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Old 01-11-2007, 11:56 PM   #22
Hoof Hearted
...you smell something?
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Monroe, GA
Posts: 420
The posted picture does not show 300 ewes, and I've seen sheep ranching, shearing, and butchering operations with wooden pens holding hundreds to thousands of sheep crowing each other so tightly the dogs had to walk on the backs of the sheep to get across the pen to do their work of cutting animals out for sorting.

I cannot dispute that the animals are dead, they certainly are, but it seems improbable to me that they died in the manner they are claimed to have...trampoling seems most likely...but again, I find it odd that they are in a single layer and not piled or overlapping.

My reasoning behind thinking sheep could not squeeze other sheep up against an immoveable wall is because of their short legs and lack of leverage and weight. Animals are going to stand. Some will lean, but most will keep their legs under them. It is instinctive. If you are off balance, you could fall and die. Period. All animals want to stand upright to survive. They do not want to be down, and especially upside-down is anathema to them.
I would expect that sheep at the outer edge of a herd WILL press away from whatever is stimulating them. The other sheep (away from the stimulation) are not going to react very much at all. As soon as they are out of sight of the stimulation (stupid sheep) out-of-sight-out-of-mind, they will just stand. Their wool will create the buffer needed to breathe. The few leaning sheep are not enough weight to crush other sheep up against a wall.

These ewes appear to have died where they stood. Asphyxiation from air displacement seems likely, as stated...but I feel poisoning from contaminated feed could also be a likely culprit and could cause them to die en mass in a single layer.
I'd like to know what a necropsy had to say about cause of death...
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