The Soay Sheep Chronicles

Just when we thought we could relax and wait for lambing to begin, Steve came back to the house looking agitated and clearly worried. He discovered one of our pregnant ewes, Venus, in dire straits in the Maternity Ward. Here’s his report:

 ”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 . . .

Allow me a brief detour from the Lamb Kit to introduce Llucy, our guard llama. Steve took this picture last lambing season. I was watching a new lamb cavorting when without warning Llucy snuck up behind me, I felt warm damp air on my neck, just barely heard a soft shwoosy sound, and I was nose to nose with my friend.

I like retelling the story of Llucy’s arrival at Saltmarsh Ranch. For me, it says a lot about how Soay and their guardians worm their way into our hearts.

We had just gotten our first four Soay when a broadcast e-mail arrived from another Soay breeder looking for someone to take a whole flock (almost 20 as I recall) from a couple who had to find a new home for their Soay quickly for health reasons. There was only one condition: the Soay’s guardian llama Llucy was part of the package deal.

What did we know from llamas? We were a couple of greenhorns newly arrived from “back east” in Chicago who thought shepherding consisted of little more than acquiring a few sheep, a pre-battered stonewashed cap from LL Bean, and a set of Pan pipes, with perhaps a shepherd’s crook thrown in for good measure. In short, we were ignorantly giddy at the thought of jump-starting our Soay operation and a llama sounded like a good bonus for a Christmas card picture. We volunteered to take the whole lot of them, including Llucy, with not even a passing glance at the llama literature to see what we were getting ourselves in for.

The sheep arrived late at night in a huge trailer unlike anything we had ever seen. I do not remember whether there was a full moon but let’s say there was for the sake of atmosphere. Backing the trailer down our narrow lane and nestling it up against the gate to the nearest pasture to prevent escapes was quite a trick, but nothing compared to the bravura performance that followed. The driver cautioned us Llucy must come out first or there would be general confusion and panic in the sheep. Fine with us. Llucy came out first. And then began the procession, the remarkable sight of Llucy the second grade teacher, standing on duty at the gangplank, wearing sensible shoes, with her clipboard, on a field trip with her students, checking each Soay off the list with her nose as it came down the ramp. She took roll, and we know to a moral certainty that there would have been hell to pay for the driver if even one of the sheep had turned up missing.

Whatever the disadvantages of having llamas, with or without sheep to guard — and we are told there are such drawbacks — for Steve and me there was no question about the rightness of having Llucy. Any animal so committed to her charges would be a welcome member of our Saltmarsh Ranch menagerie. And so she has remained, faithful to her Soay and utterly endearing to us. May you also have the good fortune to find just the right guardians for your flock!

For now …