The Soay Sheep Chronicles

Loyal readers may recall an earlier time in my life as a Soay shepherd when I went through a frenzy of making feed bags for our four livestock guardian dogs and for Steve to hand out occasional treats to the ewes and lambs. Believe it or not, one of the bags already wore a hole through the bottom, probably because over the winter our tool shed, where we load the bags for our dogs’ twice-daily ration, becomes home to the occasional mouse. It appears one of them (the mice) decided it was more fun to gnaw through the bottom of Isaac’s feedbag than to go around to the front entrance and just walk in.

What with lambing preparation and lambing itself, we’ve had to make do with a piece of sisal rope to bind poor Isaac’s feedbag together for the last several weeks. I’m here to tell you that the resulting knob makes resting the feedbag upright impossible; it tips over all the time. Nothing like a graphic reminder of why the flat-bottomed feedbags work so well — as long as they haven’t been used as teething toys by the local rodent population.

No sooner did I have Isaac re-outfitted than Steve started whining about how Shawn and I had commandeered Steve’s grain-feeding bag for our LGD puppy, Khloe, and wouldn’t I pretty-please make Khloe her own bag so Steve can continue currying favor with the ewes by hand-feeding them treats. Back to the sewing machine, rummage around for another old jeans leg, whip up a bag for Khloe.

But wait, Khloe’s our first female LGD, living here with four stinky older brothers (TJ, Chuy, Isaac, and Jacob). She is living proof that the playing field, although it still has a few potholes in it, for professional women is finally leveling out. Khloe is only eight months old, but within the last few weeks she has turned an important guardian dog corner in her maturity and is now on full duty every night in the pastures nearest the river where the coyotes like to hang out. Although she is still growing and has a voice somewhat less basso profundo than her brothers, she is already an important member of the security force here at Saltmarsh Ranch and she has taken her place in the line of succession as our older dogs eventually must retire from active duty.

What a dilemma. I didn’t want to do anything to suggest that Khloe is somehow an inferior guardian just because she’s a girl, nor did I want to raise Title IX issues by providing her with a lesser level of equipment, but still, it seemed she should be able to have a lady’s handbag without undue damage to her stature as a tough guy. As luck would have it, right then I stumbled over a box of sewing “notions” that I’ve never taken time to unpack since we moved out here from Chicago. There amidst the ziploc bags of mismatched buttons, partial cards of hem tape, unraveling spools of thread, and the usual assortment of stuff a would-be home seamstress collects “just in case” was my collection of laces and edgings and ric-rac saved from the dismantling of my great grandfather’s general store in Pomeroy, Iowa decades ago. One spool of lace in particular fairly cried out to be used on Khloe’s feedbag. Here’s one of the laces from the Williams General Store, probably approaching 100 years old, and Khloe’s Pravda knockoff:

Steve can barely hide his disdain for Khloe’s bag, and Shawn refuses to comment, but what do you expect? The collective “boys” have been sore ever since we got the vote, after all. I say it adds a sorely-needed touch of elegance to our pastures, especially now that it’s spring and everything is clean and fresh and green.

I will close this frivolous interlude with a couple of my favorite pictures of Khloe, first on the day she arrived last fall at the age of six weeks and needed to use Steve and Shawn’s legs to hide under,

and a couple of weeks ago when she was hanging out in the shade

while Steve read a book with Isaac, and occasionally Khloe, at his feet:

For now …

For Soay sheep and their shepherds, summer is an easy, laid-back season.  All the sheep are feasting on grass, so there is no hay to tote.  Moving the animals from one area to another to keep them rotating through the pastures is a welcome task, since we get to be with our Soay flock and watch them race to the new section on the other side of the fence, where the grass really is greener.  With so much open air and so much movement, our fret about worm load goes away until winter and the return to close quarters.  All the creatures, great and small, are content to bask in the summer sun.

If I had to pick one phrase to describe summertime with our Soay sheep, it would be “a feast for the eyes.”  Everything is good to look at  — the sheep, the dogs, the llamas, the pastures.  I have been so intent to talk here about the “working” side of shepherding that it is high time I show you the mellow side for a change.
Our tour begins with the view from our upper pastures, the ones we hay, looking down on a section of the pasture we use for the sheep.  You can see two of the shelters in the distance.

Ever since we started raising Soay sheep, green definitely has become my favorite color!  We are lucky to live on a river, the Little Applegate, and it is right down there beyond the grass, lined by the big trees.  It is the river that makes these lush pastures possible for Soay sheep food.  The next picture shows one of the essential parts of the irrigation operation.

