Onyx
Date de Naissance: 2019
Sexe: Mâle
Accueil le: 15/09/2019
Race: Ouessant Sheep
It was time for Benco to be shorn. While the shearer was shearing him, he told us that he bred Ouessant sheep and that the past year he had to eat all the little rams. He therefore decided to have them all castrated this year and try to sell them, although any that he could not sell he would eventually eat too.
Ariane had been thinking it would be nice for Benco to have some company of his own species as he seemed lonely, and this way there would also be two baby sheep who were definitely not going to be eaten.
The shearer brought the little rams over to the sanctuary in his car. They were very wild, no-one had ever touched them. He told us we should socialise them as soon as possible, as when he would come the following year to shear them he wouldn’t have time to chase after them.
Aslan and Onyx were never mistreated, and they stayed with their mother until the shearer brought them here. The first days at the sanctuary they were bleating a lot but then Benco became sort of like their stepfather and they calmed down.
Within two months Aslan and Onyx were already very friendly with the animals and the humans of Mudita sanctuary. The three sheep really stick together. Benco is so much happier now – before they came he was ramming into the gate all the time to try and get where Ariane was, and now he doesn’t do that anymore.
Onyx is still a little shy and doesn’t let us pet him quite yet but he does come towards us when we enter the field. He can be recognised by his thin and short horns that look like tiny versions of normal horns. One interesting thing we’ve learned is that when you castrate rams so young their horns stop growing.