Normal Behaviour

We know what constitutes sheep’s normal behaviour. Essentially, it is to be: at outdoor pasture; in circumstances that are quiet and relaxed; with appropriate lengths of time to eat, ruminate, rest and sleep; with opportunity and surroundings for mating, breeding, and infant-nurturing, in tune with natural cycle. A sheep needs to be with other sheep.

Through humans’ endeavour to educate each other about sheep, and through their use of sheep entertainingly in that educating process, or by humans’ use of sheep to entertain as reason in itself, can come disruption, distortion and alteration to what is sheep’s normal behaviour.

Sheep having a right to express normal behaviour has quite a long heritage, its roots being in the 1965 Brambell Report which led to the Five Freedoms which the Farm Animal Welfare Advisory Council articulated in 1979. One of the Freedoms was ‘Freedom to express normal behaviour’. Then came in 1994 the Five Domains Model for animal welfare of David J Mellor and Dr Cam Reid. (The Five Domains Model was last updated in 2020). Domain 4 is ‘Behaviour’. Mellor, in his comment on Figure 1 in his 2017 paper ‘Operational Details of the Five Domains Model and Its Key Applications to the Assessment and Management of Animal Welfare’ in Animals, gives this useful information, ‘Note that an animal exercises “agency” (Domain 4: “Behaviour”) when it engages in voluntary, self-generated and goal-directed behaviours [44.45].’ So, from this, an interpretation of what represents the normal behaviour of a sheep can be: the behaviour which a sheep, on its own initiative, decides to do, for its own objective.  

At the National Trust’s Wimpole Home Farm that the sheep and lambs are able to behave in their normal way is seen as the supremely important thing. Visitors are not allowed to feed sheep and lambs. At lambing time, only mother’s milk is given to lambs (unless for some reason the mother cannot feed a lamb, in which instance the lamb will be bottle fed by a member of the staff). Visitors are kept a distance away, so that ewes and lambs can behave normally without disturbance. When the lambs are strong enough, they and their mothers are transferred to the pasture of the Wimpole Estate. 

The approach at Wimpole Home Farm contrasts markedly with some other places which have visitors. At certain of these latter, visitors can feed lambs. And this could mean that the lambs remain indoors for quite long, rather than them experiencing the outdoors quite soon after being born as would be usual. (And they, together with some sheep to whom visitors can feed purchased-food indoors, may be kept inside at a time when normally sheep would be outside consuming luxuriant and nutritious pasture.) There is a natural season for lambing. The Big Sheep Farm & Theme Park boasts ‘we lamb throughout the year’. 

There can be other and worse ‘departures from norm’. Sheep ‘dancing’, racing, doing anything on a stage or in an auditorium, is not sheep expressing their normal behaviour. They are being trained to be performers; they are being treated in a commensurate way to circus animals and dancing bears. The scene is that from an age of less enlightenment. Not only are the sheep not displaying normal behaviour, they are being used in a way which denigrates them and which insults, and is against, their true nature.

A threat to the ability of sheep to express normal behaviour can come from the type of environment into which they are put. Land which sheep are made to occupy, or their accommodation of other kind, may not be appropriate or large enough to permit the sheep to behave in usual manner. City farms whose territory may be small - due to inability to obtain enough urban space etc - are a category which may be not be giving sheep as much or as good pasture or accommodation as sheep need for their well-being or to act normally. 

So, the overall concerning matter is this. Some of what humans require sheep to do is not sheep’s normal behaviour and/or does not allow sheep to express their normal behaviour. 

Entertainment

Providing entertainment using sheep can be done for varying reasons and in various ways. 

To produce a money-making entity, a provider may see entertainment as their means. A provider may perceive that having their ‘offer’ contain some entertaining elements will increase its appeal, and maybe widen the market for it. A provider may recognise that their core product lacks the dimension of being entertaining and so knows that this element needs to be inserted. A provider may be wishing to convey an educational message and will opt to do so in an as entertaining a manner as possible to endow that message with maximum appeal. A provider may be well-versed in the ways of good communication, and so will instinctively wish to use entertaining styles for connecting with their audience.

Sheep are appealing in themselves, lambs particularly. So, they are intrinsically a draw. How tempting it must be to any provider whose prime concern is not sheep’s well-being, welfare, or dignity, to not merely have sheep on view to a visitor but to heighten attraction by getting the already appealing creatures to do things that will entertain.

