What is a Male Sheep Called?

The male sheep called a Ram. The ram is the common name used for male sheep. But different parts of the world have different names at different ages.

A young male sheep is called a ram lamb. The male baby sheep that is under a year old can be called a ram lamb. The male sheep between one to two years is “yearling ram”. These are the rams that the breeder decides whether to keep them for breeding or cull them. Maintaining a good ram for breeding purposes is a costly affair.

Male Sheep Called

Best rams will be used for breeding purposes. Some of the rams will be castrated, if they are weak these rams are called wethers. The wethers are infertile rams that do not produce lambs. But primarily raised for meat. The wethers can be kept among ewes without any concern about an unplanned pregnancy.

The rams that are fit and healthy are used to produce lambs. The higher quality lambs can only be produced by the best rams. The ram mating with a ewe is called in certain parts of the world as “tupping“. Buck is the slang term for ram. In the United Kingdom, the ram is often called a tup.

An aggressive ram with high sex-drive needs to perform a vasectomy, these rams are called a teaser ram. These teaser rams encourage a flock of ewes to be estrus earlier than they might.

Rams do come with horns and few won’t. The Horned ram is the one that has horns and the one that doesn’t have horns is polled ram.

How long does it take a ram to mature?

The usual time the ram to mature is around 12 months. But it depends on genetics, breed, and nutrition. A ram lamb reaches puberty at the age of 5 to 8 months. But the sexual maturity or ready for breeding is only at the age of 1 year. Also, the ram should reach the breed standard weight to be ready for breeding.

Can a ram breed his mother?

The inbreeding practice is good and bad at the same time. In order to deliberately inbreed specific bloodlines to fix certain characteristics in the flock. But at the same time, it will increase the number of recessive genes that affect the breed in the long term.

Ram breeding his mother is always a bad idea. As the recessive genes will be carried over so always bring in new blood to the flock. The flock gets strong and also their resistance to diseases will increase.

Male Sheep	Male Sheep Called
Young Male Sheep	Ram Lamb
Castrated Male Sheep	Wether
Adult Male Sheep	Ram
Slang for Adult Male Sheep	Buck
Name for Male Sheep in the UK	Tup
Male Sheep Without Horns	Polled
Male Sheep With Horns	Horned

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