1.  Food.  Grass and forage in the summer if you are lucky enough to have grass all summer, either naturally or because you irrigate.  When the grass gives out, switch to good quality grass hay.  Sheep do not need anything as rich as alfalfa hay and you should not feed it to your rams anyway.

2.  Water.  A stock tank will do just fine.  Where we live, they come in tall and short – get the short one.  If you only have one or two animals, you can make do with a big plastic bucket secured so it will not tip over.  Sheep need access to water 24/7/365, which means if you live where water freezes in winter, you need to make provision for that sooner or later.

3.  Mineral.  Get sheep-appropriate granulated (not a block) mineral from your farm store.  Cow mineral contains too much copper and is toxic to sheep. Put a pan of the sheep mineral where the animals can get at it 24/7.  Keep it out of the rain, preferably in a container up off the ground so it will not get kicked over or pooped in.

4.  Treats are an easy way to persuade your sheep to follow you. Use just a little in a bucket (so you can shake it and make a sound the sheep recognize), but do not give it to the sheep on a regular basis or they will follow you all the time and become a nuisance.  Any sort of treat will do:  ewe/lamb mix, beet pulp (soaked overnight), COB (corn, oats, barley mix).  See what is on order at your local farm store.  Caution:  never give more than a few particles of a grain-based treat such as COB to the rams.  The only times Soay need supplement beyond grass or hay are when you are flushing them or they are gestating or lactating ewes, and all that comes later.

5.  Fencing to keep your new flock from running away.  You need mesh with fairly small holes, e.g., 2 x 4 no-climb or similar, or else a solid wood barricade fence.  Sheep can get their heads stuck in ordinary field fence trying to reach for grass on the other side (remember, “the grass is always greener … “), and lambs can crawl right through.  If you are buying both genders in order to breed later in the fall, you need two separate areas, and a view block if they adjoin.  You do not want your new ram(s) bashing down your new fence(s) to get at your new ewe(s).

6.  Shelter.  In the summer, any structure or area with a roof  that is big enough to let the sheep to get in out of the sun.  A tarp over a section of the fenced area will do in a pinch.  In the winter, depending on your climate, the sheep will need an area they can retreat to in heavy rain or snow, and in severe winter areas, the shelter will need sides to cut down on wind.  If you have a barn, all the better.  The sheep do not need heat, just protection from rain/snow and wind.

7.  Predator control.  Unless you are sure there are no coyotes or mountain lions in your area, protect your sheep at night by (1) bringing them into a barn or other enclosed shelter that coyotes can’t get into; (2) procuring an experienced livestock guardian dog or llama that can live with the sheep outside 24/7; or (3) electrify your fences with a hot wire on top and on the bottom (coyotes will dig under).

8.  Medical.  Locate a veterinarian who will treat sheep and if you can, get to know him or her before a medical issue comes up.  Buy a rectal thermometer and keep it where you can find it, since it is your number one ally in diagnosing whatever may ail your sheep.  If you do not already own a large airline dog crate (hard plastic, slatted sides for ventilation, we’ve all seen them), go out and get one so you can take a sheep to the vet if necessary.

9.  Book learning.  If you do not already own either Storey on Sheep or Ron Parker’s The Sheep Book, go online to your favorite book purveyor and get yourself one of them to read in your spare time (see below).
.
10.  A comfortable chair.  How else will you be able to sit and fritter away hours watching your irresistibly adorable Soay?

That’s enough for now …

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 …

 ”When I first saw Venus out of the corner of my eye, I thought one of our ewes had lost her mind, standing on three legs, holding her back right leg straight behind her and shaking it furiously. Not until she paused momentarily did I see that her leg was broken between the hock and the dewclaw. When she shook her leg, her foot twirled around at a 180-degree angle, rather like a swivel club. This was not right. What to do.”

Once Steve was able to enclose Venus in the shelter, we quickly assessed whether we should try to save her, realizing the odds were not great of managing to keep her safely pregnant long enough to deliver, yet keenly aware of the likely expense of treatment. We will never know for sure what path we would have taken had she been an ordinary ewe, but Venus is carrying a genetically valuable lamb so we elected to try to save her.