Of entities displaying sheep to the public there is a range, from those not much or obviously, representing entertainment, through to those which do represent entertainment. 

At the National Trust’s Wimpole Home Farm, the only entertainment is to observe what is naturally occurring. At the Farm the welfare of its sheep is put first and foremost. Visitors can watch mothers and young lambs in early days after lambing, but are not allowed to feed them or get close to them. An air of calm prevails.

It would appear that a provider deems that visitors will be more keen to attend at his provision of sheep if the opportunity is given not just to view sheep but to engage with them; and that offered engagement is feeding - and the petting associated. Feed is made available to the visitor for purchase, and/or the visitor is given chance to bottle feed lambs. The visitor is entertained.  

At Adam Henson’s Cotswold Farm Park visitors can feed sheep with purchased food and for a period the opportunity is available to visitors - twice a day - to bottle feed lambs.

Self-described as ‘edu-tainment’ is The Sheep Show. This stage show tours the UK, giving three performances in a day, at 120 events per year, to ‘an estimated 2.5 million people’. In essence, on the stage on a lorry-trailer, with accompanying commentary and explanation, one sheep is sheared; and then several different breed sheep are put on platforms, chained so that they do not escape, kept fed, and the highlight of the show being that sheep ‘dance’. 

At The Big Sheep Farm & Theme Park is a similar performance, except solely with rams, and no shearing, and no ‘dancing’. It takes place in the show arena as does ‘Bottle Feeding Lambs’, for which latter event very few lambs are used. Both these shows happen twice daily in high season. Food in on sale for feeding to adult sheep - but not of course to the lambs - in the Animal Barn.

Probably geared to be the very most entertaining of the sheep events of The Big Sheep Farm & Theme Park is the Sheep Racing in which sheep rush round a race course, with soft-toy-sheep riders attached to their backs. They go over jumps. 

In the USA at rodeos ‘mutton busting’ happens, in which children ride sheep until they fall off. In its ‘Mutton busting’ item Wikipedia says ‘Organizations such as the ASPCA discourage the practice on the grounds that it does not promote kindness to, or respect of, animals.’ Wikipedia references what the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) says, which is this: ‘… the ASPCA is opposed to children’s rodeo events such as goat tying, calf riding and sheep riding “mutton busting” which do not promote humane care and respect for animals.’ (‘Animals in Entertainment: 5.4 Rodeo’). 

It is clear that entities offered to visitors and the general public which use sheep range from those overtly and seriously educational, through those bearing a slight component of entertainment, onward through those them, ending with items whose sole role is to entertain.

If a provider’s objective is their own benefit, what they choose to do with a sheep towards that objective can be not to the sheep’s benefit. An item may be judged as needing to be - to a lesser or greater degree - entertaining, to attract people enough and in sufficient number for achievement of the provider’s purpose. 

Little of what sheep are required to do as entertainers is likely to coincide with what it is sheep’s nature and custom to do. Racing, ‘dancing’, and suchlike are not what sheep do normally. Sheep are not for riding.  Can it perhaps be that, to an extent, the very attraction of sheep attractions to some visitors is that these display sheep doing things that are not expected of sheep?

Sheep are being asked to do, and trained to do, what they do not do naturally. They are not performing animals. And those sheep appearing in The Sheep Show will have to endure much travelling: they will be ‘on the road’ rather than on home pasture. 

When being required to give entertainment, sheep are being used and exploited, they are very likely being demeaned, and sometimes they are treated cruelly. 

Education

For education about sheep to be well given, the reality needs to be told, the communication done effectively, and with the manner and style suitable to an audience.

Of course, much can be learned by people about sheep through simply watching them, doing what they normally do, and where they normally are. But, it can be required that information about sheep be consciously conveyed and in a formal and formatted way and at a more customised and suited location. Cause of this can simply be that a usual place of sheep is not accessible to the public and/or is not appropriate for hosting the public - in any number. A major reason is that a provider wants an entity of information about sheep to meet requirements they hold. These can be: to have a managed public facility not amid farming activity; to present a decided and controlled ‘message’; to place a sheep information resource where ‘add-on’ income-earning facilities are able to be put.

