02/11/2026
Well said. That’s why we keep records.
Fool Me Once: Culling, Records, and the Lies We Tell Ourselves
By Tim from Linessa Farms
Sheep and goats are creatures of habit — especially when it comes to mothering.
You get good dams and bad dams.
Some ewes and does are attentive and calm.
Some are aggressive and overly protective.
Some are hands-off but consistent.
And then there are the problem animals.
Poor milk production.
Repeated birthing issues.
Leaving lambs or kids to stand at the feeder.
Prolapse.
Structural problems.
Chronic “something always goes wrong” females.
Those patterns don’t come out of nowhere.
They repeat.
That’s the part people don’t like to face.
⸻
-When “bad luck” keeps happening-
I recently talked with a friend dealing with struggling lambs.
The ewe doesn’t make enough milk.
Panic mode kicks in.
Now he’s got two bottle babies he doesn’t have time for and a female that still can’t do her job.
Somewhere in the frustration he says,
“Yeah, we always have problems with her.”
That sentence tells you everything.
If you always have problems with an animal, that’s not bad luck.
That’s a record — even if you never wrote it down.
Here’s where it usually goes sideways.
He really likes how the offspring look.
Twin ewe lambs.
Flashy.
Easy to justify keeping.
Next year there’s a good chance he isn’t dealing with one problem female —
he’s dealing with three.
That’s not genetics biting you.
That’s selection biting you.
⸻
-Memory lies. Records don’t.-
Most wrecks in sheep and goat operations don’t come from ignorance.
They come from selective memory.
People remember the one decent year.
They forget the assisted birth.
They downplay the bottle feeding.
They excuse the poor milk.
“If I don’t write it down, it’s easy to convince myself it wasn’t that bad.”
If your system relies on “I’ll remember,” it isn’t a system — it’s hope.
And hope is how problems quietly get bred forward.
Records don’t exist to shame animals.
They exist to stop people from rewriting history.
⸻
-The sale barn and dispersal trap-
This is where a lot of people get burned.
Someone buys a mature ewe or doe with no records and no context —
often from a sale barn, dispersal, or “downsizing” herd.
They bring her home.
Lambing or kidding is a mess.
Then they say,
“Maybe she’ll do better next year.”
Meanwhile, they’ve probably just bought someone else’s cull.
Now they’ve sunk two years into feed, labor, frustration, and lost sleep trying to confirm what was already decided before that animal ever left the original farm.
That’s not patience.
That’s paying tuition for someone else’s bad decisions.
⸻
-Culling isn’t cruelty — it’s clarity-
Culling makes people uncomfortable because it forces honesty.
A ewe or doe that can’t raise her offspring isn’t evil.
She isn’t broken.
She just isn’t aligned with your operation.
Keeping her — or keeping her daughters — because you hope things improve doesn’t make you compassionate.
It makes your workload heavier and your outcomes worse.
Culling isn’t anger.
It isn’t punishment.
It’s editing.
It’s deciding what traits you’re willing to manage every year —
and which ones you refuse to keep teaching yourself to tolerate.
⸻
Animals tell the truth. People negotiate with it.
Animals are honest.
People are situational.
Deep down, most folks know when they’re dealing with a true exception and when they’re staring in the mirror. They just don’t like admitting it — especially when there’s money, pride, or a pretty set of lambs or kids involved.
Good sheep and goat operations aren’t built on hope.
They’re built on memory, records, and the willingness to act on what the animals are already telling you.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice?
That’s not bad luck.
That’s a management decision.
