all adult health stuff, including ram issues
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 […]
When last we met to discuss signs of spring, the topic was chicken eggs. It’s about time to re-direct attention to Soay sheep, don’t you think? Every year along about January or early February, our previous spring’s ram lambs — what I refer to loosely as our “yearlings” — begin an impressive growth spurt which by the end of summer will take them nearly […]
When you are putting together your Soay flock business plan, remember you do not need to include haircuts and perms in the expense column. For the most part, Soay will shed their fleece without your help. But you do need to pay for someone to trim your animals’ hooves or, better yet, learn how to do […]
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 […]
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 […]