The Soay Sheep Chronicles

Far be it from me to presume to know, actually, but I do know their shepherds see all sorts of lines and angles and curves in everyday objects that can delight the eye and provide an additional layer of pleasure to what sometimes feels like pretty humdrum stuff — feeding, watering, filling the mineral feeders.

On my way out to feed early one recent morning after a lovely big soft snowstorm — no wind, no drifts, just the fluffy stuff coming straight down — my eyes were greeted by all sorts of arresting scenery and it occurred to me that what we see, and our sheep see, on a wintery morning, is all part of the fascination in raising small livestock on a small acreage.  I hope you will enjoy these images of life in the country.

Corduroy comes in all colors, including “fence beige”

One of Steve’s dreams for our farm ever since we got serious about formal conservation breeding with our British Soay sheep has been to have breeding paddocks consolidated in one place.  He figured it would make chores more manageable, and our livestock guardian dog’s protection more effective, than having the breeding groups spread throughout the pastures.  And besides, he has had a hammer in his hand and a tool kit slung on his hip since he was a toddler, so there generally is no way to dissuade him from taking on yet another project, improving on the 4th generation of shelters, thinking up new ways to protect the mineral feeders from getting rained on — you get the idea.

This year, with the help of our trusty summer ranch hand Shawn, the breeding paddock dream came true.  I have never seen so many angles and Frank-Lloyd-Wright-like surfaces on a farm before, but I find them very pleasing to the eye.  Here is the Saltmarsh Sheraton, a four-star breeding hotel:

Let me know if you are interested in a detailed description of how these pens are put together.  On a flat surface, they actually would be quite manageable to construct.  On land as slopey as ours, that’s another matter.

Not everything at Saltmarsh Ranch is as meticulously constructed as the new breeding pens, nor as pleasing to the eye, but I thought you might smile at this picture of our sheep trailer, which I maintain must have started life as a circus wagon, parked in the snow next to our trusty old pickup Willie (as in Nelson), filled to the brim with snow-covered scrap metal, largely from the building project.  The angular trailer has its own story, but that’s for another day.

And last and most, here is the legendary Berci Box all decked out in its winter finery when it got caught out in the snow, with snags of snow hanging from the air holes on its side.

The Berci box has carried countless Soay sheep up and down the west coast, but one of its earliest and most notable uses was to carry Soay sheep into the U.S. from Athelstan, Quebec a decade ago, a story unto itself and a worthy tale for reading on a winter day.   If you don’t know Kathie Miller’s saga, I commend it to you.  It’s a great tale about legendary sheep (and their crate), and about Kathie, an even more legendary pioneering Soay sheep maven.

For now …

No, I am not referring to your trusty Kohler or Toto.  Flushing is shepherd lingo for increasing a ewe’s nutrition in the weeks leading up to breeding in order to trick the ewe into releasing a larger number of eggs.  Most of the sheep literature we have read, and a number of Soay breeders we know, report higher multiple birth rates if flushing is part of the pre-breeding regime.  The concept is straightforward:  ewes ovulate more readily and release more eggs if their bodies sense that times are good, that food is plentiful, and so it seems a good opportunity to raise a larger litter.  As I understand it, commercial breeders use flushing routinely.  They must have a high ratio of multiple births to make sheep-raising financially viable.

Here is how it works from the shepherd’s standpoint.  Two weeks before you put your breeding groups together, start feeding your breeding ewes a little something extra along with their normal diet of grass or hay.  We use a product called “ewe/lamb ration” from our favorite feed store.  It is 14 % crude protein.  COB (corn, oats, barley) or other pelleted feed with 9 % crude protein is another alternative.  If you don’t mind the hassle of soaking beet pulp pellets (also 9% crude protein) every day, you can use that as well.

The goal is a gradual and modest increase in the ewes’ “nutritional plane” — to boost them slightly from where they start.  If they are already fat, flushing probably will not help and it might be counterproductive, because really fat ewes are reported to have lower fertility rates.  But if your ewes, like ours, are starting to complain about the quality of the late-summer grass in your fields, or you are down to the last few sorry bales of last year’s hay, the increased nutrition should have the desired effect. 

