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
One day and several hours’ sleep after I watched a Soay lamb born in the moonlight, I captured this tranquil scene. Not a picturesque background, I admit. It is a jug, after all. But what a calm mother and baby. And it turns out this little guy will be a breeder for us one day […]
2:15 a.m. Thursday, April 5, 2012, just came in from a magical two hours with our pregnant ewes. Steve and Shawn both turned in early after a couple of really busy days – six lambings on Tuesday and seven yesterday – so I agreed to take the 9pm to midnight lamb checks. At 10:00 all […]
Last week when lambing finally began, our friends Kathy and Jim called and asked to come see the first arrivals, a set of twins from our ewe Lilly J born overnight. Hearing and seeing their reactions to the lambs reminded us once again how lucky we are to be able to raise these fetching and historically […]
After a prolonged work stoppage, the ewes at Saltmarsh Ranch agreed to assume their assigned tasks (lambing and nursing) on Day 166 after breeding began. Sources indicate the onset of lambing ends several weeks of tense negotiations and picketing. For its part, management have withdrawn their threat to withhold compensation (a.k.a. hay) and have turned […]
In my last post, I talked about how sheep horns grow and what shapes they can take, and I touched on the issue of when horns need to be cut for health reasons. Here I will walk you through a more detailed horn evaluation of two rams and then provide a pictorial demonstration of how […]
Soay sheep horns come in all sizes and shapes. The rams may have tightly spiraled horns; thick horns of varying diameters; horns tilted at an angle before turning back in a corkscrew (or remaining in a flat plane); open, wide-angled spirals in the shape of a Celtic “M”; and everything in between. There’s more: the spiral […]