The pipe running right up the middle is in the same upper pasture shown in the foreground of the first picture.  It is that pipe, complete with its rainbird just peeking through the grass, hooked to a riser, and laid end-to-end with 17 other pieces of pipe, that brings the water up from the river to the upper pastures.  In the next picture, you can just barely see the rainbirds spewing water up the hillside, the little white spots at the edge of the grass.

I will never forget how excited Steve was last year when we were able to hay the upper pastures for the first time.  Here’s what this luscious green grass will look like in about a month, after it is baled and ready for winter feeding:

Pop quiz:  Is this man having fun raising Soay sheep?

As for the animals, it is not just about loads of green grass to eat.  For the ewes, there is the peace and quiet of post-weaning and the chance to put a little weight back on after the lambs have taken their fair share of their mom’s body mass.  Have a look.

I took this picture recently when we put our adult ewes into an area of our property that has never seen sheep, and for decades was a neglected area overgrown with blackberry and star thistle.  I am fairly certain the tan ewe in the middle is Libretto.  The pretty white-faced ewe in front is Ellerbeck, the cover girl on the front page of our farm website.

This nearby group of ewes is about to attack a “mature” stand of blackberries, right behind them.  It didn’t take long for these determined ladies to turn that blackberry thicket into bare stalks.  The ewes will volunteer to return next April to munch on the tender new growth of blackberry that will dare to rear its ugly head in the pasture.

Once they’ve had their fill, the ewes take time out for a late-afternoon snooze and cud-chew.  The ewe against the fence right in the middle is Vieva, one of our 2008 AI lambs, with a darker face than has been seen in the US-based British flock previously.  Over on the left is another of our 2008 AI ewes, Ossie, with the completely white face other than her black eye and nose.  The ewe with the yellow tape on her horn is the mother of at least one of our AI lambs from this year, but I honestly cannot tell which one.  Sheep may safely graze.

Life for the rams is quiet, too, in the months before rut starts and the guys have to prove they are the most worthy breeding candidates by periodically bashing each other.  Here they are earlier in the summer on new grass.  You can see the most recent rotation pattern, over on the left where it looks not so lush any more.

While we are down here in the bull pen, let me brag on a couple of our rams.  I took this picture of Cinnabar a couple of days ago because he reminds me so much of his sire, Fenugreek.  Some day we may figure out where this longer fleece came from originally, but for now we simply enjoy looking at it.

The equally handsome fellow in the back with the yellow-taped horns is Emmett, sire of a number of British AI grandchildren this year (Emmett’s father is Gaerllywd Mustard, who resides in the U.K.).

As for the lambs, they are out from under their moms’ watchful eyes and free to cavort around the pastures eating grass to their rumens’ content.  I tried in vain to get some of them to stop and pose as they started out in a new area of grass a few weeks ago, but was lucky just to capture one little Brit ewe lamb who found the grass so high she had to jump over it!

One of our priorities this lambing season was to focus on our lambs’ non-milk nutrition, especially during weaning, when they are under stress and are more vulnerable to coccidia.  This tan ewe lamb is not quite four months old and weighs 35 pounds, a robust weight and a size that confirms she has not been carrying a worm load.

I had to laugh when I saw the next picture come out of the camera.  This is one of our mahogany Blue Mountain-derived American Soay lambs in a pasture area that had seen better days by the time I got there, but I love seeing the ewe lamb so comfortable being with our guardian llama, Llucy, who you can see looming over her in the background.

Alas, the grass does not last forever.  Here are our youngest British lamb (an AI granddaughter named Heywood) and her mother Xanthoria (Heywood’s sire Curtis is way down in the bull pen of course), trying to scrounge just a little more grass from an area they clearly have taken down about as far as we want it to go.

Not surprisingly, their pitiful attempts prompted me to summon Steve right away to move Heywood’s group to a new section of pasture.

As for our livestock guardian dogs, we are not sure whether they are so content during the summer because they are out in the open pastures, or because the sheep are so content on grass, or because the coyote babies also have been weaned and their mothers are no longer frantically looking for food, but whatever the reason, our big guys mellow out come summertime as well.  Here is Isaac in the cool grass and shade, watching his ewes enjoy a new pasture area.

There is one animal on our farm, our border collie Molly, who never takes a vacation from work, but she is mighty content during the summer when she can find a water tank to cool off in,

or a field of lush grass to run in:

To get you oriented, the foothills in the background are in California (we are about 10 miles north of the border as the crow flies).

I will end the tour by showing you one more time why we love being around the diminutive Soay sheep.  No sooner had I put down my clipboard and picture list when Alizarin (”Lizzie”) came over to investigate.

Here’s hoping you are having a good summer.  If you have Soay sheep, we know you are enjoying this season!

For now …