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
No one believes me when I tell them our ewes are noisy eaters, much less that you can watch the hay level drop in the feeders when fully pregnant ewes are at the trough. Thanks to my dandy new video cam, I can now document our ill-mannered ladies. True, they are particularly eager eaters right […]
Soay lambs benefit from a little human intervention shortly after they arrive on the scene and have had their first, critical meal of colostrum. At a minimum, sterilizing the remains of their umbilical cord and checking their temperature to be sure they have been nursing well goes a long way towards ensuring a healthy and […]
Soay sheep breeders delight in finding clever names and elaborate naming themes for their lambs, perhaps to compensate for the fact that we play no role in the lambing process — our ewes are entirely self-sufficient in that department. There are lamb “crops” named for trees, automobiles, famous scientists, spices, towns in Oregon, Native American […]
It’s Soay toy time at Saltmarsh Ranch. I just got a little bitty video camera and tried it out for the first time in the Maternity Ward. I thought it would be fun to show off our pregnant ewes who are about to have their first lambs (at least that’s the plan). These ewes were […]
Few issues vex new Soay sheep owners as much as the quandary about whether one of their animals is “tan” or “light phase.” I recently stumbled across a digital “stack” of photos of our light phase Soay taken over the last several years. Posting several of them here, with minimal commentary, may help train your […]
One of the rewards of managing the Open Flockbook Project — documenting the ancestry of all known Soay sheep in North America — is tracking down missing parts of the family tree. We are pleased to report that one of the pieces has been rediscovered, a flock in Arkansas descending from a flock in Georgia, […]