Decisions on these matters influence to what extent, if any, compromises are made in ‘telling it like it is’ and in ensuring sheep’s maximum welfare and best way of living.

At the National Trust’s Wimpole Home Farm, lambing is a visitor feature. It is clear that sheep’s and lambs’ welfare is regarded as paramount. The objective is to give sight of these animals to visitors and to be very informative to visitors about the animals. The prime vehicle of information, giving considerable detail about sheep and their life year round, is a booklet, Lambing at Wimpole. It is indicated clearly that lambs go to slaughter, apart from those females which ‘show signs of good quality breeding potential’. 

At Adam Henson’s Cotswold Farm Park, as at Wimpole Home Farm, are rare breed sheep and other animals (Adam’s father, Joe, was a leader in saving and promoting rare breed animals). There is excellence to the provision for the animals. Information aplenty on sheep is supplied; around the Rare Breeds Through History Trail, though, the information pathway could be made more clear, plus the linkage between information on a panel and what animal is before the visitor could sometimes be rendered more directly obvious. Elsewhere on site is displayed information on the farming year. In the Park’s shop are Adam’s books, and other books, but, seemingly, no guidebook/souvenir publication on the Park. Visitors can buy food to feed to the animals. And in the Animal Barn, during a period of the year, there are twice-daily sessions for visitors to bottle feed lambs. 

City farms tend to constitute small, worthy of idea, admission free, endeavours, which are seeking to serve a local community, and whom have limited resources across the board. So, paucity is often displayed. In regards data, this likely lends to information about sheep and how they should be treated being insufficient in content or amount. Mudchute Park and Farm in east London sells food for visitors to feed animals.

A directly educational resource is the farm of Woodchurch high school, highlighted in a double-page photo spread in The Guardian earlier this year (9th January 2024). Pupils even show sheep.

It can be seen that educating about sheep requires that the information about sheep be true and accurate, and not at risk to accommodation due to provider need to attract an audience. It can be seen also that methods of conveying information do need to be as good as possible for engaging an audience’s interest. This is where the genie of entertainment can be let in. The judgement is what is acceptable in light of the aim to inform and educate, and what goes too far. 

 Rare breeds can be noted as featuring considerably in settings aiming to be educational, and at enterprises major and small. It can be questioned whether rare breed sheep are entirely chosen to be present due to their rarity and interest, or might it be that coming into play too is that rare breeds tend to be more visually-interesting and appealing than routine and ‘commercial’ sheep types?

Certain compromises may need to be made, towards the objective to reach an audience to inform it about sheep. But the existence of a ‘slippery slope’ should be recognised. Going too far to appeal, and sheep may be put at risk of some suffering, and truth and integrity may be starting to evaporate.

Education and Entertainment

There is education about sheep. There is education about sheep done using entertaining means. There is entertainment provided through using sheep. So, a continuum exists. The greatest potential threat to sheep’s well-being is at the entertainment end of things. If the objective is entertainment, a sheep’s welfare and dignity can be under threat. 

To want to educate about sheep is a worthy objective. It is in sheep’s interests that humans should know about them. The hope will be that, with the obtained knowledge, humans will be treating sheep well. 

To provide entertainment with sheep may not be inherently bad. The use of an entertaining way to inform about sheep might be regarded as acceptable, provided what is done is not harmful or disrespectful to sheep, or out-of-tune with sheep’s nature. 

The problem and unacceptability appear when sheep are the chosen items for giving entertainment. Benefit is not for the sheep, it is for the providers. Towards a provider achieving an entity of appeal and income, there can be distortion by the provider of sheep’s habits and ways. Providers are gaining livelihood from what they make sheep do, and in what circumstance and environment. Meanwhile, onlookers are not having helpful benefit, because they are getting a false impression of sheep. 

It can even be wondered whether some providers - entertainers, income-earners, and business-people - do not have very much knowledge of sheep for straying from. The people may simply have ‘stumbled upon’ sheep as being - docile - items that can be used.

The difference between education and entertainment in relation to sheep is this. Educating about sheep has at its heart the wish to communicate information to humans about sheep, and so is fundamentally in sheep’s interests: though it should of course be said that the sheep industry uses the information. Entertaining deploying sheep essentially represents sheep being used as items for humans’ objectives and priorities. 