We start with 2 ounces per ewe per day and gradually increase that amount to 4 ounces by the end of the first week.  You do not want to change your ewes’ diet abruptly for at least two reasons:  their rumens need to adjust to the change in composition of the material to be digested, and apparently if the new stuff passes unprocessed into the intestines, the ewe is at risk for scours.  In other words, ramp up rather than change abruptly.   

How do these numbers play out?  Here are a few examples:

# ewes     Days 1&2      3&4              5&6            7                   8-14

1                      2 oz       2.5 oz           3 oz             3.5 oz            4 oz

4                      8 oz       10 oz            12 oz           14 oz             1 lb 

8                      1 lb        1 lb 4 oz       1 lb 8 oz      1 lb 12 oz       2 lb   

Stay at the increased level for a second week (days 8-14), then put your your ram(s) with your ewe(s) for breeding.  On the day you begin breeding, start tapering off the goodies gradually until you quit supplementing them at all after two more weeks.  In other words, four weeks total of supplementation, gradually up, gradually down. 

For the same reasons flushing is designed to increase the number of ova released, it also encourages the ewes to start ovulating a little sooner, which may put them in sync, and that in turn may concentrate your lambing so it does not drag on for weeks.

Most books recommend a second trick to get your ewes ready for action, i.e., getting them to cycle well.  If your pasture situation and prevailing winds allow it, place your ewes near or at least downwind from the rams.  The smell of the rams (and believe me, they smell at this time of year) helps trigger cycling, as does the shortening of the days.  If you can put your ewes in a location adjacent to your rams – a stout fence and a view block separating them – all the better.  That way, the rams also can smell the ewes and get charged up.  But – and this is crucial, you must have sturdy fence and you really should use view blocks.

Will you agree with me that these pictures of some of our 2008 twins provide yet another reason to flush your ewes — the sheer pleasure of looking at the little ones together?

If you flush your ewes, you’d best get your lamb kit ready because before you know it, lambs will begin arriving two by two to entertain you. 

For now … 

It’s post-season in major league baseball and breeding is about to begin on our Soay sheep farm.  While the world awaits the (inevitable?) demise of the Cubs, we are pacing (mentally) in the dugout, wondering how our selection of rams to call up from the bull pen will turn out.   Will our three British “starters” for our conservation breeding program be enough or should we designate a reliever right now to take over in the event of disease or accident?  Will Fenugreek turn out to be rookie of the year with our black and tan-carrying ewes?   Here he is.  What do you think?  Is this young fellow up to the task?

The baseball analogy starts to break down, alas, when we talk about good numbers and bad numbers.  The low ERA of a Roger Clemens is the reverse of what we want in a breeding ram’s Ewe-to-Ram Average in lambing.  General managers and amateur baseball statisticians accumulate years, and occasionally decades, of data on pitchers.  They can trace a pitcher’s development, prime seasons, and decline down to the patterns of individual pitches in single games.  In our Soay world, rams generally get one breeding season and that’s it.  ERAs are calculated on only one trip to the mound.

What about stats on strikeouts, which figure prominently in deciding what pitcher to use?  Not for us, thank you.  We want every single ewe to get on base and hit a double — the exact opposite of the baseball types.  If a breeding ram ever struck out with a ewe, it’ would be lost lamb revenue for us.  Worse yet, by the time the strikeout was known, lambing would be over for the year, way too late to bring in a reliever. 

Nor do we care one whit how many pitches a ram accumulates during the game, in fact, the more the better.  Just put him out there and let him throw his best stuff   Last year Warwick serviced 22 ewes quite nicely and was ready for more, and we recently heard from another breeder who used one ram for her 40 ewes with good results.  If it would make any difference, we probably would conjure up special cheers reminiscent of high school days.  With apologies to all Wisconsin Badgers’ fans:  “On Trenear, on Porkellis, on to victory.  Bring your balls right down the field, boys, on to victory …”

Pedigree and associated genetic ancestry is of course the single most important consideration for us in deciding which rams to use.  We do our best to avoid family histories of rotator cuff and hyper-extended elbows.  But we do like sons of proven fathers and are always on the lookout for the ovine equivalent of Cal Ripken Sr. and Jr.
On a less scientific level, but unavoidable in the age of marketing, we occasionally waste a little time wondering whether our breeding rams should sport goatees and ponytails, the baseball equivalent, I suppose, of sweeping horns.

