Why do sheep need so much help?

[SleepingStandingUp]

Farmers always have to be there to look after them, seemingly more so for other animals (based on watching Down on the Farm) but why? Is it how they've been bred? Do they all need the same help really but it isn't talked about? Have cows and pigs got better PR? What would the death rate be like if all the sheep were left to give birth alone?

I'm not Ewe shaming, we should all be entitled to a little help.

Some creatures are just more fragile than others, to be honest. Horses and sheep don't do well when they're sick; cows on the other hand are practically invincible in comparison.

There's a saying some farmers have "a sick sheep is a dead sheep". Gallows humour, but not wrong

The amount of help depends on the breed. Some breeds lamb more easily.
Cows and pigs need help too, but fewer will be giving birth at the same time.

@derxa should be able to help on this 🐑🐏

They have been bred to give birth to more and larger lambs, but the evolution of their birth canal hasn't caught up.

See, I knew you guys would be more fun than Google

It's not so much that they need help, it's that their sole goal in life is to find a way to die, so shepherds and farmers have to spend all their time trying to thwart them. For creatures so benevolently dim, they are actually quite innovative in finding new ways to shuffle off their mortal coil!

Sheep are incredibly smart so of course they've trained humans to do their bidding while simultaneously pretending to be dumb.

Love it!

A sheep’s one ambition in life is to die as quickly and as inconveniently as possible.

It's breed, season, system and weather dependent.

We lamb 950 swaledale sheep outside every year. The vast majority of the time they pop out 1 - 3 lambs all by themselves. Its rare we have to catch one and assist it to lamb. We have maybe 15 - 20 sheep in the sheds if after lambing they or their lambs need a bit more help to stay alive.

Other than that our sheep work through the year is pretty routine, we bring them in to the sheep pens for drenching/worming, to treat their feet, to treat them to prevent lice and fly strike and to shear them. Each time they are straight back out to the fields again.

Like people some get sick and die. Some die of old age (but not many because they are usually kebabs by then).

I don't really watch down on the farm but from the bits I have seen they lamb inside which is a much more intensive system. The sheep are a bigger fatter breed breeding a bigger fatter lamb. And of course human intervention makes good telly.

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

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.
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 😂

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.

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.

OK so needy and suicidal.

Sadly true. Very, very true!

"needy and suicidal."

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

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

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.

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

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.

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”

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

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.