To ask if you know anything about sheep?

[MightyMoose]

I couldn't quite figure out where to put this as we don't have a "flock" topic. We went to a farm today for a day out. Lots of great play equipment, tractor rides and animals. They had a "meet the lambs" session. When we got into the barn the bleating from the sheep (mostly the mothers) was deafening. They had so many sheep crammed in the pen you could hardly walk between them. Some of the lambs were in a sort of raised pen so the kids could get a better look. One of the workers was carrying around a lamb for the kids to pet. When I asked why it was loud the lady working there said it was because the mothers and lambs had been separated in the shuffle and they were trying to locate their lambs. It all seemed a bit frantic with the mothers charging round bleating away. Is this really ok for the sheep? Too distressing? Surely just a few ewes and lambs would have done it and been less distressing for the ewes? I admit I'm utterly clueless about farm animals.

Of course it's distressing for them, but on the scale of distressing things that happen to farm animals it's probably not high enough for the farming staff to register.

I know very little about sheep, but there's a poster called @derxa who does. Hopefully she'll be along.

When DD was small we went to a farm where you could watch the lambing. It sounds nothing like you describe. It was in a big shed but the ewes were kept with their own lambs and I don't remember there being any petting.

I had a pet lamb for a while when I was small.

If a ewe can't actually see their lambs, they will call to them repeatedly, sometimes to locate them, other times simply to reassure them that they are there. So if they have been moved in a chaotic fashion and some of the lambs have been penned separately, you would expect them all to be calling continually to locate and reassure their own lambs. It's not necessarily distress (although it would be preferable for the ewes to be kept and moved with their lambs), they can also do it at night, for example, when it's too dark for them to see, like a repeated mantra: "I'm here, where are you? I'm here, where are you?"

In terms of space, if they've just been moved temporarily into a group pen in the barn for the meeting the public session they don't require a lot of space, particularly if they are one of the more gregarious breeds. I wouldn't expect you to be able to walk freely amongst them.

If they were distressed, you might hear their bleating take on a higher pitch like a cry, or see them run or turn repeatedly in tight circles. There are also signs that the farmers should be looking out for, like their ears turning, because ewes can become surprisingly aggressive when they have lambed.