High Summer

At the height of summer, there are reasonable expectations of warm weather. The time is when the usual students are not at schools and educational establishments. Many workers are taking holidays in the period. A general desire in people to go away from their routine location is present and much acted upon. Those unable to, or not wanting to, journey much distance from their home, take day trips, or visit places near their domicile about which they have been curious but which without the circumstances presented by high summer they have not had motivation or opportunity to visit. So, at the height of summer there are a lot of people having leisure time in the countryside and a lot of other people having leisure time in the city.

Sheep, meanwhile, will be unlikely to be ‘on holiday’ in high summer. In rural areas they will be trying to get on with their normal lives despite a visitor influx and the attendant effects upon them and potential threats to their well-being. Sheep in rural farm parks and suchlike will be undergoing much attention from humans, due to a great quantity of visitors. In cities, sheep at city farms - intrinsically not a natural sheep habitat - will too be enduring much human attention because of large visitor numbers - and, moreover, in a general context of constraint of space. At high season too, sheep may be especially being deployed as features of attractions, shows etc. 

High summer may not be a highly nice time for sheep - if the context is masses of people around them and in their vicinity.

Recognising and Owning

For dog worrying of sheep to be made to cease, the happening needs to be utterly recognised, to be addressed, and where responsibility for it lies to be owned. 

A 2024 police survey by the National Sheep Association (NSA) found that ‘78% of forces who took part reported an increase in sheep worrying by dog incidents’. It also found that ‘Dogs off lead and not under control was the main cause of attacks, followed by lack of responsibility, education and disrespect for livestock/farming’ (Sheep Worrying, Survey Results, National Sheep Association).  

Governments need to give sufficient attention to the matter of dog worrying of sheep and bring in legislation to address the matter. Dog owners need to own that their dogs have a natural inclination to worry sheep, and own, and accept, their responsibility to see that their dogs do not worry sheep. Of course, there is too the onus on sheep owners and carers to see that the sheep for which are responsible are in an as-secure-from-threat-of-dogs situation as possible. Sheep outdoors on land will at least have some room to run from dogs. Sheep indoors will be trapped. A dreadful example of the latter was in 2023 where, of sheep in a farmer’s barn, 22 pregnant sheep were killed and 48 injured from attacks by two XL bully dogs (Andy Wells, ‘Farmer forced to shoot dead two XL bully dogs after they kill 22 sheep’, yahoo! news, 16th May 2024).

At a conference in the UK in 2023 ‘Dog owners received a stern warning from the Farming Minister Mark Spencer to keep their canines on a lead when near livestock after a sharp rise in attacks’. He ‘blamed the owners themselves, rather than the dogs, for making “bad choices” after an increase in the number of sheep worrying incidents and attacks on cattle over the past few months.’ And he said ‘There is no such thing as a bad dog. It is just bad owners.’ (Chris Brayford, ‘Farming Minister calls on dog owners to keep dogs on a lead’, Farmers Guardian, 16th June 2023). 

Mark Spencer was Farming Minister in the Conservative Government. That Government supported a Private Members’ Presentation Bill ‘which would give police greater powers to crack down on irresponsible dog owners whose pets attack livestock’ introduced early in 2024 by Dr Thérèse Coffey. This was the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) (Amendment) Bill. Its aim was ‘to amend the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Act 1953’ (‘Government backs proposals to tackle livestock worrying’, NFUonline, 17th May 2024). On 24th April 2024 the Bill was unamended (Commons Library Research Briefing, 15th May 2024). In a General Election on 4th July 2024 a Labour Government was elected. 

It is clear that dog worrying of sheep is continuing and increasing. Dog worrying occurs because dog owners are not - for whatever reason - stopping their dogs from worrying sheep. Whether from choice or through ignorance, dog owners are opting not to accept and display responsibility for their dogs, not to control their dogs, when the dogs are indicating their natural inclination to see sheep as prey. The NSA survey, quoted above, conveys the message(s). To impose firmly recognition in dog owners that they must own responsibility for their dogs and for controlling them against worrying sheep, adequate legislation and much education are needed. And demanded to be generated in dog owners are respect for, and care about, sheep.

Enforcement

There are laws and regulations to achieve good welfare and treatment of animals. But if they are not enforced, at all or entirely, animals will not have the protection and good experience that the laws and regulations are aimed to bring. 

