The Soay Sheep Chronicles

Not much changes from year to year in the lore about hoof trimming for sheep and other cloven-footed animals:  use sharp clippers, trim a little at a time so you do not cut through the “quick,” try to create a platform for each hoof so the animal can walk without a hitch in its step.  If your Soay are on wet or soft ground all the time, they will need their hooves trimmed at least once, and probably several times, a year.  Sheep that must walk over gravel, or even dry sand, during part or all of the year usually do not need a pedicure more than annually.

We trim our flock’s hooves at the time we give them their annual Covexin-8 boosters, also a good time to check for runny stools (a sign of worms), ram horns that may be curling in and need trimming (uncommon, but not a big deal when it happens), and a general look at the animals’ health.  You can find a pretty good description of the process in an earlier post on this blog:  here.

Earlier this week we were working our rams and I happened to capture a few pictures that address two of the questions we have received since I put up that earlier post.

FAIRY SLIPPERS: LONG HOOF TIPS ON YOUNG SOAY SHEEP

Normally we do not need to trim our lambs’ feet until they are a year old, which means our ram lambs have their first trim at about age 15 months when we conduct our annual Working of the Rams.  Although the main “platform” of their hooves stays ground down, they often have long points at the tips of their hooves, what we call “fairy slippers,” as though someone pulled straight out on the ends, creating a turned-up hoof tip that looks like the fairy or jester shoes in movies and cartoons.  Here’s a somewhat ratty-looking example:

Yearling Soay ram's fairy slippers

As you can see, Saltmarsh Tarleton’s fairy slippers had started to wear off and break before trimming day arrived.  So far, we have not had any problems with rams tripping over their fairy slippers, and since the main part of their hooves stays relatively flat for the first year, we do not find it necessary to schedule a special mid-year hoof trim for our ram lambs — one less chore during the winter.

RAM DEMEANOR:  CAN I REALLY TRIM MY RAMS’ HOOVES WITHOUT GETTING HURT?

Yes, and the more you do it, the easier it becomes.  Hoof trimming is neither an art nor a science; it is simply a task that takes practice.

Because we regularly walk among our sheep, including the rams, when it comes time to work the rams they more or less cooperate.  The “more” half of the equation is that if your Soay sheep, rams included, are comfortable having you close to them on a regular basis, they will put up much less fuss when you want to get even closer and more personal.  The “less” part is that no matter how much time you spend among your sheep, they still do not like to be caught, and they will put up resistance to having their hooves trimmed if you try to conduct the pedicure with the ram standing up and the person with the trimmer kneeling beside the ram.  That is asking for a pair of broken glasses or a nice bruise on your face.

We have tried a number of different setups for trimming hooves, including sheep chairs.  The sheep chair worked okay for our very large North American rams and it must be wonderful for working the big hulking Suffolks, but it is way to big and unwieldy for our British ewes and rams; they slide down in it, wriggle around, and basically it is useless.  Before we had the sheep chair, Steve used to put a bale of hay in the catchpen and put the rams up on their butts, with their backs resting on Steve’s chest.  This year, he decided to go back to that tried and true method, and it worked just fine as long as he positioned the bale, the ram, and his own rear end in a way that put the ram’s hooves in position.  (It helped a lot that we had Shawn working the rams with Steve, and I highly recommend drafting the nearest strong young person you can find to help with this chore).

The bottom line here (sorry) is to be sure the ram is squarely on his back end.  If you do that, he will be calm enough; he will not get away; and he will not be able to land a direct hit at your face.  Here is Steve working one of our rams this week:

Trimming a Soay ram's hooves

To give you an idea of the hay bale setup, here’s another picture of Steve trimming the same ram’s hooves, with Shawn working the back legs.  If Shawn had not been part of the process, Steve still could have leaned over, with the ram’s head tucked to either side, and grabbed the back legs to work them without undue stress.

Tandem pedicure for a Soay ram

This ram, Saltmarsh Royton, was about average in terms of demeanor, not happy at being turned on his butt, but once upended he just sat there while the shepherds did their work.