These are hard questions, somewhat to our surprise. Soay are utterly endearing and we love having them, but when you start talking about x-rays and casts and more than 10 or 15 minutes of a vet’s time, the expense can swamp the value of the animal and then some. If we had only a few Soay, we might seek intensive vet care for every problem, but with over 100 sheep, we really have to be somewhat businesslike about prioritizing when and how much to spend on husbandry.

Off to the vet went Steve with Venus in a dog crate, the Soay shepherd’s one-animal “trailer.” An x-ray revealed a clean transverse break in the middle of her metatarsal bone. Back he came with Venus in a full-leg cast, complete with an artificial “hoof” made by daubing some quick-hardening epoxy-like stuff on the tip of the cast, complete with the two points characteristic of a real hoof. So far so good. But immediately upon landing back in the Maternity Ward, Venus began to flail again and banged the cast against anything she could find. Steve fashioned a small enclosure, about 4 x 5 feet, within the shelter using bales of straw. He gave her a bucket of water, some hay, and left her to heal. Here is the first recovery room.

As near as we can tell, Venus interpreted the pain in her leg, and perhaps the weight of the cast as well, as a predator attack. From the outset, she had tried to shake off what had “grabbed” her. Whatever her nightmares were, she managed to work the cast off overnight and we found her the next morning still in her little recovery room, but with her leg once again unset. The cast was intact but thrown off to the side of the enclosure. Either she had shaken it off, or wedged it somehow, giving her purchase, and pulled it off. It was back to the vet for another cast, this one under “warranty,” thank goodness. The vet sawed the cast in half, re-cemented it, applied it somewhat tighter than before, and sent her home with pain medication but no sedative since she is pregnant.

Steve’s nothing if not a quick learner, so as we drove to the vet the second time, he talked through a better confinement arrangement. Clearly it needed to be much smaller, about the size of the dog crate or even narrower if possible, to prevent Venus from having any room to swing her leg and kick off the cast again. The dog crate had two drawbacks, instability and the air vents on the sides, which could catch the artificial “hoof” points. But Steve remembered a piece of our Shaul panel system we use only occasionally, 2-foot wide contraptions called “alley supports” that form each end of a makeshift “lane” for moving animals between pens. Why not make the sheep world’s shortest lane?

And that’s exactly what he did. Using two 5-foot panels and the two alley supports, he got the enclosure down to about 2 x 5 feet. A single straw bale tipped on end brought the length down to just over three feet. A single scrap of 4 x 4 inch “horse” panel cut to size formed the “gate.” Three scraps of plywood covered the three sides of Shaul panels so there would be no slots where the cast could catch. Here’s what the new outpatient facility looks like.

All that remained was to get Venus out of the truck, out of the crate, and into the recovery room. The whole barnyard was concerned. Here’s Isaac, our Anatolian shepherd puppy, following the gurney (a.k.a. garden cart with dog crate – nice fit, eh?) into the Maternity Ward.

Here’s Venus with her cast. Woebegone, isn’t she?

Here’s Venus in her little stall.

And finally, here’s Llucy, ever the faithful guardian llama, checking on Venus to make sure her pillows have been fluffed and her bedpan, uh, make that water bucket, is in place.

It’s 48 hours later and the evening lamb check, which of course now includes Venus, confirmed that she made it through another day without kicking off the cast. We are hopeful. Stay tuned.

For now . . .

If by any chance you do not vaccinate your Soay against clostridial diseases, you should start now. This is one of the few areas where I cannot help nagging. The sight of an animal in the throes of tetanus is truly ugly and heart-wrenching, and easily preventable.

You can read about chilling vaccine, shaking it often, the nitty gritty of the actual vaccine on more technical sites. What you will not find on the pharmaceutical pages is how to make the process shepherd-friendly. Read on.

Scheduling. We follow conventional wisdom from other breeders and aim to vaccinate about 30 days in advance of lambing. On this schedule, the ewes’ immunity level is freshly boosted and their colostrum at the maximum level of antibodies for the newborn lambs. Plus, having a set calendar allows us to pretend our lives are in order, the same sort of harmless illusion of control we get by changing batteries on the smoke alarms each year when Daylight Savings Time kicks in.

