We often get phone calls desiring information on raising European Mouflon Sheep.  When it comes to books, videos or the internet, there is very little information out there.  We hope we can help give some understanding on some of the basics of maintaining and medicating European Mouflon Sheep.

  Many times European Mouflon Sheep are categorized with Corsican Sheep, Black Hawaiian Sheep, Texas Dall and Barbado Sheep.  These sheep are hybrids developed from Mouflons.

  European Mouflon Sheep are a true wild sheep.  They should be categorized with the Rocky Mountain Big Horn, Alaskan Dall, Stone Sheep, Iranian Red Sheep, Armenian Mouflon, Marco Polo Argali and all other wild sheep.

  Although European Mouflon Sheep are distant kin to Corsican Sheep, Black Hawaiian and Texas Dall we cannot use the usual practices of maintaining and medicating them in the same manner.

  Mouflons are very hardy animals.  Mouflons adapt well where it is very hot or where it is very cold.  Usually wherever they are they are thriving, unlike many of the other wild sheep that are struggling to survive.

  Mouflons are basically a maintenance free animal.  They do not require a lot of space. We raise and produce our sheep in small 1 to 2 acre pens.  We fence our pens with a 4 1/2  foot net wire with two barb wire strands over the top.

  When it comes to fences, Mouflons are usually not bad about jumping over and out.  At this time of writing we have never had one to jump out.

  When Mouflons settle in and make up their minds that this is their home they will usually calm down and take up with the herd you have put them with.
  Whether you have a high fence or a low fence we recommend that you build a catch pen within your enclosure.  We feed in our catch pens on a daily basis.  This makes it easier when we get ready to catch them.  After you build your catch pens it may take a few days to get them to go in and eat, but they will go in and eat sooner or later.

  The catch pens need to be very strong and solid.  It needs to be built where the sheep cannot see out.  If they can see out it will cause them to try to run through the fence.  But, if it is solid it will help them to calm down much faster.

  When you plan to catch your Mouflons you need to take several things into consideration.  One of these things is that they are not domestic sheep or hybrids, but true wild sheep.  Considering that they are wild, and I may add very wild, you need to catch them as fast as possible.  The longer it takes the more stressful it is on the sheep.

  Another thing you want to consider is lambs in the herd.  If you do have lambs, make sure you wait until they are about 4 months old or older.  If lambs are smaller they risk being trampled on by the adult sheep.

  The alternative to catching your Mouflons in a catch pen is to tranquilize them. If you have not bought a tranquilizing gun yet, I recommend that you do so.  Sooner or later you will need one.  It is better to be prepared than to wait and try to borrow someone’s dart gun.

  In buying a tranquilizing gun I would recommend a rifle over a pistol.  Pistols and blowpipes are good with short distances, but Mouflons will usually be a little further out.

  Besides buying a rifle, you also need to buy books, videos and ask a lot of questions where you can educate yourself before you dart one of your animals.
 
 

  Tranquilizing is a good and humane way to capture your Mouflons.  At first you may be like myself.  I was very hesitant about darting one of our sheep, fearing that I might kill one of them.  But, now after darting Mouflons, cows, antelopes and deer, I treat it as a routine way of capturing our sheep.

  Mouflons are very strong and vigilant animals.  Once they are darted they will try to fight the medication and usually it will take a while for your Mouflons to go down and out.

  A mature ram usually needs about 3 cc’s of  Rompun.  Rompun is one of the safest drugs on the market for tranquilizing animals.  It may take a little longer for the drug to take its effect, but you probably will not lose any of your animals.

  As we have stated before, Mouflons are very hardy and basically are maintenance free.  They resist diseases far better than most wild and domestic sheep.  Parasites are the only thing that you must watch for.  If I have one sheep that shows sign of being wormy, I may choose to treat her by herself or I may treat the whole herd she is with.  Most parasite problems are stomach worms and if one is having problems the rest of the herd may also be having problems.

If I treat the whole herd, I usually get the needed dosage of Ivomec for the whole herd and then apply it on their feed.  This will usually take care of the problem.  This is a lot easier than trying to catch each one of them and give them a shot.

If I am going to treat just one animal, then I will get a tranquilizing dart and put 1 cc of Ivomec into the dart.  I then dart the animal and it is treated without having to catch it.

“Feeding Your Mouflons”

  If  you have your Mouflons on a bigger pasture you may not have to feed them hay.  But, in small patches and pens I would recommend feeding them hay especially in the winter.

  What is good hay for cattle is often not liked by Mouflons.  One example is  Coastal Bermuda hay is good hay for cattle. Our Mouflons will eat it if they don’t have another choice, but they waste too much.

