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
Let’s face it, all you shepherds and shepherdesses over the age of 40. If we are not smart about how we handle our animals, we put our backs at risk – never mind lifting hay bales, building fence, and breaking up ice in the water tanks in January. The last thing we need is to […]
Once we are past lambing and the pumps are in the river, ready to start irrigating the pastures, we turn our attention to the Bull Pen. Other than occasional wormings, putting hay in their feeders in the winter, and for the lucky few, fall action, the rams are pretty much on their own year-round. Their Annual […]
All my life I’ve been blessed, or cursed, with an uncontrollable urge to start singing a matching song when something or someone catches my eye. And so it came as no surprise that I found myself humming the Camelot tune as I was out photographing lambs. All of a sudden four of our yearling ewes who […]
Neither traditional dictionaries nor any of the numerous websites that trace the history of “Break A Leg” have seen fit to include lambing in their list of definitions, or Soay lambing as a possible source for the expression. They obviously haven’t been reading this blog. Breaking a leg sure brought Venus good luck. Last year, with her leg intact, she delivered a pair of […]
When last we met here, Otley was a 3-day old, unusually small lamb who already had seen the world and was none too pleased with it. As you will recall, Otley not only arrived at less than two and a half pounds after her mother struggled mightily to deliver her, she also ran away from […]
Some of the indications that a Soay ewe is about to lamb are seen only in an experienced ewe. If she is going to twin, she usually looks like a propane tank. Even if carrying only a single lamb, an older ewe will develop saddlebags and a waddle. The yearling ewes (“gimmers”) who are lambing for the first time exhibit more subtle signs of approaching labor, oftentimes surprising […]