Catching. Use your trusty grain bucket, the Soay shepherd’s best friend (well, maybe second-best after blue gloves), to get the ewes off the pasture and into catchpens. In case you doubt the effectiveness of a strategically-placed bucket of grain, have a look at Steve last Sunday doing his imitation of the Pied Piper.

Confinement. Tranquility is the goal here. The last thing you want is for general panic to set in; therein lies both madness and broken horns. Aim for the smallest possible enclosure.  We used to put all our girls into our 8 x 12-foot shelters and even they were too spacious. This time around we processed 5-7 ewes at a time in an enclosure no bigger than 5 x 4 feet made from our trusty Shaul panels, just room for the person giving the vaccinations. Since I was the paperwork processor and Steve was the hands-on guy, I will let him describe what he did.

“Once I get the ewes in a small space, I stand still among them, then calmly reach out and touch one of them, on her horn if possible, or around her neck. If they can’t go anywhere, they will accept my touch without undue alarm. What I want to avoid is anything that will start a chase. If they cannot run, they accept their fate.”

Seating the ewe. Working one standing ewe is enough to convince any sane shepherd that converting the ewe from a four-footed animal to a sitting duck is the only way to go when vaccinating. As the observer, it seems to me the key is to keep the ewe from lurching her head and arching her back, triggering flailing behavior. Once again, I will let Steve describe how it works for the person on the front line:

“The easiest way to get access to the vaccination site on the ewe’s chest area, right behind her foreleg, is to get her sitting on her butt or, better yet, slightly off to one side on her left ‘cheek.’  I have watched shearers do this and of course they make it look easy, especially that no-good rascal in Thornbirds. Unlike the big clumsy Suffolks, Soay are quick and adept at remaining upright.  But I have the advantage, their small size.  I just lift the ewe up until her back legs are dangling, then quickly drop her while moving slightly backwards so her hooves will point forward and she’ll land on her bum. For me it is most comfortable to let her left side rest against the inside of my left leg.”

Author’s note: where is the video camera when I need it?  Does anyone know how to post videos on a blog? Hrmph.

Injection-site lumps. Some sheep, perhaps one in ten, seem prone to develop marble-sized abscesses at the injection site. This is nothing to worry about except they look icky and you will fret about them no matter what I say.  It seems to help avoid the lumps if you are adept enough at giving injections that the needle lies almost flat between the skin and the body wall. Try not to go straight in like a “puncture.” Once you have given the shot, immediately rub the injection site for a couple of seconds, shmooshing the vaccine away from the hole.

Marking the finished ewes. By all means mark your ewes as you work them. It is the simplest way to be sure you have not missed anybody. We use the “All-Weather Paintstik Livestock Marker” made by LA-CO Industries, should be available at your local farm supplies store. One marker will last way beyond your Soay-raising lifetime if you do not leave it in your pocket and run it through the washing machine – yuk.  The slash of color on the ewes’ noses gives them a whimsical look right out of the circus clown tent, but it wears off in a few days, and who cares if they look like pregnant Bozos, anyway? Here is our fetching little tan ewe, Lime, with her pink forehead right after her vaccination last Sunday.

Extra credits. In the non-essential but useful category, we always bring along a ewe list to make sure everyone is present and accounted for. Almost without fail, we see something to make a note about, an issue needing attention or presenting a “new development” worthy of discussion over adult beverages after chores. Just this morning, in fact, I was downloading pictures to the OFP Gallery (see link over there on the right) and needed to confirm whether Millie is polled or scurred. Sure enough, there in the folder of old vaccination and worming lists was a grubby note I scratched next to Millie’s name the first time we worked her in late 2004: “tiny buttons.”

A closing note on dosages. We use Covexin-8. Its label calls for an initial dose of 5cc, with boosters thereafter at 2cc. On the advice of our veterinarian, we use 2cc right from the beginning on our lambs. Five ccs seems just way too much for a 10-week old Soay lamb.

Oh yes, did you remember to set your clocks ahead last night?

For now …