Fat tails?

[kelpiegirl]

Anyone ever work with these sheep? Lucy's breeder has a bunch of these and tells me that they are quite wild. I know in past conversations that Cheviots can be like this, anyone know about this particular breed?

Thanks

[Pipedream Farm]

My understanding is "fat-tail" is a type not a breed, like hair is a type.

 

Mark

[kelpiegirl]

Thanks Mark! I just did some looking, and see that... I will have to question her further, and see what kind they are... Anyway, the deal is, they are a bit high strung, and not condusive to working with young experienced dogs. Any suggestions on getting them a little toned down? They run from people too. At this point her plan is to keep the oldsters, and the lambs to tame them down, and eat the wethers

 

My understanding is "fat-tail" is a type not a breed, like hair is a type.

 

Mark

[stockdogranch]

Out here Karakuls are often referred to as fat tails. I've had some over the years, and they are nice sheep. In fact, I've had several incarnations of "Fatbutt" who have served as school sheep. Julie has Karakuls,

A

[juliepoudrier]

Sorry for the slow response--I was at work this a.m., where they are renovating my office space, and I didn't have internet access.

 

Mark and Anna are right--fat tailed sheep are a type of sheep (of which there are numerous breeds), most of which originated in central Asia and Middle Eastern areas (karakuls, for example, were developed in the arid steppes of central Asia in what is now Turkmenistan and tunis came from Tunisia). Because these areas are often feast or famine, this type of sheep is able to store fat in the tail, which can be drawn upon in lean times (much like a camel's hump). The main fat-tailed breeds that I know of in the US are the karakul and the tunis, though some wouldn't really classify the tunis as a fat-tailed breed anymore. You do see some with fatter tails, but nothing like what you'd see on, say, a karakul. (This is because only a few tunis were ever imported to this country, where they were crossed on "native" breeds. There were a number of these "tunis" flocks in the southeast before the Civil War, but most were largely decimated then. To build the flocks back up, more crossbreeding took place, particularly with the Southdown, and so the American Tunis no longer has the really fat tail characteristic of a fat-tailed sheep, although their tails are a bit broader than average, in some cases. When I was researching them early on, I found some modern photos on a Tunisia travel site and what struck me most was how much the flocks of sheep in the photos looked like red-faced karakuls.) Someone on Sheep-L asked about the breed of sheep used in the Iranian cloning experiment and from the picture, it looked like it could have been a karakul, but I actually went and found a site for Iranian sheep, and the interesting thing to note is that all of them appear to have fat tails (scroll down to the breed photos section). I have seen fat-tailed breeds with really HUGE tails as well. For more examples, check out the Afghan Arabi, the Hasht Nagri, the Lati, the Masai (a fat-tailed hair sheep), the Mehraban, the Moghani, the Ossimi, and the Ujumqin (whose dressed tail fat apparently weighs more than 2 kg) at the Oklahoma State breeds of livestock site.

 

I can tell you that neither my tunis nor my karakuls have ever become very dog broke. They tend to be a bit flighty, even when worked by experienced dogs, but they *can* be handled. When I got the tunis I was warned by an experienced open handler that they would become broke really fast, but that hasn't been my experience, nor that of my neighbor, but then neither of us works our flocks a whole lot either. That said, I have a friend who put a few tunis in with her border cheviot flock, which effectively slowed the whole flock down a bit. So it's all relative I suppose.

 

I will say that karakuls are naturally high-headed, so they *look* flightier than most, and I often wonder just how odd it must feel to have that big ol' fat tail flappin' behind when they take off....

 

ETA: A number of my karakuls are pretty people friendly, probably as a result of being halter trained for show purposes. They will come up to me in the field if I don't have a dog with me. I imagine it would be pretty easy for your friend to tame her flock down a bit if she fed them (grain buckets have a way of making friendly sheep). The best working karakul I have is a little yearling who used to hang out with Laura's dog-broke hair sheep and so she's pretty sane about being worked. So keeping and mixing them with dog-broke sheep would seem to help.

 

How's that for a regular treatise on the topic?

 

J.

[kelpiegirl]

Thanks Julie- I find this stuff fascinating, and I will suggest to her that the way to a sheep's heart/soul, is through it's stomach She is really chuffed to have them.

[Mudpups]

I am totally inexperienced with sheep, but I thought that I would add some pics of my parents 'fat tails' which are far more docile and less flighty and jumpy than the merinos and merino x sheep that they used to have (those things were nuts!).

 

These photos were taken on the day the sheep arrived, (Dorper rams, Damara ewes, I believe the Damaras are an african breed of fat tail) so they were a bit stressed, but nothing like the merinos. In my inexperienced eyes, they were quiet calm with Taj, even when his natural 4.5 month old exuberance came out once he realised that he could make them move.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michelle