Re-establishing the pecking order

This is ram jail, where the rams spend time  getting re-acquainted after being shorn and having been taken away from their respective groups of ewes.  Putting them in close quarters prevents the serious injury that could occur if they had room to back up and bash each other. The rams spent about 36 hours here and another 12 in the double-size pen.  This morning I let them out into their regular ram pen. There was still some tussling, but it was relatively mild.

It was obvious to figure out who was #1. Savor and Tioga are the yearling ewes and Savor has the top spot. He didn't let anyone forget it.

Tioga didn't put up much of a fight. If he acted as aggressive as Savor there would have been trouble.

Tioga protected himself but did not challenge Savor.

Savor thinks he's hot stuff...

...but he's not finished yet. Granite is the two horn ram lamb who is shying away from Savor's  show of authority. Granite is #3 under Tioga but there were a few challenges between them. I think that Granite will be ready to try again for the #2 spot after he is a little bigger. Tioga comes from  mild-mannered ancestors. His sire, Ranger had his skull fractured by Houdini, a very aggressive ram I had a few years ago.  Ranger healed and was always a well-mannered ram, as was his father, Rocky.

Savor is still not satisfied.

Savor and Tioga are still tussling here. Notice that Granite is confronting Diego, another 2-horned ram lamb (in 4th place ranking). Do you see the lowest ranking ram? That's the 4-horn ram lamb from Michigan. However, what the other rams don't realize, is that Clint actually had the last ewe to breed to himself. While the rams were in "jail" one of the ewe lambs approached the pen wagging her stubby tail. I took Clint out and he took care of the job quickly before he had to go back in with the bullies.

Now it seems that its OK to hang out together. This reminds me of an article that I just read in Smithsonian magazine--it was all about he social hierarchy of male elephants. Lots of posturing. That avoids some of the bloodshed.