By Lisa Hadden
Spring is a fun time on the farm; there is the promise of warmer days and a lot of new babies. There are calves, chicks, piglets and lambs, to name a few. Let’s talk about lambs and sheep.
This month has been spent teaching the area fourth graders a little more about sheep. Illinois ranks 27th in sheep production while it ranks fourth in both beef and pork production. Therefore, students don’t see sheep as much — and seemingly know less about them.
Sheep were some of the first animals to be domesticated. They played a very important role in human history because they provided not only meat for food and wool for clothing, but also their skin was used for clothing and shelter.
Today there are over 40 breeds of sheep in the United States and over 900 different breeds around the world. A female sheep is called a ewe, pronounced “you.” A male sheep is called a ram and a baby is called a lamb.
A couple of characteristics that sheep share with cattle are that they are ruminants, and they only have teeth on their bottom jaw. A ruminant is an animal with four compartments in their stomach. They chew a little, swallow and then bring the food back up to their mouth to chew some more. This is referred to as “chewing their cud.” They then swallow again, and the food makes its way through all four compartments.
Lambs are born with eight teeth on the bottom jaw only and these are replaced by adult teeth. These adult teeth are flat on top and therefore, not painful when they rub against their upper gum.
Sheep are herbivores, which means they only eat plants and are considered to be prey, not a predator. Their eyes are on the side of their head, and they have rectangular pupils allowing them great peripheral vision (almost 360 degrees). They also have the remarkable ability to rotate their eyes in their head so that the pupil remains parallel to the ground while grazing; this allows them to always remain aware of their surroundings.
Shearing, the act of cutting the wool off the sheep, happens in late spring or early summer. This gives the sheep some relief during the warmer months. It would be like wearing a wool blanket in the summer. The wool is not washed before shearing because this would remove some of the lanolin from the wool. Lanolin, a waxy substance naturally created to protect the sheep’s wool, is one of the many by-products that we get from sheep. It is used in products like make-up and lotion. It is separated from the wash water used to wash the wool in the first step of cleaning the wool for yarn. It is said that the wool is “touched by human hands” 27 times in the process of creating wool yarn.
Like all farm products, there are many by-products from sheep. Leg of lamb is a popular main course for Easter dinner. Meat from an animal under the age of one is lamb, while meat from older sheep is called mutton. Items such as explosives, paints and chewing gum contain fat or fatty acids from sheep and the intestines provide sausage casings, instrument strings and surgical sutures. Also, as we are preparing for baseball season, it’s interesting to know that baseballs contain 450 feet of wool yarn inside of them. So, I hope “ewe” have learned something new about sheep.
