, that sheep are over-domesticated and that our human interventions have moved their evolutionary development away from self-survival. Evidence suggests that sheep were the second species to be domesticated. Even wild sheep aren't that scary as prey / a food source. So if you're already learning, as the human species, to domesticate something, you'd pick a good food source and something not terribly scary to catch.

And we all probably know what was the first species. Dogs. That helped us hunt and then to manage our other domesticated animals. Horses, cows, pigs etc - if you've ever met the wild versions of those, you'd know why they were well down the list of things you're going to want to domesticate!

The Welsh mountain sheep when I was small apparently rolled over the grid.

I always thought sheep were dopey cos they eat too many magic mushrooms 🍄

I regularly have to rescue sheep who have got their heads stuck and horns entangled in the stock fencing holes trying to graze the grass (that is identical to the grass growing in their fields!!). Stupid creatures

They like to die. Some also like to pretend to be sick, and get special care.

I lamb a mix of Suffolk, texel and hill sheep cross ewes inside. I've talked of lambing singles and twins outside and only lambing the triplets inside, but I feel a very overwhelming need to watch over them during lambing. And most of them seem to enjoy it when the digestive biscuits come out. Some of them, even with being watched almost all the time, want to die anyway.

Farmers often have huge flocks of sheep that all lamb at a similar time.
Calving would be more spread out.

Its also a really undignified way to die really isn’t it?

Imagine if that happened to humans. Your gravestone would read “died…cos I couldn’t get off my back”

The getting stuck on their backs thing generally happens when they are too fat or heavily in lamb.

It can kill them pretty quickly too sadly.

Getting stuck on their backs is presumably related to having been bred to produce a lot of wool?

Other problems like getting cragfast is because of living in places most other animals couldn't manage at all. I'm sure Mountain Rescue has to extricate humans from similar predicaments despite us being a better shape for turning round.m

They are so dopey.
DH family have sheep. Last year one got stuck in a trench. BIL got it out and it literally walked back into the same bloody spot and got stuck. They live in Africa so it's an international thing with dumbass sheep.

Sheep can be incredibly dim but I also remember reading a thread where sheep have worked out how to go over a cattle grid.

In once case, a sheep would lay on the grid and allow the others to walk across her.

In another case, a sheep kinda just…..rolled over the grid

"needy and suicidal."

Yes, this pretty much. Although Welsh Mountain sheep are different. Absolute nails they are.

Sadly true. Very, very true!

I think in part it is how far away they are and how far they roam, they are all over the bloody place. Cows tend to be in the field, in the shed or in the milking barn. Sheep are up the moor, down the dale, over the hill. The farmers are always driving miles to check on them.

We live opposite a field of sheep and have become unofficial 'sheep watch' for the farmer. As PP have said sheep are on a full time mission to drop dead, get stuck, get upended (esp when pregnant). We WhatsApp the farmer when any have got into a scrape and DH helps him with putting them the right way up.

This.
We farm sheep on our croft. Every day for years, I ask myself the same question.
Its a sheep's life mission in life to find ridiculously awkward ways to die, get trapped somewhere they shouldn't be and have hoof issues, after you've put them on the furthest field.

I envy the neighbouring croft and their pigs 😂

I think sheep like to feign illness for a bit of tlc and entertainment as they get bored if farmer is not around for a while???

keeps the farmers fit catching the buggers who suddenly become a bit more agile at point of being caught to get what they need treated .

This is my second favourite thread today after the one about if superheroes were real what would our car and home insurance be like 😁