Talk:Domestic sheep

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Contents 1 Life Expectancy? 2 moufflon or urial? 3 Fat-tailed sheep? 4 Naming 5 woolly ruminant quadrupeds 6 Requested move 6.1 Discussion 7 Black sheep 8 Sheep Wool 9 Technique 10 physical characteristics 11 gestation 12 sexuality 13 Shoop 14 Neoteny

[edit] Life Expectancy?

What is the average life expectancy of sheep? Can someone add that?

65.29.40.220 15:45, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] moufflon or urial?

The introductory paragraph gives the urial as the most likely ancestor. The subsequent paragraph on "Domestication of sheep" says this is unlikely, giving the moufflon as the ancestor. Can anyone resolve the contradiction?

Ferdinand Pienaar 08:44, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Fat-tailed sheep?

In Pakistan there's a common domestic animal called a "fat-tailed sheep", which has, I believe, a different name in Urdu than an ordinary sheep. I think also varieties of sheep cultivated by early inhabitants of South Africa (already there when Dutch colonists arrived) were said to be "fat-tailed". What's the history of these animals?

Ferdinand Pienaar 08:50, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Naming

From article:

"A ram or wether lamb, after being weaned, is called a hog, or hoggitt, tag, or pug, throughout the first year, or until it renew two teeth; the ewe, a ewe-lamb, ewe-tag, or pug. In the second year the wether takes the name of shear-hog, and has his first two renewed or broad teeth, or he is called a two-toothed tag or pug; the ewe is called a thaive, or two-toothed ewe tag, or pug. In the third year, a shear hog or four-toothed wether, a four-toothed ewe or thaive. The fourth year, a six-toothed wether or ewe. The fifth year, having eight broad teeth, they are said to be full-mouthed sheep. Their age also, particularly of the rams, is reckoned by the number of times they have been shorn, the first shearing taking place in the second year; a shearing, or one-shear, two-shear, &c. The term pug is, I believe, nearly become obsolete. In the north and in Scotland, ewe hogs are called dimonts, and in the west of England ram lambs are called pur lambs.

The ancient term tup, for a ram, is in full use. Crone still signifies an old ewe. Of crock, I know nothing of the etymology, and little more of the signification, only that the London butchers of the old school, and some few of the present, call Wiltshire sheep horned crocks. I believe crock mutton is a term of inferiority."

What is the source of this? I am suspicious of the strange first person statements. How many of this names are still in use and where? I have a suspicion that these are mainly British and Irish terms. Rmhermen 19:49, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

It's from http://gutenberg.teleglobe.net/1/0/0/7/10074/10074-8.txt Others have already asked this contributor to credit the source. I've also been slowly integrating the contributor's cut&paste from public domain texts into the article proper and crediting sources (e.g. snake and James Wolfe). Samw 22:20, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Could we talk about sheep as "wollies"? The singular being "wooly". They are so soft and cuddly! ~

I've heard sheep being called woolies (or one wooly), in reference to the number of sheep to be shorn in one go (eg. "We have 5000 woolies for you this year") but not sure it's useful to the article. Donama 22:30, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] woolly ruminant quadrupeds

This is the best definition ever. I think this is what I will now forever call sheep. [[User:JonMoore|— —JonMoore 20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 03:57, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm sure 'ruminant quadrepeds' is lifted from some book or other but I can't remember... --Kiand 00:05, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Closest thing I found to a book was a website called "Sciencedaily.com," which cited Wikipedia.com in its page about sheep, or "Woolly ruminant quadrupeds."
68.38.242.66 05:40, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

This should be a case of the ordinary meaning receiving the priority to the common name. In fact, the disambiguation page, Sheep (disambiguation) already exists. But now hundreds of incoming links go to a disambiguation page instead of to the correct article.----

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~

• Support. Turn this page into redirect to sheep, move disambiguation text onto existing disambiguation page. Rmhermen 04:57, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose (changed mind based on Jimfbleak's rationale) Donama 00:00, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose, reversion of move inconsistent and unscientific, see my reasons below. jimfbleak 05:58, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. A move to inconsistency would be a bad thing in this case, but I do feel that 1) the sheep article could be improved by highlighting more strongly that it's not about domestic sheep (and that there is a difference), and 2) some sections in domestic sheep need to be moved to the parent article. The current arrangement works for me. -- Ian ≡ talk 07:10, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Right now I am fairly neutral beccause the person who moved most of "Sheep" to "Domestic Sheep" didn't detail the reasons but I assumed it is more correct scientifically to write about all sheep in "Sheep" and just the sheep as livestock in "Domestic sheep". I did quite a few manual relinking in pages directing to "Sheep" instead of "Domestic Sheep" already, but there are literally hundreds remaining and it would need bots to do the job properly. Donama 00:00, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

The scientific rationale for the move is obvious; the article I moved was almost entirely about the domestic sheep, with other species being mentioned only in the context of listing relatives, and the ancestry of the domesticated form. The taxobox and conservation status was for one species, the domesticated form, not the sheep genus Ovis. I would agree that the genus article needs expanding, but that doesn't nullify the move.

Although the "common name" principle is a good one, ie sheep rather than Ovis, in cases like this overapplication leads to wooly (LOL) thinking. If you go to goat, turkey, pig, peafowl etc you get the genus article, with domestic goat, domesticated turkey, domestic pig, Indian Peafowl etc as links. AFAIK all the main domesticated animals have articles titled as domestic rabbit etc, unless they have unique names eg chicken, silkworm, honeybee.

