Sheep and Goats
Sheep and Goats in Their Natural Environment
In nature, sheep and goats live in secluded mountain grasslands, where they spend the vast majority of their time grazing the diverse landscape. Bound by their desire for fresh stream water and foraging, they wander through the lush hills, stimulated by a great variety of sights, smells, sounds, and tastes. Both sheep and goats have evolved to be extremely dependent on a herd lifestyle, so much so that a solitary individual will quickly lose interest in grazing and become weak. In fact, nearly all of their tendencies can be traced back to their intensely gregarious social lifestyle.
Like cows, sheep and goats are ruminants. They spend up to 10 hours grazing each day, followed by an equal amount of time ruminating – part of a digestive process in which fibrous plant material is stored in one chamber of the stomach (the rumen), fermented by bacteria, then periodically regurgitated and re-chewed. During this time, the animals appear noticeably relaxed as they groom themselves and each other.
Although sheep and goats are virtually defenseless, they have many physical adaptations that help them evade their predators. The combination of widely spaced eyes and large rectangular pupils allows for incredible peripheral vision. With the slightest movement of their head, they can spot a potential predator in the distance without drawing their attention. They communicate through a series of low-pitched vocalizations, tilting their ears to determine the source and location. Of all their keen senses, none is more vital to their survival than their acute sense of smell. Whether searching for nutritious foods, recognizing the smell of a potential predator in the air, identifying females* who are in estrus (ready to mate), or picking out their offspring amongst dozens of identical young, a powerful sense of smell is an essential tool for survival.
“Sheep” is a generic term, referring to ewes (females), rams (males), and their offspring (lambs). Similarly, the term “goat” refers to does (females), bucks (males), and their offspring (kids). In late autumn, when there are fewer daylight hours, a ewe begins to secrete larger doses of melatonin, a hormone responsible for initiating the reproductive cycle. After mating, she experiences a five-month pregnancy culminating with a strong instinct to isolate herself from the herd. In the minutes after birth, she gently nuzzles her baby and intently licks their fur until it is clean and dry. The baby, using their sensitive lips and nose, signals the desire to suckle. When the time is right, the mother will use her head to help her baby stand for the first time. In between bouts of play and socializing, young lambs and kids watch their mothers carefully to learn about their surroundings and how to survive.
Sheep on Animal Farms
On animal farms, sheep and goats are confined in restricted pastures and crowded feedlots. Unlike their wild relatives, they never know the freedom of wandering for miles through diverse landscapes. Domesticated sheep and goats have been selectively bred over many years with an emphasis on breeding out survival instincts and positively selecting faster growth, thicker “wool,” and more milk. Over the past several decades, the market for these products has expanded throughout the world despite the fact that overall consumption is decreasing. In an effort to out-compete nations in the Global South, the U.S. and other countries farming sheep and goats in the West are turning to science.
In recent years, manipulating an animal’s environment has become standard practice for ensuring profitability. In an effort to supply “meat” for a large springtime demand, the industry often forces sheep to give birth in the winter. In order to reverse their natural breeding habits, which are stimulated by exposure to sunlight, the sheep may be kept indoors where light can be artificially controlled. In these cases, as the artificial light is gradually increased, the females begin to secrete increasing levels of melatonin. Alternatively, farms will manipulate ewes by isolating them from all contact with males and then introducing a male, which triggers the females’ estrus cycle off-season.[1]
Sheep have also been bred to produce unnatural quantities of “wool.” While wild sheep shed most of their “wool” each year, which is essential to their survival, humans have manipulated many domesticated sheep to endlessly grow more “wool.”[2]
The process of “wool” shearing is much more traumatic than most people realize. It is well-documented that the combination of restraint, along with the pressure and heat from the shears, causes significant elevations in sheep’s cortisol levels–the primary indicator of fear.[3, 4] Unlike other procedures, shearing remains a great source of anxiety and stress for the sheep each time it is performed.
Sheep raised for “wool” and “meat” also face a variety of painful mutilations. Some of the practices are aimed at reducing the risk of fly strike, where a fly lays eggs in feces that is stuck to the sheep’s rear end. Once the eggs hatch, the larva can enter the sheep’s body and cause a painful death. The industry has created a cruel practice to “solve” this problem. More than 80% of the lambs raised in the U.S. have their tails cut off at an early age.[5] This common practice is considered necessary to keep feces from accumulating in sheep’s “wool”; this of course is only necessary because of the conditions they live in. In many cases, tails are cut too short, and the lambs suffer rectal prolapse in which their tail muscles weaken causing their rectum to protrude from their anus.
The majority of male lambs are castrated to eliminate the risk of unplanned breeding and to tame natural behaviors.[6] The castration is performed without anesthetics, using a common scalpel or a variety of scissor-like tools. In some cases, an extremely tight rubber ring is placed over their scrotum, causing their testicles to drop off after several days.
