Hello there prestigious and good ladies and gentlemen to our peace loving, animal loving website that wants to help any pet owner to be the best for the sake of their pets. As animal loving website, we provide many useful information to all of pet owner around the world with trusted, useful and always interesting. We want every animal in this world to have better life and better understandings with their owner so we strive to provide as much information about animal as we can. We have hundreds of article, guide and information all about animals from cats, dogs, fish, to more exotic animal like lizard, turtle and snake, to farm animal like sheep and cows. All of it can be trusted and will prove to be interesting for you. For now, today we are going to talk about sheep, especially on sheep behavior.
Sheep is one of the most oldest companion for human being. Dating back to early hunting and gathering era, where human live nomadic in search of foods and shelters, human don’t have any idea on how to domesticate any animal and producing more foods than hunting and gathering. Then there is agricultural revolution where human change their nomadic lifestyle to settling lifestyle, from hunting and gathering lifestyle to farming and herding. Sheep as well as cows are example of early domesticated animals by human.
Why sheep? Why human domesticate sheep of all animals? If human choose to domesticate bigger animals like elephant there will be lot of elephant today right? Yeah well, the reason why human choose to domesticate sheep is that sheep can be easily domesticated. They can be caught easily, they reproduce quite fast, and their warm wool is very useful. Sheep have been domesticated long time ago for their warm pelts, milk and meat.
Sheep is animal, they have certain behavior that many people trying to keep them aware of it. You might be thinking, why we should learn about sheep behavior? Well to be exactly, it could be really useful for any new farmers who want to buy flock of sheep in their farm. Knowing well their behavior could be really useful. Now today we will learn about Psychology Of Sheeps: How They Behave?
Sheep behavior you might want to know about it
For those who buy their very first flock of sheep, they might have a hard time during their first few weeks taking care of sheep. Sheep is living creature with their own behavior and instinct. In order to effectively take care of sheep, you might need to learn and understand first about how sheep behave. Bellow here, we are compiling 4 sheep behavior that you need to know if you are going to keep sheep in your farm. Hopefully, this sheep behavioral guide could prove useful for you. So, let’s get started shall we?
- Sheep flocking instinct
Sheep have very tight and strong flocking instinct. First of all, what is flocking instinct? Flocking instinct is instinct of stick together as one flock of prey animal. Most prey animal have this instinct in order for them to survive in wild. Prey animal are mostly defenseless if you leave them alone but in flocks they can be hard to prey at and mostly safe from predator. We can say that this is survival instinct pass down generations to generations of sheep and now they still retain their flocking instinct. Whenever you leave one sheep alone, it can be stressed as it don’t have any friends and will be afraid of anything. This flocking instinct psychology should be your main concern when keeping sheep in your farm.
- Sheep also have strong family bonds
Sheep have flocking instinct and they also have quite strong family bonds. Sheep recognize their family, their siblings, their mate and of course their offspring very well, and they also tend to remember their family bond pretty well. Sheep mostly stay in one maternal group for their entire life. They graze together, they sleep together, and together they form a maternal bond. Sheep that is separated from their siblings might show a sign of distress and if it continue without any care from their master, it could give a sheep some trouble. If you reunite separated sheep, they will recognize their friends immediately.
- Sheep behavior when threatened
Sheep is prey animal, which means they are gentle in nature, don’t have any aggression toward other creature, and won’t attack unless provoked. Sheep also tend to run whenever they sense danger. Their first action when they are threatened is running. Threatened flocks of sheep will run in one direction. If they aren’t panicked, they will form formation in which they protect the young and frail old sheep inside their formation and strong ram outside the formation. However, sheep will mostly run away from any sign of danger and they will run the second any predator attacks.
- Sheep line of sight
Sheep eyes are on their side of their head. Their side eyes make them have a wider line of sight. This physiological help sheep to spot predator head on before their predator could leap to attack them. Sheep will mostly have their head to scan their surroundings carefully, looking for any predator that could kill them. The sheep line of sight is great, far and wide but they have limitations. Sheep have one blind spot and that is their back. Sheep couldn’t look around their back very well, and any predator that could sneak around their back could easily pounce and kill them. This is useful whenever you need to catch your sheep. Remember to sneak behind their back before catching them, and then put your arms around their neck. Use your body weight to make sheep fall down and they won’t fight anymore when you catch their neck.
Anyway, that concludes in our guide about Psychology Of Sheeps: How They Behave?If you have any other question and opinion, feel free to pour them in our comment section. Help us to provide the best for other pet owner in this world.