CrazyParrot wrote:Thanks for the advice! Any farmer we ask (apart from the one we got them from) seems to think that all pet lambs die, so we dont get much advice from them apart from how to dispose of bodies! The four of them are males, but are being castrated on sunday so hopefully wont get aggressive.
To be honest, I think eating them would save a lot of trouble, but I live in a house with two eight-year old girls so any suggestion of some nice organic meat just brings tears and tantrums! It looks as if they are here to stay!
What age do you start to wean them off the lamb creep? just when they are happily eating grass and seem to be fully grown?
thanks again!
Hi, newbie here to this forum.
I just had to respond to the comment about your girls having tantrums. Surely you need to sit down and have a little chat to them about the facts of life regarding meat? Explaiun that yours will soon grow into tame but pushy and stroppy boys who won't be much fun to have about. Make them feed and see to them in freezing and wet weather and accept the responsibility of the daily chores involving them. Explain how yours will be loved and well treated . Refuse to buy any lamb from the butcher etc.
I am the mother of a 34 year old son who learned from a young age that if he wanted to eat meat, there was a process whereby meat got onto his plate. Sure at first he thought the "awww fwuffy wicckle pet animal"way, but once he had to hump straw, muck out, was shoved in the mud a few times by large pushy beasts, he soon got fed up. When presented with his first home grown meal, he tucked in.
If you don't make pets of the lambs they won't be too attached to them. What will happen to these when you move house, or need the land they are on, or they start escaping, or turn aggressive because they don't think of humans other than the providers of food and start butting and shoving the children? What if then, you need them gone? They will be too big to be tasty and you won't be able to find anyone to take them.
Without wanting to preach, you should have thought about the possibility of your children not wanting to eat them, before you got them, or sat down and told them exactly what was going to happen to them (i.e. they become food). Giving in to their tantrums will not be any good to them or those lambs, nor will it teach them how food is produced and to be responsible about it all. They will end up being 2 more T***o shoppers because those nice cellophane wrapped bits of protein don't look like an animal and they won't have to think abiout what they are eating. Surely the exact opposite of what you are trying to do for them?
As a poultry breeder, I get really angry when people breed a clutch of chicks because "it is educational for the children" then refuse to cull and eat the cockerels which hatch, end up asking me if I know of a cockerel rescue anywhere because they cannot bear to kill them, yet happily go to the supermarket to buy vile factory farmed frozen chicken who have lived a short and miserable life and a stressful and slow end.
In effect, very similar to what you are allowing your daughters to dictate you should do with your lambs. Not eat what you have reared, but to eat anonymous lamb, reared and slaughtered in a manner you don't know about.
Please take control. You are the parent, you call the shots and eating your own livestock is educating them about being responsible about the meat they eat.
FArmers and smallholders children all over the country learn from their parents that meat comes from the animals they rear. If your children think that sheep are "sweet wikkle lambkins" and the meat they eat comes from supermarkets, then I'm afraid it is because they have learned it from you.
One alternative might be to buy some ewes, hire a ram in Autumn and breed your own. That way they get to make pets of the ewes and not get attached to the lambs destined for the table. I have kept and bred poultry, goats and pigs all my life. My breeding stock were also much loved pets, but my son knew that anything they produced were going to have a short and happy life before they became food.
I have to mention, that when he left home he became vegetarian. Not because he hated killing animals to eat, but because he could not bear to eat anything he had not known had been reared and slaughtered properly, with care and dignity.
I hope you manage to educate the girls into how meat gets on their plates. It will be good for them and you know, they have a huge sense of pride eating what they helped to produce. Swap some lamb for some free range pork off someone who rears a couple of weaners and teach them to make sausages, ham etc. Budding self sufficientists of the future and to hell with Tescos and the rest.
