The Soay Sheep Chronicles

There’s no need to mark your calendar to remind yourself that it’s breeding season for your Soay sheep – the rams will let you know by their appearance and their behavior.  As usual, a few pictures tell the story best.

Eight days ago we taped the horns of rams going to new homes this fall, including four adult rams headed for farms in the midwest. At the time, I thought Steve was being a bit fussy by insisting we tape both horns.   Belts and suspenders, he called it, just in case one horn’s tape came off.  Sure enough, he was right.  Here are the four rams waiting in the loading lane for Ron Keener to show up.  As you can see, after just a week of bashing each other for primacy in the bull pen, the only tape left is on the back sides of their horns, and most of that tape is coming loose as well. Talk about battering rams!

Soay rams in rut make short work of horn tape

Looking at these fellows, the two white/blue taped rams bound for Missouri and the two white/yellow taped rams headed for South Dakota, I also was reminded of how much the rams’ appearance changes during rut. The horns firm up at the base where they are attached to the head, giving the ram more strength to bash his pasture mates for primacy. The rams’ operative breeding parts increase substantially in size – I won’t show that picture here just now. But one sign of rut is easy to show in pictures.  Many rams grow a larger and longer mane, presumably to make them more attractive to the ewes, and their necks thicken up, also for strength to duke it out with the other rams. Here is a picture of our 2008 ram Beckfoot taken just two months ago on July 13th. He has a little beard, but I wouldn’t call it a full mane, would you?

Beckfoot at ease in July, pre-rut

Now look at this picture taken on September 16th. Although the light was different each day, the differences in Beckfoot’s mane and the thickness of his neck are easy to spot.

Beckfoot in rut: thick mane, thick neck

Is this fellow ready to breed? He’s headed up to Washington next week where we know he will find good-looking Soay ewes to keep him busy.

And just in case you think I was making it up about the rams bashing off each other’s horn tape, look at how pristine Beckfoot’s yellow and blue tape was just a week ago. Whew!

For now …

Veteran readers of this blog know what firm believers we are in using jugs to house our Soay ewes with their newborn lambs. The first couple of years we made jugs from our Shaul panels and that was nice, but the lambs sometimes crawled through and wandered off. So Steve and Shawn designed wood-sided jugs from old pieces of plywood and whatever other cheap wood they could find. Every year at lambing time we are reminded of how indispensable the jugs are for giving each ewe time to bond with her lamb(s), allowing us to work the lambs peacefully, and safeguarding unusually small lambs for a few extra days until they are ready to compete in the nursery and the playyard.

What we didn’t know was that jugs come in really handy when it’s time for the vet inspections necessary in order for Soay sheep to travel across state lines or the US-Canada border.  Let me explain.

This morning Dr. Rebecca was scheduled to inspect a whole lot of sheep headed north, south and east from here over the next month (so far, not west, that would be Japan).  In preparation, we had marked all the sheep with color-coded electrical tape on their horns – a different set of colors for each customer.  At the last minute, we decided to try putting each group of ewes (the rams were still down in the west end) in a jug. We’re pretty fussy about making sure the right sheep go to the right customer!

Ewes about to go on a trip with Ron

Ewes heading north to Washington

You might think the ewes would get uncomfortable sharing such close quarters, but not our girls. As soon as we put a little hay in the jug feeders, away they went!

Chowing down before heading south to a new home

Can't you see I'm busy eating?

And my favorite photo, for anyone who thinks Soay sheep are too skittish. How’s this for a trusting look?

Oh, is it my turn to be inspected? Okay!

A note about these feeders: we used to feed our jugged ewes out of milk crates on the floor, but of course they kicked over the crates. We tried hanging feeders but the ewes managed to knock them over, too. Our jugs are 3.5′ x 5′ and there just isn’t room for a fulll-depth hanging feeder. What we came up with is what you see here, an angled wooden feeder securely anchored to the wall, with the front face made from scraps of 4×4 wire panel. They are sized to hold a flake of hay horizontally and we can fill them just by walking alongside the jugs; we don’t even need to disturb the ewes with their newborns.

For now …