The Animal Law Foundation and Animal Equality delivered in October 2022 the Report The Enforcement Problem: The Case for Stronger Enforcement of Farmed Animal Protection Laws in the United Kingdom. In the Foreword Edie Bowles, Executive Director of The Animal Law Foundation depicted “The Enforcement Problem” as ‘…when a law exists on paper, but is grossly underenforced in practice, rendering its value questionable at best and redundant at worst.’ She went on to remark, ‘The Enforcement Problem for farmed animals has been known by those working in the field for some time’. Abigail Penny, Executive Director of Animal Equality UK, described in the Foreward that ‘UK policy makers have taken steps to ban a number of particularly cruel practices’ and that ‘it would only be too fair for consumers to assume that our [UK] agricultural standards surpass that of other countries’, and said ‘But the true test comes when we determine how the legislation is applied.’

In showing who are responsible in the UK for enforcement ‘On Farm’, ‘At Slaughterhouses’, ‘During Transport’, ‘At Market’, the Report displayed that in the UK there is a great complexity of responsibility for enforcement. In the Report’s Conclusion it is stated ‘There are nearly 300,000 farms in the UK, but between 2018-2021 an average of only 2.95% were inspected by public bodies.’

In February 2023 came the Report Law and Disorder: The Enforcement Solution from Animal Equality UK which ‘looks towards action on how to solve The Enforcement Problem.’ In its Introduction is said ‘there is an abundance of evidence, gathered and presented in Animal Equality’s initial joint report with The Animal Law Foundation, demonstrating that non-compliance is rife and that there is a troubling lack of oversight of the animal agriculture industries.’ The essential solution the Report recommends is a system of licensing of farms for welfare purposes, and with the key elements being farm record keeping and official inspections. 

In the Conclusion it is said 

‘It’s clear we need more order by way of stronger enforcement, if we are to make sure the UK’s animal protection laws are fulfilling their purpose of protecting animals.

As a first step, Animal Equality recommends that a licensing system be made a legal requirement across all UK farms within the next three years. This will address several of the issues that are currently leading to poor enforcement, and more suffering for farmed animals.’

In a speech at the Animal and Vegan Advocacy Summit in May 2024 Abigail Penny is reported to have said ‘that “enacting laws is just the beginning” and that without proper oversight the true impact of new laws will not be felt by animals on the ground.’  (Imogen Allen, ‘Animal Equity Shines at AVA Summit in Washington, D.C.’, 12th June 2024, updated 19th June 2024). 

Not merely do existing laws and regulations need to be enforced. New ones need to be formulated, and then enforced, that display acceptance of a key thing, that farm animals - sheep therefore - are sentient. 

Moreover, further advances in human outlook can be envisaged, with the law reflecting them, and it being enforced. It is to be hoped that requiring to be manifested in laws and regulations in the very near future, will be a change of human attitude, of seeing farm animals as not for use but for treasuring for themselves. Interestingly, Dr Steven McCulloch, Professor Paul Chaney and Dr Lisa Riley in their 2024 report Political Animals: The Democratic and Electoral Case for Strong Animal Welfare Policies in UK General Elections, which considers a Focaldata 2023 poll of the British public (6,050 respondents) that was commissioned by Humane Society International UK and some other animal protection organisations, say this; ‘This report has found a consistent supermajority level of British public support for progressive animal protection policies, defined as 67% or over of the population. At the same time, this level of support is not reflected in government laws and policy.’ 

The general implication therefore is that - as well as current animal protection law needing to be enforced – there is a need for animal protection law to ‘catch up’ with public opinion. Anthropologist Roanne Van Voorst says this: ‘The law is humanity’s alternative Bible, the one that doesn’t celebrate our belief in a supra-human god as a source of all goodness, but rather our belief in humanity as that source.’ (Once Upon a Time We Ate Animals: The Future of Food, 2021, p 181).  

With coming change of human thought on farm animals will be demanded new laws and regulations, and enforcement of them.

Rights

What distinguishes animal rights from animal welfare? In essence, animal welfare looks to see that animals are treated as well as possible in the context of their being creatures owned by humans and deployed for humans’ purpose. Animal welfare has been a concern for a long while - for two centuries. A cornerstone in relation to livestock welfare are the Five Freedoms (which emanated from the 1965 Brambell Report). The perspective of animal rights is that animals should not be subject to what humans want from them, but should have rights to certain things and with which humans must comply.