Due to a variety of factors, nearly 20% of young lambs do not survive to the time of weaning.[7] Those who do survive are killed at 8 weeks to 15 months old.[8] If they have so-called “desirable” qualities, sheep may live for several years and breed many times before being killed.
Goats on Animal Farms
Raising goats for milk has become a popular option for small-scale and part-time dairy farmers.[9] Many of the same cruelties suffered by cows raised for milk are inflicted upon goats used for milk. Female goats endure relentless cycles of forced impregnation through artificial insemination, giving birth, and being milked.[10].
After a doe gives birth, her kids are taken away to be raised for “meat” (or raised for milk if they are female). Their mother’s milk is ironically considered too valuable for her babies to consume and it is sold as a human commodity. So, instead of being allowed to nurse from her, the kids are given a milk replacer – sometimes even a goat milk replacer is considered too expensive and they are fed a cow milk replacer instead.[11, 12]
At one to three weeks of age, the kids’ developing horns are painfully burned to a stump using a red-hot dehorner.[13, 14] Goats use their horns to protect themselves, so one reason goat milk farmers remove goats’ horns is to take away their ability to defend themselves when being handled on the farms.[13, 14] Farmers also claim that goats in shared housing can injure each other with their horns, but this is only an issue because of the cramped conditions goats are forced to live in.[14]
Goat milk is a small industry in the United States, so goat dairies tend to be significantly smaller than cow-based dairies. However, goal milk production in the United States is becoming more industrialized each year. In countries with larger commercial goat dairies, such as Australia and India, both of which export goat milk to the U.S., goats may be intensively housed and unable to express their natural behaviors, leading to frustration and distress.[15] Moreover, a 2019 investigation of one Australian goat dairy revealed newborn goats screaming in pain as their horns were burned off, while at another dairy, newborn males were bludgeoned to death in front of their mothers, since the males are considered “surplus.”[16, 17]
When a doe is no longer producing a profitable volume of milk, she is sent to be slaughtered.
The Trauma of Transportation to Slaughterhouses
The process of transporting sheep and goats to a slaughtering facility is likely the most traumatic experience of their brief life. One by one they are loaded into large trucks where they huddle together in fear for the final hours of their lives. Current laws allow transporters to travel up to 28 consecutive hours without a rest period. For sheep, this period is extended to 36 hours if the 28-hour period ends at night. The fine for violating this law is a mere $100 to $500.[18] During this time, the animals are deprived of food and water. Throughout the journey, the sheep and goats sense a multitude of unfamiliar sounds and smells, and often travel through extreme weather conditions.
When the sheep and goats arrive at the slaughtering facility, they are unloaded, weighed, and placed in a restraining chute. Before being slaughtered, each animal is supposed to be rendered unconscious. The goal is to penetrate their brain but not sever their brain stem. If their brain stem is severed, then their heart would stop pumping blood and the animal would not bleed out as quickly or completely. The tool most commonly used for this procedure is a captive bolt pistol. The pistol is placed firmly against the animal’s forehead and fired. A pointed bolt penetrates their brain causing the animal to spasm uncontrollably, and then collapse.
After being shackled by a hind leg and raised off the ground, the sheep or goat is cut from their stomach to their throat and left to bleed. As if being slaughtered weren’t already terrifying enough, many regain some degree of consciousness during the bleeding process.
Although the demand for sheep and goat “meat” has been steadily declining for many years, 2.2 million sheep and over 600,000 goats were slaughtered for their flesh in 2020 in the U.S. alone.[19]
The Killing of Wildlife
Sheep and goats are not the only animals who experience the downsides of the domestication process. Absurdly, an increasing number of wild animals are killed each year to protect animals raised for human consumption. Under the guise of “Wildlife Services” – formerly “Animal Damage Control” – the U.S. government subsidizes massive hunts to eradicate native predators from the surrounding woodlands and grasslands. More than 1.5 million wild animals were killed by Wildlife Services in 2020, including coyotes, bears, wolves, bobcats and mountain lions who were killed to protect the profits of sheep and goat farmers.[20, 21] These keystone predators are invaluable to the local ecosystem where they play an integral role in keeping all other animal populations in balance.
The Harm of Animal Farms
Animal farms operate based on a theory of minimal care for individual animals. At every stage, the animal’s true nature is manipulated, suppressed, and disregarded in an effort to drive down costs and maximize profit. Producing “meat,” milk, and “wool” as cheaply as possible has many devastating implications for the animals. Millions of years of evolution and countless adaptations are largely ignored because they would decrease the efficiency of production.
What You Can Do
Go vegan: If you have access to healthy foods, choose a vegan lifestyle. Going vegan (including refraining from wearing animal products such as “wool”) is one of the most direct ways to help end these cruel practices and the suffering of sheep, goats, other non-human animals, and the workers exploited by the animal agriculture industry.
*Note: We are using the terminology “male” and “female” because it is the language we have available at this time to describe how the industry exploits non-human animals based on their assigned sex. We recognize that humans and non-human animals do not fall into a binary of only two biological sexes.