Welcome to The Chronicles. I hope you will enjoy my posts about the joys of raising the oldest breed of sheep in the world -- the always intriguing, easy-to-raise Soay sheep. With few exceptions, posts contain what I hope is useful information interspersed with a bit of whimsy. Feel free to comment on anything you find here. If you want to send me a private message, that's okay, too. Send your note to the address on the "contact us" page of our main website (***saltmarshranch-dot-com). Meanwhile, enjoy The Soay Sheep Chronicles! Priscilla
Kate, a first-time Soay breeder, called me excitedly the other day to announce the arrival of her very first British Soay lamb and sure enough, she wanted to know what the furry little creature will look like when it grows up. Has any new Soay breeder not wondered what her lambs will look like as […]
Apart from lambing itself, the best part of raising Soay sheep is communicating about them with other breeders, folks interested in starting a flock, researchers looking for various kinds of data, the anonymous readers of our website and this blog, and especially anyone with questions about lambing issues. Most of the time the questions come […]
Remember the notion that the larger the dataset for lambs, the more likely the split will hover around 50%? And the corollary that as the dataset grows, the percentage of ewe lambs should move towards 50% whether it started above or below that figure? Here are the numbers for Week 4: [table th=”0″ colalign=”center|center|center|center|center|center|center”] 2014 […]
Not long after I put up the post about gender odds in British Soay lambs, it was pointed out to me that since history is no predictor, what’s going on this year? So far, the numbers are not good, but it’s still early in the lambing season. I thought about putting a daily tabulation here, […]
Among the ancient rituals in raising sheep — rams vying for dominance during rut, breeding, gestation, lambing, weaning — only one is unique to the humans involved: the shepherd’s daily fret over what portion of the lambs will be ewes. Although we cannot prove it, we’d bet a nice dinner in town that shepherds have […]
Out here in Oregon where we have been spared the endless rounds of blizzards and ice storms, our year-old rams can’t get enough of the emerging pastures. I was photographing parts of our fencing earlier last week for an earnest post about how to construct a fence that will keep Soay sheep safe and happy, […]