It can be argued that animal welfare initiatives cannot go far enough because conditioning the initiatives is that due to what humans want from their animals - to deploy the animals for human purposes - the outcome will never be of the well-being of an animal having full sway and being put first. So, a right, and likely with legal enforcement, is required for what is best for animals to prevail and be the totally governing principle.

Non-human animals, sheep therefore, should have the right of good treatment by human animals. The rights that non-human animals should have are: to live life as they wish and as suits their kind; to express their normal behaviour (as one of the Five Freedoms articulates); to have their sentience both fully-recognised and manifested in the calibre of treatment of the animal; to have a full span of life. 

In the difference between animal welfare and animal rights resides where lies power- with either the human or the creature. What animal welfare constitutes and how far it goes towards seeing that an animal is treated well is likely to be governed by: the extent to which the human is demanded to tend to the animal’s welfare; the amount of attention to animal welfare the human needs to give for their objective. Gary L Francione speaks of the ownership dimension, saying ‘If animals are property, welfare standards will always be low and will be shaped more or less by what level of protection is necessary to exploit animals in an economically efficient way. Animal welfare is about economics, not morality.’ (Why Veganism Matters: The Moral Value of Animals, 2020, p 46). In the Glossary of the book Animal Rights Law (2023) by Raffael N Fasel and Sean B Butler, Welfarism (or Classic Welfarism) is defined as ‘an approach according to which animals should be treated humanely because they can suffer (ie they have welfare), but they may nevertheless be owned, used, and killed because human interests are considered to be morally weightier than non-human interests. Classic Welfarism is the philosophy underlying animal protection laws around the world.’ (p 202).     

Now to look at what is already happening and to the future. There is reason to hope that animals will attain rights.

The Party for Animals in The Netherlands describes itself as ‘an integral part of a worldwide growing movement of people working for the rights of animals, in politics, in public administration, and in society.’

Roanne Van Voorst calls for law changes. She says that we need ‘… to look at ourselves in a different way; to look at what a human is, and what a nonhuman animal is, and what animal rights could look like as a result, and how these differ from human rights, and the meaning of all these laws in relation to one another in an age in which humans have long since stopped behaving humanely.’ (Once Upon a Time We Ate Animals: The Future of Food, 2021, p 213). And Martha C Nussbaum states ‘If animals have rights, this means that legal mechanisms to enforce them must either exist or be created.’ (Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility, 2022, p 279). She remarks ‘… we must not forget that a justice that is truly global is a justice that takes up the burden of protecting the rights of all sentient creatures …. And it must really by justice - concerned ... with removing barriers to sentient creatures who strive to attain their ends.’ (p 314).

Gary L Francione states ‘When we recognize that animals have a right not to be used as property, we reject treating them exclusively as means to ends.’ (Why Veganism Matters: The Moral Value of Animals (2020) p 150). 

For sheep to attain rights, society needs to change how it sees sheep. 

Sheep should have a right to be treated well; humans have no right to treat sheep as humans choose.

Welfare

Attention to the welfare of sheep varies across the world. Moreover, human interpretation is somewhat fluid and amorphous on what constitutes animal welfare - and therefore what constitutes good animal welfare. Overall, the concept of animal welfare seems to have the embedded interpretation that the item is how people treat animals during process of making use of them. And the use of animals emanates from people having ownership of them. 

Confining seeing animal welfare to be being the matter of how well humans treat animals in the process of using animals, and whom are their possessions, limits standards of animal welfare from being raised to a higher level. It also stops animal welfare from being interpreted fundamentally differently.  

The core alteration to what is meant by animal welfare would come if humans no longer regarded non-human animals as their inferiors. People would stop being speciesist. So, in the instance of sheep, humans - and not just sheep farmers and those in the wider sheep farming community, but everyone - would then attend to sheep’s welfare as well and equivalently as their own.

A nation which sees itself as a leader in animal welfare is the UK. Giving indication of what sheep welfare currently consists in the UK are the RSPCA welfare standards Sheep and the Code of Recommendations for the Welfare of Livestock: Sheep from the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), each dated August 2023. 

