Arapawa Experience

Bareneck and Mama when they first arrived

We first decided to get Arapawa sheep because they are supposed to be relatively easy to keep on a small block. As they are feral sheep from Arapawa Island, they don't need a lot of maintenance. You don't have to worry about their feet, don't need to dock them, and don't even need to shear them if you don't want to.

Unfortunately, because of where they have come from, they are also very smart, fast and wild! The weekend after we first moved in, our 2 pregnant ewes arrived, named 'Mama' (because she supposedly had twins often) and 'bareneck' (because the wool around her neck had come off). Along with them came 3 year old ram, Splotch.

Splotch

From what we understand, Splotch was the pet of a girl, and he got out of hand. We were told they didn't have enough room for him, but when he was being picked up, they mentioned they were scared of him. He was very friendly, coming over for a pat at the fence... that lasted a day! Suddenly one morning, he just went crazy while Dave was feeding him pellets. From that moment on, we could not get in the same paddock with him, even at opposite ends. Not only was he like that when you were in the paddock, but he also would start charging the fenceposts and breaking them if we were even in the backyard. With a new puppy running around, we decided to swap him for a quieter ram.

Our new ram remained unnamed. He was quiet and gentle, and rather impressive looking. This one lasted about 2 hours. We were outside digging the vegetable garden, when we heard a noise. The ram had jumped the fence into the neighbours paddock. This started a 2 hour ordeal over 3 properties, ending up on a cliff face. This ram jumped everything, including a deer fence! Although we liked him, we couldn't keep him contained and decided he needed a new home.

'Bareneck' had the first lamb on October 14 2009, which we still call 'Lamby' (the photo on the previous post is him). Lamby became an orphan at 3 weeks old. We ended up tying him to the fence for a little under a week until he was used to us giving him milk, and since then he has become our best friend. We decided to castrate Lamby, because we wanted to keep our first lamb, but didn't want him to end up like his father Splotch!

Mama unexpectedly gave birth to a tiny little ewe lamb on new years day. We are still a bit concerned about her, and have already had to catch her and clean her up to stop her getting sick. We had given up expecting Mama to have a lamb, considering Lamby was born nearly 3 months ago! Mama is quite wild and grumpy, and we would have sold her too if we could catch her, so lucky we didn't!

After our 2 Arapawa rams, we decided we would not continue to choose the breed. We'd had 2 boys who we couldn't keep for safety reasons, one ewe that died, and another who is very wild! We wanted a quiet, friendly breed... Arapawa's weren't it! We will keep the 3 Arapawa's we have, 2 are our first lambs, and we would quite like an arapawa x dorper and see what that's like!

Next time, meet our dorpers!