AgriCulture: Sheep Don't Vote?

The news is understandably still full of stories about the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Investigators want to know how much was planned ahead and orchestrated by leaders, and how much resulted from spontaneous combustion of the crowd. Historians have similarly parsed other episodes of communal violence, whether localized, like the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 and the Wilmington, North Carolina, massacre of 1898, or on a massive scale, like the genocidal ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, Bosnia and of course the Holocaust. The conclusions are always complex. There are always organizers, provocateurs and goaders, and there are those who never would have planned to do what they did, maybe even regretted their actions, but were carried away by being part of a group in the moment.

Recognizing the complexity of human motivation, and how fluid the boundaries are between our individual senses of purpose and our desires to be part of our group, our legal system will expend significant resources trying to figure out who was a leader and who was a follower or unwitting collaborator on January 6. The examination is critical in determining who to charge with a crime, and what crime is charged. It’s how we assess blame and signal how members of our society must behave.

Shouldn’t we assume that our animal cousins share a complex range of motivations as well? I keep coming across animal studies in the popular press, like the article in this week’s New York Times entitled “Goats Don’t Vote” which suggest otherwise: that each species has one predominant model of decision making. This week’s article was based on a study in Wales of a herd of goats on which GPS tracking devices had been placed. It suggested that the primary way goats make “herd” decisions, such as where to move, is to simply copy what other goats do. The scientists reached this conclusion because the tracking devices showed that the goats did not orient themselves to face in the same direction before moving, which they would have done if a “discussion” of some sort had preceded the decision. To me, this seems scant evidence on which to based such a conclusion, but when you observe such a thin slice of behavior, I guess you don’t have much else to go on.

The article linked to previous articles, such as “Sneezing Dogs, Dancing Bees: How Animals Vote.” which described species, including meerkats and honey bees, where sounds or dances preceded a group move. The meerkats would mew when they thought it time to go. When enough of their compatriots mewed back, the group would move. Essentially, the group reached consensus.

I suspect that the reality of group decision making for any species is far more complex than the terms “vote” or “copy” convey. Even with sheep, who are so herd-oriented that we describe people who just go along with group-think as behaving like sheep, I observe all sorts of aberration from the sheepish norm, every day at feeding time.

It is impossible, with a group of animals that crave grain the way I crave chocolate, to distribute handfuls of feed into individual feed bowls while they are with me. I need to clear the sheep from at least a portion of the barn in order to place the feed without pandemonium ensuing. I’ve tried to teach them to cooperate in that process with some predictable signals.

First, I turn on the overhead lights in the barn, which on these gray low light days creates an immediate change in their environment. Then, as I enter the barn, I start clapping my gloved hands. Usually, but not always, they understand this signal and start moving for the exits. On nice days, they go out either the open east or south barn doors. On days of inclement weather when they prefer not to go out, they at least move to the barn’s south vestibule, where I can close them out of the rest of the barn.

Usually the lights and clapping suffice to produce movement, but sometimes the group will look at me, seeming to look right through me, and stand their ground. If one or two don’t go, none will go, and I have to get more aggressive about moving around, clapping my hands, and bellowing “outside, outside”, sometimes resorting to pushing a few in the right direction.

While the majority of the group is likely to follow the first few, it is hardly a universal response. It is inevitable that Sophie, the youngest of our bottle fed ewes, instead of following the group will approach to sniff my pants and be petted. In contrast, the trouble-making ram, Nazim, before he was sent off to auction a couple of weeks ago, would take the opportunity to charge me. When I first entered the barn, and the space between me and him was occupied like a crowded subway car by a sea of ewes, such an aggression was impossible. But once the group moved the field was open to him, and following the crowd was never as important to him as showing his dominance. Meanwhile, Nilufer, Ayse and Pepse, my dearest ewes, would almost always hang back from following the group, hoping their special bonds with me would give them some sort of first dibs on the grain treat.

On days when they all go to the vestibule, I sometimes forget to close the east door of the barn. When the ground is snow covered, I assume they would rather not walk around to come back through that door. But one ewe, number 45 (known by her ear tag number because we sold her to another farm years ago and when that other farm decided to stop raising sheep and returned her to us we had forgotten her name, but also because after our last President I can barely stand to enunciate the name of any being numbered 45), has always proved to be rather resourceful and intelligent. She will inevitably move from the vestibule out to the south pasture, through the fence to the east pasture, and sneak back through the farm door to get first access to the grain treat. I’ve noticed in the last week that a second yearling ewe has learned to follow her, leaving the entire rest of the herd behind. From this, I deduce that movement by one or two sheep, at least these two, is insufficient to induce copying by the rest of the herd. For their part, those two sneaky sheep care far less about remaining part of the herd than about their greed for grain.

Thus, even in animals pigeon-holed as the most herd-oriented in the animal kingdom, it seems there is significant individual variation in priorities, motivations, intelligence and decision making. They may not be as smart as us, but they’re smart enough to be good or evil, loners or group oriented, and to have appetites for different satisfactions. As we try to understand animal behavior, the individual variations deserve examination.

WHAT’S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK

Cheese pumpkins, $1/lb

EGGS: production has doubled, feel free to order, $5/doz

MEATS:

CHICKENS: They were quite uniform in size, all just around 6 lbs, a few under. We’ve already had one and the freedom rangers have been what you want them to be, deeply flavorful. They are now frozen. $6/lb. Separately, bags of chicken livers, also $6/lb.

FARM PICKUPS:

Email us your order at [email protected], and let us know when you’d like to pick up your order. It will be put out for you on the side screened porch of the farmhouse (110 Lasher Ave., Germantown) in a bag. You can leave cash or a check in the now famous pineapple on the porch table. Because I’m now here full time, we’re abandoning regular pick-up times. Let us know when you want your order any day between 10 and 5, and unless there are unusual circumstances we’ll be able to ready it to your convenience. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to call or text at 917-544-6464 or email.