Lol, I wrote this in a thread at the TP and liked it so much I'm putting it here for prosperity

[gemfyre]

Tail docking in sheep is a practicality. If you only have a few sheep I believe you should be willing to clean them up, but when you have a sheep station with millions of sheep then tail docking is the only way to go if you don't want to have your sheep dying from flystrike all the time, you can't wipe the bums of a million sheep. :)

Comments

well actually

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe people shouldn't have large quanties of animals if they cannot look after them properly? Why is it any different to docking of dogs tails which has been proven to cause pain & suffering? For that matter you can't watch yoru children all of the time & sometimes children get fingers caught in doors which causes them pain and suffering, maybe we shoudl chop off childrens fingers just in case?

Read "Pulling The Wool" by Christine Townsend. Also biologically some animals are naturally less likely to get fly strike, so if you dock all the tails of all the sheep you don't know which animals they are, hence weakening the genetics of your flock.

Given that humans have no biological need for wool or mutton, and the great environmental impact cloven hoofed animals have had on the Australian environment you shouldn't have millions of sheep running around anyway.

- your friendly local animal libber :)

Re: well actually

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

I also agree that there shouldn't be cloven hooved animals farmed here.
In an ideal world we would all still be hunter/gatherers, but unfortunately we invented agriculture and things went downhill from there.

We _should_ farm roos and crocs and emus and other native animals that provide various resources and don't destroy the countryside. But there were always be bleeding hearts screaming "oh no not our cute kangaroos!" not realising that the things breed like bunnies and a damn site better for Australia than sheep and cows.

In all practicality people ARE going to farm sheep in Australia for a few years yet. And it's better to put them through the brief pain of tail docking then having them die left right and centre from flystrike.

http://pub136.ezboard.com/fmlptpmessageboardsfrm5.showMessage?topicID=12777.topic
that's the thread that started it all. Feel free to leave a comment on it if you like :) I'm sure you'll have something to say.

[leemur.livejournal.com]

If sheep having tails causes them to get flystruck and die, how did they manage to get by before human intervention?

Re:

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

sheep are native to cooler climates that don't have the huge amounts of flies that Australia has. :)