I probably should have taken movies of this process, but truth to tell, the shepherds engage in quite a lot of colorful talk when they are working the rams, as you can imagine.  Once all the bawdy talk is over and the hoof trim (the last step in the annual workup) is finished, Steve generally has a few quiet words with the ram before he turns the ram back into the pasture.

A final word with Saltmarsh Royton after his pedicure

A scratch on the nose and a bit of sing-song chat go a long way towards keeping our rams manageable.  And besides, they are sooo handsome!

Side note:  If you are curious about Steve’s bilious green t-shirt, it is from our local ghost town, Buncom, the last standing ghost town in Southern Oregon, just three miles down the road from our farm.

For now …

Loyal readers may recall an earlier time in my life as a Soay shepherd when I went through a frenzy of making feed bags for our four livestock guardian dogs and for Steve to hand out occasional treats to the ewes and lambs. Believe it or not, one of the bags already wore a hole through the bottom, probably because over the winter our tool shed, where we load the bags for our dogs’ twice-daily ration, becomes home to the occasional mouse. It appears one of them (the mice) decided it was more fun to gnaw through the bottom of Isaac’s feedbag than to go around to the front entrance and just walk in.

What with lambing preparation and lambing itself, we’ve had to make do with a piece of sisal rope to bind poor Isaac’s feedbag together for the last several weeks. I’m here to tell you that the resulting knob makes resting the feedbag upright impossible; it tips over all the time. Nothing like a graphic reminder of why the flat-bottomed feedbags work so well — as long as they haven’t been used as teething toys by the local rodent population.

Isaac's feedbags - new and old

No sooner did I have Isaac re-outfitted than Steve started whining about how Shawn and I had commandeered Steve’s grain-feeding bag for our LGD puppy, Khloe, and wouldn’t I pretty-please make Khloe her own bag so Steve can continue currying favor with the ewes by hand-feeding them treats. Back to the sewing machine, rummage around for another old jeans leg, whip up a bag for Khloe.

But wait, Khloe’s our first female LGD, living here with four stinky older brothers (TJ, Chuy, Isaac, and Jacob). She is living proof that the playing field, although it still has a few potholes in it, for professional women is finally leveling out. Khloe is only eight months old, but within the last few weeks she has turned an important guardian dog corner in her maturity and is now on full duty every night in the pastures nearest the river where the coyotes like to hang out. Although she is still growing and has a voice somewhat less basso profundo than her brothers, she is already an important member of the security force here at Saltmarsh Ranch and she has taken her place in the line of succession as our older dogs eventually must retire from active duty.

What a dilemma. I didn’t want to do anything to suggest that Khloe is somehow an inferior guardian just because she’s a girl, nor did I want to raise Title IX issues by providing her with a lesser level of equipment, but still, it seemed she should be able to have a lady’s handbag without undue damage to her stature as a tough guy. As luck would have it, right then I stumbled over a box of sewing “notions” that I’ve never taken time to unpack since we moved out here from Chicago. There amidst the ziploc bags of mismatched buttons, partial cards of hem tape, unraveling spools of thread, and the usual assortment of stuff a would-be home seamstress collects “just in case” was my collection of laces and edgings and ric-rac saved from the dismantling of my great grandfather’s general store in Pomeroy, Iowa decades ago. One spool of lace in particular fairly cried out to be used on Khloe’s feedbag. Here’s one of the laces from the Williams General Store, probably approaching 100 years old, and Khloe’s Pravda knockoff:

Khloe's feedbag

Steve can barely hide his disdain for Khloe’s bag, and Shawn refuses to comment, but what do you expect? The collective “boys” have been sore ever since we got the vote, after all. I say it adds a sorely-needed touch of elegance to our pastures, especially now that it’s spring and everything is clean and fresh and green.

I will close this frivolous interlude with a couple of my favorite pictures of Khloe, first on the day she arrived last fall at the age of six weeks and needed to use Steve and Shawn’s legs to hide under,

Khloe at six weeks

and a couple of weeks ago when she was hanging out in the shade

Khloe at 8 months

while Steve read a book with Isaac, and occasionally Khloe, at his feet:

Isaac & Khloe keep Steve company

For now …