It’s that time of year again, with breeding almost over but lambing still in the distant future, when Soay shepherds start looking through catalogs and scouring the web for holiday gifts for their animals. I have two suggestions this year, both of them bargains and far easier than making Christmas stockings disguised as feed bags – my 2008 year-end suggestion.
The poor man’s sheep drencher
Need to get liquid wormer into an uncooperative ram’s mouth? Do you have a shivering newborn in need of a quick slug of Baby Lamb Strength or another molasses-like product for a glucose boost? You can spend $10-15 for a big metal drencher made for hulking Suffolks, or you can make your very own Soay-sized drencher in about 1-2 minutes (plus shopping time) for less than a dollar. Steve dreamed up this contraption out of frustration with wasting so much wormer in the big drenchers and with dribbling on himself when the sheep balked at the big applicator and burped out the wormer.
Start with a plastic disposable syringe without its needle. We get ours in bulk from Jeffers. The one shown here is a 6cc size. Then betake yourself down to your local hardware store or, better yet, your favorite auto parts store, and buy yourself a couple of feet of fuel line hose. Caution to shepherdesses: this is guy territory. Fuel line (”micro”) hose is the 1/8″ (inside diameter or ID in boy talk) orange stuff used to replace rotting fuel lines in lawnmowers and other gasoline-driven machines, or so I’m told. Here are the components laid beside our current bottle of Ivomec:
Syringe and hose, pre-construction stage
Start (and end, this is a one-step construction project) by cutting off a three-inch piece of the fuel line and working it onto the tip of the syringe (the “luer”) where the needle would be screwed on. As if by magic, if you screw the fuel line onto the luer, the fuel line will work its way down the threads just like the needle would, so the connection is remarkably secure. When a sheep clomps down on the fuel line, or you step on it, or one of the dogs chews it apart, you just take it apart and put another penny’s worth of fuel line on the syringe. Here’s the final product – no intermediate steps.
Steve's pretty good Soay sheep drencher
What could be easier?
Once you get used to the ease of the custom Soay sheep drencher, you will find all sorts of other uses for it. For example, we have one with a really short piece of hose dedicated for working new lambs. The stubby version holds enough lubricant for taking several lambs’ temperatures without one of us having to dip our fingers repeatedly into an increasingly disgusting vaseline jar.
The world’s best burr remover for your border collie
Have you ever wanted to strangle your otherwise beloved herding dog when she comes back from a day’s work with the sheep covered with dried out thistle flowers, mint “flowers,” and all sorts of other burrs? Worse yet, have you noticed that as you pry the dastardly burrs out of the sharp metal wires in your dog brush, little pieces of the burrs get imbedded in your fingers — ouch.
After enduring several years and untold dozens of annoying and hurtful brush-cleaning sessions, we discovered the perfect solution — a self-cleaning wire and plastic brush our ranchhand Shawn brought back from a local pet store. I should have taken a EweTube movie to demonstrate the brush, but Molly politely declined to provide on-demand burr acquisition and removal services. Sorry it takes quite a few pictures to show you how this thing works, but do bear with me and I think you’ll see why spending $8-10 for this brush is money well spent.
Begin by imagining your border collie (or Australian shepherd or whatever breed you rely on to herd your Soay sheep) covered with burrs from a romp in a dry early winter field — not a pretty sight. Remember your current dog brush, the one with all those rows of bent little wires filled with burrs you do not want to pry loose? Put that picture out of your mind.
Here is the brush Shawn found, viewing it from the back side. You’ll see why I started with the back in just a minute.
Back side of the burr-removing brush
What distinguishes this brush (brand name: Evolution) from the standard, annoying brush is the grey lever in the middle and the little red knob to the left. These two innocuous-looking knobs are all you need to get all the burrs out of the brush without having to touch even one needle-like part of one burr with your fingers. Hooray!
The next picture shows the bristles full of burrs, left over from the last Molly-brushing. If this were our old brush, I would be most annoyed at the person with initials S.W. who left the burrs in for someone else (guess who?) to remove. But with the new self-cleaning brush, it really does not matter.
Brush full of burrs
Yuk!
Remember the first picture showing the back side of the brush? Once the bristles are full of burrs, simply turn the brush back over …
Getting ready to auto-eject the burrs
push in the little red knob, which releases the larger grey lever, and pull down on the lever. Voila! The bristles retrack into the brush, leaving the burrs on a smooth plastic surface.
Bristles retracted, burrs loose on surface
Is this great or what?
All you need to do now is wipe off the burrs with a kleenex or paper towel or your hand or whatever is in your hand, leaving the surface of the brush clean, bristles still retracted.
Bristles still in, burrs off
Flip the brush over one more time, push in the red knob, flip the lever up to send the bristles back out to work, and you are ready to go next time your unrepentant border collie takes a romp through the weeds.
Burr remover all ready for the next time
Because Shawn gave us this brush, I don’t even know what other brands or sizes are available, but I have to believe you can find this brush or something substantively identical at your local pet store.
Enough about Soay toys. It’s time to get back to making gingerbread cookies and stringing the lights.
For now, happy holidays!