There is also a difference in emphasis between what might be called the "biological" articles, and the "agricultural" one. For example, in the case of Turkey, the more scientific information on the two species of wild bird would sit uneasily with details on the domesticated form, especially of the Thanksgiving dinner variety.

I fixed a lot of the links, but the same problem arises there. Some, like the economy of... ones are clearly domestic sheep, others like ewe and the bluetongue disease articles are generic to sheep or bovids, and I left those pointing correctly to sheep.

I wont get into an edit war if these changes are reversed, but I do think that reverting will be inconsistent with other domestication-related articles, and an unecessary dumbing down, leading to confusion. At the very least a taxobox for sheep should be for the genus.

I suppose that the alternative would be to have the genus article at Ovis, rather than sheep, but this is against the common name principle and would also lead to much relinking. I don't know that if I were searching for information about sheep in general that I would start at Ovis, rather than Sheep?

jimfbleak 05:55, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Jim. I find the precedent set by the other Wikipedia article's to be the most compelling consideration. Note, however, that there are still dozens of "economy of x", "y cheese" and sheep product articles that need the links changing (including any about wool and lamb (food)). Do you know how to make a bot to fix these? Donama 11:39, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm an IT moron - I'm not sure in any case that a bot could distinguish whether a particular item should go to sheep or domestic sheep, although I suppose it would be simpler to change them all to the latter, and fix the relatively few links to the generic article manually. Thanks for for your help with link-fixing, I know there are a lot left to do, but I don't want to invest lots of time in them at present until this issue is resolved. jimfbleak 12:05, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Removed notice as no consensus was reached to move it. Donama 23:27, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Black sheep

What causes the black sheeps color to be black? Is the skin of black sheep a different colour or is it just the wool? Any idea of the ratio of white sheep to black sheep? Rusty2005 15:33, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

It depends on the race, there are just black or brown sheeps in some races. Other races prefer the white ones, because you can color the wool better, but they are always some black ones in every white flock, because its nature you are dealing with. There are, I think, also races with black and white spots like a black HF-cow!

It's just the wool, just like hair on people. There are black, reddish, grey or brown sheep in some breeds. Commercial production relies on sheep carefully bred to minimize the occurance of colored genes as the colored wool cannot be mixed into the normal product stream for white wool. So in commercial wool flocks the incidence will be virtually zero. Even meat flocks sell wool as a secondary product so colored wool is very rare. Specialty and heritage flocks will preserve the color variances in the breed but the wool is used in smaller (and separated) product streams, often using the natural colors and unusual breeds as selling points. Jacob sheep are a breed with multi-colored coats while Shetland sheep, perhaps have the widest range of colors. Rmhermen 16:23, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sheep Wool

Would a sheep's wool keep growing if it's not sheared? How to keep it warm after shearing?

Yes it does keep growing. A ram that evaded the annual muster in central Australia for more than four years had wool 24cm long. As you can imagine he'd have gotten pretty hot a lot of the time and had it pretty tough. They thought it was pretty amazing he was alive. In South Australia, shearing is normally done in September, October or November so the sheep don't have to worry so much about how to keep cool! — Donama

When a ruminant feels cold, its starts eating more, because the digestion makes a lot of temperature. So, after shearing, you should make sure, that your sheep has enough to eat. More dangerous is, that the sheep are getting to hot, so they stop eating at all.

While it may seem backward, some sheep do wear coats - but they wear them before shearing to keep the wool cleaner, not after shearing to keep warm. Rmhermen 16:25, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Also done as part of the bioclip (http://au.merial.com/bioclip/) system so that you can take the fleece off in one piece --Peripitus (Talk) 03:53, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Technique

OK, someone's added a section on how to have sex with sheep. I'm going to remove it but if anyone wants to include it they should probably put it in a different section (rather than right below the opening paragraph). --163.1.223.30 11:28, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be more than appropriate to skip that part. If anybody really want to include it, it should be in an article about whatever that sexual attraction is named.

[edit] physical characteristics

How big are sheep? I know they have a weight range, but what's an average weight or size? Horses are incredibly variable, from miniatures being two feet or less at the shoulder to giant types like Percherons. I assume there's some of the same variability in any animal domesticated for a long time, but still, there's nothing here that indicates how big they are, that I saw, at least. Deirdre 21:17, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Horse has a section called "Biology of the Horse" and cattle has a section called just "Biology". I may work on it latter today - but it is not as variable as horses. Rmhermen 22:32, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] gestation

How long does it take for a sheep to give birth? my kids would like to know. many thanks

"Sheep gestation usually runs from 145 to 153 days."[1] or about 5 months. Rmhermen 19:18, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] sexuality

not sure if this is the right article, but something should be mentioned about sheep sexuality and ongoing research about it. --71.240.184.133 04:49, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I added the additions about the OHSU controversy bc it has been an international scandal. and I added the cites about the occurence of homosexuality in sheep, not bc I think we need to go around mentioning it in every of the hundreds of animals it has been observed in, but bc it has been closely studied in sheep. VanTucky 17:28, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Shoop

Does anyone belive this is a word? Should or shouldn't it be removed from here? Rboesen 15:15, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Neoteny

Are sheep neotenised animals? I was given to understand that most domesticated animals are. --62.136.24.91 18:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely. VanTucky 17:27, 28 February 2007 (UTC)