Here are our big guys in the bull pen waiting for the phone to ring, meanwhile agreeably posing for our friend Leigh Hood.  Will their offspring appeal to buyers? We sure hope so.  

As I write this, I of course have no idea who will win the playoffs and whether we will win the lambing gender lottery next spring.  What I do know is it’s time to finalize the breeding roster and take stock of our popcorn and beer supply.  Game 1 of the World Series will be here before we know it and we put our breeding groups together next Friday.   Batter up!

For now … 

Perhaps the greatest initial investment a Soay keeper needs make is decent fencing to keep the little darlings home and safe.  Alas, the aesthetics of a run of taught, newly-installed wire fence fastened neatly to precisely aligned, precisely vertical fence posts is of no concern to the rams, especially during rut.  They bash away without shame when they are trying to court the ladies on the other side of the fence.  Let it be said, in fairness to the rams, that ewes also engage in this most unattractive behavior, with more persistence if less power.  Ordinarily they do not actually broach the fence, but clips come loose, unsightly bulges develop, and the bottom of the fence raises up to the point that stupid lambs will get their necks caught reaching underneath.  All most annoying to an otherwise agreeable shepherd.

Consider the options.  You can sell the sheep and take up some other hobby.  Or you can always just eat them.  Less drastic, if expensive and back-breaking, you can replace the trashed fence entirely with a stout board fence of 2-by-8’s bolted to railroad sleepers.  Better yet, make use of the fact that a sheep will not bash what he, or she, cannot see.  That is, provide a View Block.

A View Block is just that – something, anything that keeps a sheep on one side of your fence from seeing, and trying to get at, what is on the other.  There are any number of strategies.  A friend of ours came by a great stack of used plywood sheets some years ago.  Every autumn she lugs the whole lot to the fences separating her various breeding groups and ties the pieces together end on end with scraps of baling twine from last year’s hay bales.  Economical to be sure, but only if you have a source of free plywood and a strong back you are willing to sacrifice to the cause. 

Last year about this time, just as the rams were gearing up for their annual testosterone-driven display of head-butting, we stumbled on a less strenuous and for us more practical alternative.  Steve was out one day laying black landscape cloth along one of our fences to keep grass and weeds from shorting out the electric “scare” wire.  A gust of wind blew a loose flap of the cloth up against the fence, blocking our view.  Eureka!  If it blocked our view, it also would block the animals’ view. 

For readers not familiar with this stuff called “landscape cloth,” here is a modest description.  It is generally black, somewhat the texture of thin felt except made from a woven synthetic fabric, water permeable, UV-resistant so it lasts a long time, and mechanically strong so it does not stretch – all desirable characteristics.  At our farm store it comes in 3, 4, 6, and 12-foot widths, the 4-foot size being just right for our fences.  It is sold in 100 or 200 meter rolls (go figure).  Landscape cloth usually goes under a gravel lane or walkway to keep weeds from growing up through the rocks, or under the mulch layers of flower beds much tidier than the ones found on our farm.  (We like to think of its new use as keeping our ram or ewe “weeds” from getting through the cloth to the other pasture.).

Steve folds the cloth over the top of the fence, leaving a 4-inch flap (somewhat akin to a selvage if you’re a tailor or seamstress) on the other side, and secures it with cable ties, the doodads electricians use for bundling wires.   Here’s a picture of one of our View Blocks with the flap folded over and held down by cable ties. 

Any scraps of wire or twine also will do to secure the cloth.  Using a 10-penny nail to poke a hole through the main sheet of cloth and the flap, as close to the top wire as possible to provide a snug closure, we zip up a cable tie every 2 feet or so across the top length of fence.  The goal is to keep the cloth flat against the fence and tightened down so the wind cannot allow any flapping or billowing pieces to get started and eventually tear off.  Here’s a closeup of the cable tie securely anchored.
 

