In the beginning, BART's firefighting brigade consisted of goats hired for their affinity to gravitate towards taller woody plants. BART has added a new animal to its fire mitigation arsenal: Self-shearing sheep. The sheep have clocked in to take care of the land's shorter grazing grasses and short roughage.
The collaboration between Clarida and Sparks resulted in a sheep shearing project that saw more than 100 students from both of their programs pass through the barns at King Campus recently, learning about the process of shearing wool and turning it into yarn and clothes.
During the sheep shearing project, students learned about how fabric is made from fleece. A member of the Upper Canada Fibreshed, the Fashion Arts class took some raw wool back to their textile lab and studied the process of cleaning, carding, felting/spinning. The fibre will be processed by Wool 4 Ewe, and the yarn will be used in the program's knitwear and textile classes as well as felting and weaving projects.
Sheep at Seneca's King Campus are shorn once a year, typically during the spring. As part of the sheep shearing project, a total of 14 sheep were in good hands with Don Metherall, a Canadian champion shearer formerly ranked top 20 in the world. He has been shearing for almost two decades, shearing about 28,000 sheep each year.
Sheep (pl.: sheep) or domestic sheep (Ovis aries) are a domesticated, ruminant mammal typically kept as livestock. Although the term sheep can apply to other species in the genus Ovis, in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated sheep. Like all ruminants, sheep are members of the order Artiodactyla, the even-toed ungulates. Numbering a little over one billion, domestic sheep are also the most numerous species of sheep. An adult female is referred to as a ewe (/juː/), an intact male as a ram, occasionally a tup, a castrated male as a wether, and a young sheep as a lamb.
Sheep are most likely descended from the wild mouflon of Europe and Asia, with Iran being a geographic envelope of the domestication center.[1] One of the earliest animals to be domesticated for agricultural purposes, sheep are raised for fleeces, meat (lamb, hogget or mutton) and milk. A sheep's wool is the most widely used animal fiber, and is usually harvested by shearing. In Commonwealth countries, ovine meat is called lamb when from younger animals and mutton when from older ones; in the United States, meat from both older and younger animals is usually called lamb. Sheep continue to be important for wool and meat today, and are also occasionally raised for pelts, as dairy animals, or as model organisms for science.
There is a large lexicon of unique terms for sheep husbandry which vary considerably by region and dialect. Use of the word sheep began in Middle English as a derivation of the Old English word scēap. A group of sheep is called a flock. Many other specific terms for the various life stages of sheep exist, generally related to lambing, shearing, and age.
Sheep husbandry spread quickly in Europe. Excavations show that in about 6000 BC, during the Neolithic period of prehistory, the Castelnovien people, living around Châteauneuf-les-Martigues near present-day Marseille in the south of France, were among the first in Europe to keep domestic sheep.[13] Practically from its inception, ancient Greek civilization relied on sheep as primary livestock, and were even said to name individual animals.[14] Ancient Romans kept sheep on a wide scale, and were an important agent in the spread of sheep raising. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (Naturalis Historia), speaks at length about sheep and wool.[15] European colonists spread the practice to the New World from 1493 onwards.[16][17]
Sheep and goats are closely related: both are in the subfamily Caprinae. However, they are separate species, so hybrids rarely occur and are always infertile. A hybrid of a ewe and a buck (a male goat) is called a sheep-goat hybrid, known as geep. Visual differences between sheep and goats include the beard of goats and divided upper lip of sheep. Sheep tails also hang down, even when short or docked, while the short tails of goats are held upwards. Also, sheep breeds are often naturally polled (either in both sexes or just in the female), while naturally polled goats are rare (though many are polled artificially). Males of the two species differ in that buck goats acquire a unique and strong odor during the rut, whereas rams do not.[29]
Coarse or carpet wool sheep are those with a medium to long length wool of characteristic coarseness. Breeds traditionally used for carpet wool show great variability, but the chief requirement is a wool that will not break down under heavy use (as would that of the finer breeds). As the demand for carpet-quality wool declines, some breeders of this type of sheep are attempting to use a few of these traditional breeds for alternative purposes. Others have always been primarily meat-class sheep.[42]
