Tails | Peggy's Little Corner

June 5, 2014

Little Bo peep has lost her sheep and can’t tell where to find them. Just leave them alone, and they will come home, wagging their tails behind them.

If you were to ask most people if sheep have long tails, they would probably answer, no! That’s because it has become a common and cruel practice to dock the tails of lambs when they are 2 days old. Furthermore, I have heard of the inhumane practice of docking fully grown sheep. It should be noted that the older a sheep gets, the more problematic docking becomes, and tetanus is a very real problem. For young lambs, the process is done by putting a rubber band around the tail and squeezing tightly until the tail rots off. Some will use a knife and a block of wood, or a hot electric clamp. Now, I know that there are a lot of sheep farmers out there who will say this practice is a necessity, but from my own personal experience it’s not.

I have in my flock, some with tails and some without, and the one without a tail gives me no end of trouble. The sheep without tails constantly have poop on their backsides, and no relief from the flies. My sheep with tails use the tail as a rudder and flip the poop from side to side, and if I lift their tails the rectum is always clean of debris. Also, it’s a handy fly swatter during the hot months. So, I am not sure why the claim of docking tails to prevent fly strike ever came to be, because I find it to be the exact opposite.

The other problem with my tailless sheep is prolapse. There are essentially two ways of docking tails: short and insane. The 4-H practice of docking the tails follows the latter, and is so insanely short that the ewe will inevitably lose muscle control and can have prolapse of the uterus when trying to birth her own lambs. Traditionally, the docking was a compromise, and the tail was taken off just below the bone to rid the sheep of the loose floppy bit. While this is by far a better method, as it does not interfere with the muscles in the hind quarters, and provides some sort of coverage against flies, to me this is no better because sheep are born with a tail for a reason.

The only real purpose I can see for such short tails, is for the express purpose of breeding. What the short tail does do is create precise batch breeding with an artificial inseminator, and when you are in the business of meat only, no one cares if the ewe lives on dies in the process.

Regardless of other traditions in other countries, in the United States, the sheep industry used to be exclusively for wool, until the 1950s. Today, it is now largely for meat consumption. I confess I grew up in an out of the way place, where modern pretensions didn’t really exist, and old-fashioned practices still ruled. For us, sheep were for wool and not food. Some of the hardest-hearted old-timers I knew would have balked at killing a baby for food, and as many grew up poor in Appalachia, you simply didn’t eat what could later clothe you. All the above seems so modernly excessive, and as for breeding practices, if you have a ewe in estrus in a field with a healthy ram, do you really think human intervention is needed? I think not!