Sheep need to be seen fully and accurately, and sheep welfare needs much improvement as a consequence. 

In their sheep welfare attitudes, humans need to display an understanding that sheep are sentient.

Necessary, But With Risks

With warming weather will come ‘shearing time’. For their welfare, adult sheep need to be shorn annually. Additionally, some of the sheep will be being shorn for their fleece to be a product, wool. However, shearing, in itself and in its timing and context, has risks to a sheep’s well-being. 

Shearing of a sheep, from a sheep owner’s perspective, can represent a necessity that is rather a nuisance. It needs to be done on welfare grounds but shearing being done may represent an economic drain - because fleece can be worth less than a shearing cost.

Reasons why shearing needs to be done on welfare grounds include: to give sheep comfortability in hot weather; to try to avoid disease due to insect infestation of fleece. Risks to sheep of shearing include: shearing occurring when weather is too cold, and so the sheep is left not warm enough; sheep that are freshly shorn being exposed to too hot weather or circumstance; a shearer’s lack of adequate training and experience; bad handling of sheep during the whole entirety of the sheep shearing process; cutting or nicking a sheep’s skin; shearing with unclean equipment; shearing a sheep over-fast and so carelessness resulting (usually a shearer will be paid by the number of sheep that they have shorn). 

Sight of the ewe with overgrown fleece, from being stranded for two years on the coast of Scotland, reminds how necessary shearing is on welfare grounds - the ewe was shorn after being rescued (Daily Mail, 6th November 2023). But not to be forgotten is that shearing has risks to sheep.

Sheep and City Farms

City farms have usually been set up with worthy objectives. They will be looking to serve their local community, to give information and education about food and farming, to involve people, to help them, to give quality and improvement to their lives. They aim to be accessible. 

Admission to a city farm will likely be free, with any charges being for extras of some kind. Support may come from a local authority - and therefore the public sector. Probably there will be grants from trusts and foundations, and some funding from companies and other donors. A city farm may have been established in less financially straightened times than nowadays, and may be particularly struggling economically at present. 

An essential likelihood is that a city farm will be not adequately resourced, financially, but also in terms of land, staff, and expertise. In a city context, enough quantity and suitable quality of land for a city farm will probably be unable to be obtained. A staff of sufficient number, and representing all necessary knowledge areas, will maybe not be able to be provided because of insufficient funding. Part of the work may be done by volunteers. Potentially, a city farm will be trying to do too much, and will be spreading itself too thinly.

The huge danger, if it is in a context of under-resourcing, is if a city farm has animals. While if it has no animals, an under-resourced city farm can delay a task, or shut down an element until ‘better times’; if it has animals - live creatures - it needs always to be giving them the right amount, type, and calibre of resource, care, and attention. The animals’ welfare is paramount.

Sheep are among those animal types which are often placed at city farms. City farms, in their context of vying for space in areas where, generally, land is at a premium, and at a premium price, are liable to end up occupying space not truly large enough for their requirements and which is not of best quality. Animals at city farms may be placed on land which is too small for them and not right and suitable in other respects. Sheep are creatures of the countryside. They need pasture to stand on and to eat, and enough of it. They are nervous animals. They are not used to being in close proximity to a lot of people. It will be stressful to them if dogs, their predators, are nearby. They need to be cared for by people who are knowledgeable about sheep, their ways, their needs, the diseases and ailments that they can suffer.

To put sheep - any animals - on a city farm is unlikely to serve those creatures’ best interests. Should it be decided to keep sheep there, then the city farm is obliged to ensure that the welfare and well-being of the live creatures is totally attended to - to the highest standard. 

Not A Joke

Sheep are not a joke. They are sentient, intelligent, animals. To portray sheep as comic figures is a frequent occurrence, and liable to encourage the misguided perception in humans that sheep do not need to be taken seriously. Particularly, products aimed for children often show sheep as ‘funny creatures’: this could lead to engendering in the children an attitude for life that sheep are not for valuing.

And with an attitude taken hold among the populace, or regarded as acceptable in society, that all sheep are is ‘a laugh’ could be rendered a dire consequence. This would be of sheep being treated badly because of them not being seen as animals worthy or necessary to be cared for well. Could it be that contributing to the highest level of sheep welfare not always being attained is people regarding sheep as a joke?