The Soay Sheep Chronicles

Soay sheep breeders delight in finding clever names and elaborate naming themes for their lambs, perhaps to compensate for the fact that we play no role in the lambing process — our ewes are entirely self-sufficient in that department. There are lamb “crops” named for trees, automobiles, famous scientists, spices, towns in Oregon, Native American tribes, rock stars from the 60s, flowers, gemstones, you name it. We know one breeder who constructs names for his lambs each year by combining parts of the sire and dam’s names. He’s been at it long enough now that his lamb’s names are downright byzantine.

Here at Saltmarsh Ranch, we take naming pretty seriously and devote an embarrassing number of hours each winter to choosing the themes (one for the British Soay and one for the North Americans) and constructing the master list from which we choose names as the lambs arrive. But one theme remains constant: our British lambs unfailingly are named for small towns in a selected county in Great Britain: 2006 Cornwall, 2007 Yorkshire, 2008 Cumbria, 2009 Lancashire, and this year East Anglia (Norfolk & Suffolk). There’s also a rationale for each choice: Cornwall was my mother’s family’s ancestral home; Yorkshire because of a chance internet encounter with a nice lady named Anne and her proximity to the legendary James Herriott, a hero in my family; Cumbria because we loved hiking in the Lake District; Lancashire is the ancestral home of my mother’s best friend; and this year because of a tattered road atlas.

That’s right, a road atlas. A few weeks ago we were sitting around the fireplace in the evening musing about the upcoming lambing season and realized we had not yet selected our British county for 2010. Steve suggested I contact a friend of ours, Peter Nicoll, a non-stuffy Brit who lives in Surrey. Peter knows our flock and knows our fixation with names. He was here visiting in 2008 when one of our Cumbria-named lambs, Askham, arrived on the scene and was befriended by Llucy, our guardian llama who doubles as a midwife during lambing:

[Ed. note: you know, when a person is nose-to-adam's apple with your adult llama, that you have a seriously tall person visiting your farm!]

We were confident Peter would be up to the task of helping us select a county for this year’s little British lambs, and sure enough, here’s the heart of his suggestion:

Despite the fact that there are plenty of sheep around here in Surrey, that is how sheep are thought of; in isolated hill or moor areas. There is a perception of ruggedness about them. There is no reason why you should not choose any county in England but on the perception of ruggedness I would suggest you could stick to the outlying ones of the North (Northumberland, Westmoreland, Durham etc), South West or East Anglia (Norfolk or Suffolk or Lincolnshire). That fits with the general layman’s perception and it may also fit with the perception of your customers for lambs etc. … The other areas are outside England, i.e. in Wales and Scotland. There are lots of sheep there! Watch out though, as some of those areas in Scotland and even the real North of England can be a bit sparse for place names.

For inspiration (dream on!) I went out to the car and dug out my road atlas. On the front cover it happens to have a cutting of an area of Norfolk east of Norwich and I list a lot of place names, chosen at random, such as Taverham, Horsford, Marsham, … etc etc. Norfolk does have sheep but is unremittingly flat and agricultural (and under the sea come global warming!) …

If you like, I have to replace my road atlas – not that the places move, of course (I’m not that stupid!) but the roads change a bit since 2004 – so I could easily send you this one by post and you could use it as a starting point. …

best regards
big kiss to Llucy
Peter

I wonder how many Soay breeders in the U.S. have a nice dog-eared copy of a genuine English road atlas to guide them in their hour of need?

With the arrival of our first lamb on Sunday evening, we know it won’t be long before Saltmarsh Aylsham, Colney, Heydon, and Ryburgh are real Soay lambs — not just dots on a map — running around the play yard.

For now …

One of the rewards of managing the Open Flockbook Project — documenting the ancestry of all known Soay sheep in North America — is tracking down missing parts of the family tree. We are pleased to report that one of the pieces has been rediscovered, a flock in Arkansas descending from a flock in Georgia, via Nantucket Island. A few days ago I interviewed the shepherd of this flock, Bill Lilly; here is his Soay story, mostly in his own words.

Bill and his wife Linda’s Soay adventure began in the mid-1990s, when they learned about Soay sheep through magazine articles and “literature.” At the time, they already owned about 140 registered Jacob and Shetland sheep. Nevertheless, Linda loved what she learned about Soay and wanted to get a breeding pair. Bill recalls that they had contact with an organization associated with rare breeds, but the only Soay they could locate were Bruce Poor’s flock on Nantucket Island off the coast of Massachusetts. Note: Bill understood that Bruce’s Soay came from Georgia, which must be a reference to Robert and MaryEllen Johnson’s important early flock of Pine Cone Valley Soay.

Thanks to Linda’s persistence, in about 1997 she and Bill acquired their foundation Soay ewe and ram from Bruce. They flew to Nantucket, put the two sheep in crates and flew them back to Hyannis, then drove the pair in a rental car to Boston, where they air freighted the animals to Little Rock, and finally drove them home in their pickup truck to Fayetteville. Note: and I thought Steve and I were heroes when we roused ourselves in the middle of the night to airfreight two rams from our nearby airport just 23 miles away!

Bruce told the Lillys they were getting his “prized animals” and that he had taken their ram to “the best hotels in Boston” as a pet [!]. The ram, who Bruce had named Ewelysses [I am not making this up], was about one year old when the Lillys bought him. The ewe, also a year old at the time, was named Ewephoria. Both lived long and productive lives at the Lillys’ farm; Ewephoria died just recently at the ripe old age of 14.

Linda and Bill paid Bruce $1200 for each animal, and the airfare was about $800 per animal. Wow!

From day one, Bill and Linda kept their Soay separated from their Jacob and Shetland flocks. Their farm is divided into paddocks for that purpose and also for pasture rotation. Over the years, Bill and Linda kept their Soay as a wild flock for several reasons. Early on, they tried to house the Soay rams apart from the ewes and set up distinct breeding groups, as they did with their registered Jacobs and Shetlands, but it did not work because of lack of space within the Soay area of their farm for breeding pens. Because they were unable to find any organization that was registering Soay sheep at the time, keeping track of parentage within their Soay flock was not a priority. They also believed that running a wild flock more closely resembled how animals naturally breed in the wild, such as on Hirta, the Soay ancestral home.

None of the Lillys’ Soay sheep have eartags, and they of course have no pedigrees other than as direct descendants of Ewelysses and Ewephoria.  At the beginning, Bill and Linda tried to give every animal a name, but gave up after six or eight lambs. The inability to locate a conservancy that was interested in Soay sheep was particularly disappointing to Linda, who served for several years on the board of the Jacob sheep organization. Note: you can still find references online to some of their Jacob sheep, flock prefix “Lillywold” in pedigrees.

As for the characteristics of the Lillys’ flock, there are no black Soay and no light phase Soay. The rams are mostly “dark brown.” There are no polled or scurred animals; all have full horns. Bill and Linda did not trim their Soay rams’ horns, although they do have to trim their Jacobs’ horns. They always waited and sure enough, every Soay ram’s horns turned back out.

Not surprisingly, the Lillys’ Soay flock grew most rapidly during the last few years, reaching its final size of 52 animals. Bill and Linda never sold any of their Soay, although a few died. Their plan was to get a “reasonable” sized flock before they started selling. Sadly, Linda just died during the Christmas holidays, and Bill has sold their flock locally.

We are grateful to Bill for sharing the story of their Soay sheep. The Soay world is the richer because the Lillys went to the expense and trouble to bring their beloved breeding pair back to Arkansas and to maintain their flock over the last decade and more. Thank you, Bill and Linda!

For now . . .