A last group of sheep breeds is that of fur or hair sheep, which do not grow wool at all. Hair sheep are similar to the early domesticated sheep kept before woolly breeds were developed, and are raised for meat and pelts. Some modern breeds of hair sheep, such as the Dorper, result from crosses between wool and hair breeds. For meat and hide producers, hair sheep are cheaper to keep, as they do not need shearing.[42] Hair sheep are also more resistant to parasites and hot weather.[29]
Other than forage, the other staple feed for sheep is hay, often during the winter months. The ability to thrive solely on pasture (even without hay) varies with breed, but all sheep can survive on this diet.[42] Also included in some sheep's diets are minerals, either in a trace mix or in licks. Feed provided to sheep must be specially formulated, as most cattle, poultry, pig, and even some goat feeds contain levels of copper that are lethal to sheep.[23] The same danger applies to mineral supplements such as salt licks.[53]
Flock behaviour in sheep is generally only exhibited in groups of four or more sheep; fewer sheep may not react as expected when alone or with few other sheep.[23] Being a prey species, the primary defense mechanism of sheep is to flee from danger when their flight zone is entered. Cornered sheep may charge and butt, or threaten by hoof stamping and adopting an aggressive posture. This is particularly true for ewes with newborn lambs.[23]
Sounds made by domestic sheep include bleats, grunts, rumbles and snorts. Bleating ("baaing") is used mostly for contact communication, especially between dam and lambs, but also at times between other flock members.[71] The bleats of individual sheep are distinctive, enabling the ewe and her lambs to recognize each other's vocalizations.[72] Vocal communication between lambs and their dam declines to a very low level within several weeks after parturition.[71] A variety of bleats may be heard, depending on sheep age and circumstances. Apart from contact communication, bleating may signal distress, frustration or impatience; however, sheep are usually silent when in pain. Isolation commonly prompts bleating by sheep.[73] Pregnant ewes may grunt when in labor.[74] Rumbling sounds are made by the ram during courting; somewhat similar rumbling sounds may be made by the ewe,[71] especially when with her neonate lambs. A snort (explosive exhalation through the nostrils) may signal aggression or a warning,[71][75] and is often elicited from startled sheep.[76]
In sheep breeds lacking facial wool, the visual field is wide. In 10 sheep (Cambridge, Lleyn and Welsh Mountain breeds, which lack facial wool), the visual field ranged from 298 to 325, averaging 313.1, with binocular overlap ranging from 44.5 to 74, averaging 61.7.[77] In some breeds, unshorn facial wool can limit the visual field; in some individuals, this may be enough to cause "wool blindness". In 60 Merinos, visual fields ranged from 219.1 to 303.0, averaging 269.9, and the binocular field ranged from 8.9 to 77.7, averaging 47.5; 36% of the measurements were limited by wool,[78] although photographs of the experiments indicate that only limited facial wool regrowth had occurred since shearing. In addition to facial wool (in some breeds), visual field limitations can include ears and (in some breeds) horns,[78] so the visual field can be extended by tilting the head. Sheep eyes exhibit very low hyperopia and little astigmatism. Such visual characteristics are likely to produce a well-focused retinal image of objects in both the middle and long distance.[77] Because sheep eyes have no accommodation, one might expect the image of very near objects to be blurred, but a rather clear near image could be provided by the tapetum and large retinal image of the sheep's eye, and adequate close vision may occur at muzzle length.[77] Good depth perception, inferred from the sheep's sure-footedness, was confirmed in "visual cliff" experiments;[78][79] behavioral responses indicating depth perception are seen in lambs at one day old.[80] Sheep are thought to have colour vision, and can distinguish between a variety of colours: black, red, brown, green, yellow and white.[81] Sight is a vital part of sheep communication, and when grazing, they maintain visual contact with each other.[82] Each sheep lifts its head upwards to check the position of other sheep in the flock. This constant monitoring is probably what keeps the sheep in a flock as they move along grazing. Sheep become stressed when isolated; this stress is reduced if they are provided with a mirror, indicating that the sight of other sheep reduces stress.[83]
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