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
I have such mixed feelings about Patterdale, our first and only bottle baby. She seemed so vulnerable when she first arrived and then as she started to grow in our breakfast nook, yattering away to be sure we knew she was there and needed milk — all the time. Both Steve and I had to resist the urge to smother […]
One of the most enjoyable, ordinarily light-hearted rituals on our farm is the annual selection and implementation of lamb naming themes. This year, picking the right theme took on a certain solemnity as we welcomed lambs with the first-ever new genetics in the British Soay flock here in the U.S., thanks to the wonders of AI, […]
When last we met Patterdale, she was just a few days old, traumatized by her mother’s rejection, confused by her wanderings in the Maternity Ward, wishing she could have continued as Tolcarne’s adoptee, and a bit uncertain about her prospects in the makeshift pen in our breakfast nook. Not to mention the nearly hourly strife of going nose-to-nose with […]
It was a dark and stormy morning last Thursday. I was in town and Steve was running the lambing operation solo. Delighted to find Fulmar with a big (5 lbs, 4 oz) ewe lamb in the area reserved for pregnant ewes, he jugged them and then went about the normal routine of quieting the din […]
Anyone learning about Soay sheep for the first time and who embarks on a literature search commonly will encounter numerous references to the Soay ewes’ legendary ability to lamb easily. In fact, if you find an article about Soay sheep that does not remark about how easy lambing is, I would be surprised. The good news: it’s not just easy at […]
Several readers brought me up short by chastising me for unfairly omitting the yearling ewes (gimmers) from my report on the late-winter spurt of ram horn growth. I was tempted to ignore their criticisms, so certain was I that only rams could possibly exhibit dramatic horn growth. But then good manners and a little nagging voice in my head prevailed, and it was back to […]