Our first fence outfitted this way was equipped with a stout flat board – a batter board actually – about 15 inches above the ground that we originally installed against the actions of a particularly determined ram.  After securing the top edge of the cloth with cable ties, Steve simply nailed the bottom edge of the cloth to the board with wide-headed roofing nails.  Although we fretted the winds would pull the cloth through the nails, we got through breeding season last year with no mangled fences and nary an attempt at bashing through the cloth. It has been nearly a year and so far the View Blocks are intact and ready for another rut, which is fast upon us.   Here is the full expanse of our most needed View Block from last year.  It kept Warwick, who had been favored with over 20 ewes in his own pasture, from bashing through to get at the additional ten or so ewes who were being courted by Jerry on the other side of the fence.  Good grief.

In the Soay world at least, good fences do indeed make good neighbors.  Warwick and Jerry finished their appointed tasks without a single dustup, and who knows whether the splendid bunch of really good-looking lambs that ensued was thanks in part to the fact that their daddies were not distracted by the possibilities just beyond the fence.      

The other method we tried came about when Steve noticed a pair of ornery ewes, known troublemakers, deep into an extended dispute back and forth along a 150-foot fence, making a mess of the whole length of it.  Indifferent to the source or explanation of such unappealing female behavior, Steve quickly threw up a cloth View Block.  This fence was not fitted with battering boards, so he used cable ties both top and bottom.  It worked for awhile, until the ewes were moved to another location.  But over the winter, the bottom edge of the cloth tore loose, creating an undulating but ineffective length of fluttering black cloth still attached at the fence top.  Here it is in all its useless glory.

The Engineering Department is at work on a solution.

As for our friend the plywood queen, we are pleased to report she has become a landscape cloth convert.  She reports that poultry wire clips also work quite nicely to hold the cloth to the fence.

Here’s [not] looking at you, kid.

For now …

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 did not get pregnant came into view.  [Side note:  apparently they were too young to breed when they were with the ram.].  As you will see in the picture at the end of this post, they were standing perfectly still.  But their pose reminded me to tell you about a nearly infallible indicator that a ewe did not get pregnant, is still “in the market,” and will not be needing a room in a jug or the extra hay needed to support a nursing ewe.   In other words, in planning for lambing, it helps to know who is carrying a lamb and who is not.       

Let me set the scene, since despite my best efforts I have never been able to capture this telltale behavior on film.

It is about two-thirds of the way through their incubation period, 15 weeks give or take.  Imagine our expectant mothers lying down, hooves tucked demurely under, dreamily ruminating about winning the Cutest Lamb or Baby With Most Hair contests, when out of nowhere a crazed teenager or two caroms full tilt through the Maternity Ward kicking up her heels, shattering the serenity of her older cousins for no good reason.  I am not talking a mere flick of the hoof here.  Think track and field high jumps or a slam dunk, the kind of maneuvers Michael Jordan or the championship girls’ basketball team are more likely to execute.  Pregnant ewes never behave like this, period, end of story.

No doubt the girls’ antics have a formal scientific explanation linked to hormones, but on a family blog I will just tell you it is unmistakable and let it go at that.  Hilarious to watch, never fails to make us laugh. 

Some of you may be wondering how a Soay operation headed up by a reputable scientist can be taken in by something as goofy as a silly-looking romp.  I would be the first to admit that a review of the literature on sheep breeding might well provide more “objective” indicia of whether a ewe has settled (i.e., whether she successfully bred):  pre-natal office visits, ultrasounds, and so forth.  What about the obvious one, the size of the ewe’s belly, for example?  If you want to rely on belly size, go right ahead, and it will work most of the time, or so we thought, until we ran up against the likes of Tolcarne, our little yearling ewe who produced Otley the Noisy.  Remember how surprised we were when Otley showed up?  No way Tolcarne looked pregnant.  But we have learned our lesson.  Had we paid more attention to which ewes were cavorting like ninnies instead of focusing only on bellies, we would have known that Tolcarne was settled.  From now on, you can be sure we will watch for this simple joy of maidenhood – leaping at will – as a more reliable, free way to know how many lambings to plan for. 

Mind you, when they are not galloping around kicking up their hooves, the Soay Sorority Sisters do what any gathering of two or more teenage girls would do –  check out the boys at the dance to see which one is cutest or whatever today’s benchmark is for the one you have your eye on.  Do you have any doubt that is what is going through these girls’ minds?

For now . . .