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
A lot’s been happening on our farm since I posted a couple of weeks ago about four of our pregnant ewes we hoped would give us black Soay lambs this year. Without further ado, here’s the report on their lambs. First came Heywood with a stunning set of twins, one medium charcoal grey and the […]
So many of you have asked whether Tiny Tim’s adoption by Lindsey worked out that an additional post seems the most efficient way to share news of his progress. Bottom line: this little Soay sheep is just fine. He loves his new mom and he is fearless in the lamb play yard. Rather than run […]
Regular readers of this blog will remember the three-part series of posts I put up in March 2011 to introduce the new fleece colors and patterns that resulted from adding two new rams to our breeding program: Mustard and Norris. Both of these rams lived in Wales at the time, but they donated their sperm […]
Clarification: two of the smartest people I know read this post and did not understand what is necessary to make a graft/adoption work when Ewe A has lost a lamb and Ewe B is rejecting her lamb. Ewe A will only adopt Ewe B’s lamb if it smells like Ewe A’s dead lamb. You can […]
One of the few vexing behaviors of Soay sheep is the tendency of a first-born Soay twin to be temporarily “adopted” by a meddlesome “aunt,” another ewe who has not yet lambed but whose hormones are starting to kick in. Let me explain. It is not uncommon for pregnant ewes to be very curious about […]
Remember two years ago when we had a teeny lamb weighing only 1 pound 15 ounces? We could not resist naming him “Saltmarsh Peanut,” and Peanut he is to this day. By way of reminder, here he is in Steve’s hands a few hours after he was born: Although lambing has begun in earnest for […]