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 . . .

Actually, it’s not an ounce, rather 2 cc’s, but “cc” doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well, does it?

If by any chance you do not vaccinate your Soay against clostridial diseases, you should start now. This is one of the few areas where I cannot help nagging. The sight of an animal in the throes of tetanus is truly ugly and heart-wrenching, and easily preventable.

You can read about chilling vaccine, shaking it often, the nitty gritty of the actual vaccine on more technical sites. What you will not find on the pharmaceutical pages is how to make the process shepherd-friendly. Read on.

Scheduling. We follow conventional wisdom from other breeders and aim to vaccinate about 30 days in advance of lambing. On this schedule, the ewes’ immunity level is freshly boosted and their colostrum at the maximum level of antibodies for the newborn lambs. Plus, having a set calendar allows us to pretend our lives are in order, the same sort of harmless illusion of control we get by changing batteries on the smoke alarms each year when Daylight Savings Time kicks in.

Catching. Use your trusty grain bucket, the Soay shepherd’s best friend (well, maybe second-best after blue gloves), to get the ewes off the pasture and into catchpens. In case you doubt the effectiveness of a strategically-placed bucket of grain, have a look at Steve last Sunday doing his imitation of the Pied Piper.

Confinement. Tranquility is the goal here. The last thing you want is for general panic to set in; therein lies both madness and broken horns. Aim for the smallest possible enclosure.  We used to put all our girls into our 8 x 12-foot shelters and even they were too spacious. This time around we processed 5-7 ewes at a time in an enclosure no bigger than 5 x 4 feet made from our trusty Shaul panels, just room for the person giving the vaccinations. Since I was the paperwork processor and Steve was the hands-on guy, I will let him describe what he did.

“Once I get the ewes in a small space, I stand still among them, then calmly reach out and touch one of them, on her horn if possible, or around her neck. If they can’t go anywhere, they will accept my touch without undue alarm. What I want to avoid is anything that will start a chase. If they cannot run, they accept their fate.”

Seating the ewe. Working one standing ewe is enough to convince any sane shepherd that converting the ewe from a four-footed animal to a sitting duck is the only way to go when vaccinating. As the observer, it seems to me the key is to keep the ewe from lurching her head and arching her back, triggering flailing behavior. Once again, I will let Steve describe how it works for the person on the front line:

“The easiest way to get access to the vaccination site on the ewe’s chest area, right behind her foreleg, is to get her sitting on her butt or, better yet, slightly off to one side on her left ‘cheek.’  I have watched shearers do this and of course they make it look easy, especially that no-good rascal in Thornbirds. Unlike the big clumsy Suffolks, Soay are quick and adept at remaining upright.  But I have the advantage, their small size.  I just lift the ewe up until her back legs are dangling, then quickly drop her while moving slightly backwards so her hooves will point forward and she’ll land on her bum. For me it is most comfortable to let her left side rest against the inside of my left leg.”

Author’s note: where is the video camera when I need it?  Does anyone know how to post videos on a blog? Hrmph.

Injection-site lumps. Some sheep, perhaps one in ten, seem prone to develop marble-sized abscesses at the injection site. This is nothing to worry about except they look icky and you will fret about them no matter what I say.  It seems to help avoid the lumps if you are adept enough at giving injections that the needle lies almost flat between the skin and the body wall. Try not to go straight in like a “puncture.” Once you have given the shot, immediately rub the injection site for a couple of seconds, shmooshing the vaccine away from the hole.

Marking the finished ewes. By all means mark your ewes as you work them. It is the simplest way to be sure you have not missed anybody. We use the “All-Weather Paintstik Livestock Marker” made by LA-CO Industries, should be available at your local farm supplies store. One marker will last way beyond your Soay-raising lifetime if you do not leave it in your pocket and run it through the washing machine - yuk.  The slash of color on the ewes’ noses gives them a whimsical look right out of the circus clown tent, but it wears off in a few days, and who cares if they look like pregnant Bozos, anyway? Here is our fetching little tan ewe, Lime, with her pink forehead right after her vaccination last Sunday.

Extra credits. In the non-essential but useful category, we always bring along a ewe list to make sure everyone is present and accounted for. Almost without fail, we see something to make a note about, an issue needing attention or presenting a “new development” worthy of discussion over adult beverages after chores. Just this morning, in fact, I was downloading pictures to the OFP Gallery (see link over there on the right) and needed to confirm whether Millie is polled or scurred. Sure enough, there in the folder of old vaccination and worming lists was a grubby note I scratched next to Millie’s name the first time we worked her in late 2004: “tiny buttons.”

A closing note on dosages. We use Covexin-8. Its label calls for an initial dose of 5cc, with boosters thereafter at 2cc. On the advice of our veterinarian, we use 2cc right from the beginning on our lambs. Five ccs seems just way too much for a 10-week old Soay lamb.

Oh yes, did you remember to set your clocks ahead last night?

For now …