  We have found that they like a wider leaf type grass hay.  Stems don’t bother them, it seems like they like stemmy types of hay even better.  Alfalfa hay, Soybean hay, Sudan hay, Johnson grass hay are some of their favorites. These types of hay digest better for them than your small fine leaf types of grass.  This often wads up in their stomach and takes longer to digest.

  Hay, feed and water are essential for a good healthy herd of Mouflons.

  We recommend that you feed a good pellet with your hay.  Your feed needs to be between 14 to 18 percent protein.  Corn and other grains are good but need to be supplemented with a pellet to raise the protein level.  Many of your deer, sheep and goat pellets would be a good choice to feed.

  Many time's people will not feed enough protein in their feed to their ewes, thinking they don’t need as much as rams do.  We were told by a nutritionist that our ewes wouldn’t need as much protein in their feed as would our rams in our ram’s pens.  The nutritionist was right, the ewes did fine but the ram that we were using as our herd sire didn’t do as well.  Oh he was healthy, but his horns didn’t grow near as fast as the rams that were getting 18 percent protein.  We now feed basically the same to all of our sheep, about 18 percent protein.

  Pure Mouflons are not an animal that you can go to a typical exotic sale and buy.  From time to time you may see some pure Mouflons at exotic sales, but it is not something you can plan on.  Matter of fact, pure Mouflons are somewhat rare and difficult to find.

  Understanding that pure Mouflon sheep are a rarity, we as breeders need to manage our herds for purity.  Pure Mouflons are much more valuable than the hybrids that are out there.  Many of these hybrids are sold and hunted as pure Mouflons.  Because of this it even makes it harder to find people that are raising pure European Mouflon Sheep.  As breeders, we must manage our herds and not allow any hybrid stock to mix in with our pure Mouflons.  We must keep a strong genetic pool of pure Mouflons to offer to other Mouflon breeders.

  As a European Mouflon breeder, we strive to offer pure Mouflons, but also world class genetics.  We feel it is very important to keep good records of our breeding stock.

  At the time we have two breeding herds of Mouflons.  We keep only one ram with each herd.  This way we can tell our customers exactly what the breeding of the sheep is that they purchase.

  To give an example of our typical breeding stock, we are able to tell our customer that the sheep they purchase are out of rams that their daddy was imported from a zoo from the Netherlands, and that their mother came from the Ft. Worth Zoo.  We are able to tell them that for generations on both sides that rams horns exceeded 30 inches.

  When we keep records like these we can keep good genetic pools available for one another.  You can see why it is needful to keep only one ram with your herd to be able to do so.

  It is also better for your herd to only have one ram with the herd.  If you have more than one ram you will have them fighting one another and sometimes having younger rams get hurt seriously.

  We have a ram pen.  In this pen we have rams of all ages, because we have no ewes with them they very seldom fight seriously, only sparring with one another from time to time.

   In keeping records of our sheep we document age, color, tail length, horn measurement and where we send these animals.  When they leave here being sold to someone else we still try to keep up with their progress.

 I often document our Mouflons by taking videos with their summer coats and their winter coats.  We also take a lot of pictures of them at different stages of maturing.  We recently took some pictures of a 3 1/2 month old ram with a small white saddle patch.  We keep these pictures and information for our customers to see.
 

  Mouflon lambs need to be caught within 48 hours after birth if you plan on bottle feeding them.  If they are much older than that they will be difficult to catch, as they are very fast.

  As far as bottle feeding them, they are not much different than a fawn.  Of course, you want to make sure that they suckled their mothers before you take them.   One of the biggest differences between Mouflons and fawns is that the Mouflon lamb needs to be handled more than the fawn does.  I take our lambs walking for a 1/2 mile to 2 miles a day when they are about 4 to 6 weeks old.  This will help them bond to you even more.

  To successfully have them bond to you, you cannot keep two of them together while they are small.  They will bond to one another.  They will not be gentle if they bond to another Mouflon lamb.  It takes a little more work, but we keep our lambs separate.  After they are grown these lambs will follow you anywhere you want them to go.

  Mouflon lambs are usually no problem when you are bottle feeding them.  The main area to watch is their stool.  Their stools will turn into pellets about one week after birth.  If their stools become loose there is usually four areas to consider.

  One is that their formula may be too strong.  You can experiment by adding more water to the formula.

  Two is that they may have begun to eat grass.  This will pass fairly soon.

  Three is it could be stomach worms.  I treat my lambs usually beginning at 4 to 6 weeks old.  I put their medicine in their milk to treat them.
 Four is the most serious.  It is also a parasite problem called Coccidiosis.  This is much worse than stomach worms.  We use Corrid again treated in their milk.  This will usually take care of this problem.  Most of the time it will take a little while for the lambs to begin to have their stool hardened to make pellets again.

  Once you begin to raise Mouflons on the bottle it is a lot of fun.  They are very smart  very playful animals, and as affectionate as any dog or cat.