The Soay Sheep Chronicles

No, I am not referring to your trusty Kohler or Toto.  Flushing is shepherd lingo for increasing a ewe’s nutrition in the weeks leading up to breeding in order to trick the ewe into releasing a larger number of eggs.  Most of the sheep literature we have read, and a number of Soay breeders we know, report higher multiple birth rates if flushing is part of the pre-breeding regime.  The concept is straightforward:  ewes ovulate more readily and release more eggs if their bodies sense that times are good, that food is plentiful, and so it seems a good opportunity to raise a larger litter.  As I understand it, commercial breeders use flushing routinely.  They must have a high ratio of multiple births to make sheep-raising financially viable.

Here is how it works from the shepherd’s standpoint.  Two weeks before you put your breeding groups together, start feeding your breeding ewes a little something extra along with their normal diet of grass or hay.  We use a product called “ewe/lamb ration” from our favorite feed store.  It is 14 % crude protein.  COB (corn, oats, barley) or other pelleted feed with 9 % crude protein is another alternative.  If you don’t mind the hassle of soaking beet pulp pellets (also 9% crude protein) every day, you can use that as well.

The goal is a gradual and modest increase in the ewes’ “nutritional plane” — to boost them slightly from where they start.  If they are already fat, flushing probably will not help and it might be counterproductive, because really fat ewes are reported to have lower fertility rates.  But if your ewes, like ours, are starting to complain about the quality of the late-summer grass in your fields, or you are down to the last few sorry bales of last year’s hay, the increased nutrition should have the desired effect. 

We start with 2 ounces per ewe per day and gradually increase that amount to 4 ounces by the end of the first week.  You do not want to change your ewes’ diet abruptly for at least two reasons:  their rumens need to adjust to the change in composition of the material to be digested, and apparently if the new stuff passes unprocessed into the intestines, the ewe is at risk for scours.  In other words, ramp up rather than change abruptly.   

How do these numbers play out?  Here are a few examples:

# ewes     Days 1&2      3&4              5&6            7                   8-14

1                      2 oz       2.5 oz           3 oz             3.5 oz            4 oz

4                      8 oz       10 oz            12 oz           14 oz             1 lb 

8                      1 lb        1 lb 4 oz       1 lb 8 oz      1 lb 12 oz       2 lb   

Stay at the increased level for a second week (days 8-14), then put your your ram(s) with your ewe(s) for breeding.  On the day you begin breeding, start tapering off the goodies gradually until you quit supplementing them at all after two more weeks.  In other words, four weeks total of supplementation, gradually up, gradually down. 

For the same reasons flushing is designed to increase the number of ova released, it also encourages the ewes to start ovulating a little sooner, which may put them in sync, and that in turn may concentrate your lambing so it does not drag on for weeks.

Most books recommend a second trick to get your ewes ready for action, i.e., getting them to cycle well.  If your pasture situation and prevailing winds allow it, place your ewes near or at least downwind from the rams.  The smell of the rams (and believe me, they smell at this time of year) helps trigger cycling, as does the shortening of the days.  If you can put your ewes in a location adjacent to your rams – a stout fence and a view block separating them – all the better.  That way, the rams also can smell the ewes and get charged up.  But – and this is crucial, you must have sturdy fence and you really should use view blocks.

Will you agree with me that these pictures of some of our 2008 twins provide yet another reason to flush your ewes — the sheer pleasure of looking at the little ones together?

If you flush your ewes, you’d best get your lamb kit ready because before you know it, lambs will begin arriving two by two to entertain you. 

For now … 

Everyone here at Saltmarsh Ranch, animals and shepherds alike, heaves a sigh of relief each spring when the sheep and their guardian llamas first move out of their winter hay feeding areas and onto pasture grass.  To be sure, the sheep cannot help but gorge themselves, creating havoc with their excretory functions but putting huge smiles on their faces and ours.  It is a ritual we never tire of.

The trick with starting grass grazing and taking the animals off pricey hay is to figure out the optimal time for the transfer.  Neither of us knew when we first started this Soay sheep madness that the timing decision would carry financial and farm management consequences.  It is not that the wrong decision is fatal to the operation, or even a mortal wound, but it is an aspect of sheep raising that creates an opportunity for sound fiscal management and better animal health if done right.  Here’s what I mean:

It would be a straightforward matter, and frankly make life in April and May easier on the shepherds’ daily routine, if we simply put the sheep out to pasture as soon as the grass starts turning green and quit lugging hay around.  The sheep would be elated.  Spring is when they get not only live grass, but also their favorite delicacies, the new growth of poison oak and blackberry leaves.  Each year we are tempted by the simplicity and the intuitiive correctness of getting the sheep onto grass as soon as possible.  Shove them out of their winter living quarters, a small section of the fields where they appear to create a desert wasteland out of a perfectly nice stretch of pasture and where they consume hay at a rate calculated to create heartburn in the resident accountant. 

But if we were to put the sheep onto grass as soon as the grass turns green, we would  regret our haste come July.  The grass needs to get a really good start, untouched by ovine mouth, if it is to recover in the 2-3 week cycle required for successful grazing through summer and into October.  We have not actually measured the height and density of the grass, but we have to wait roughly until the first growth is about knee high or more, and by golly it is hard to look at all that grass and not immediately open the gates.  Here’s what it looked like the day we put a big bunch of ewes, and their guardian dog Isaac, on the South Cannon pasture in early June:

The same terminology used for haying — first cut, second cut — applies to our pastures.  When the sheep make their “first cut” in a section of grazing area, they leave a lot of stemmy grass behind.  First grass growth is the plant’s reproductive phase.  (Note:  I have no idea what the correct botanical terms are, but if anyone reading this is bothered by the casualness of my word usage, please feel free to comment and I will update this post).  The plant concentrates its energy on making seed and the stiff stalk, I believe called “carrying stock,” that holds the seed heads high off the ground where the wind can blow the dry seed across the pasture so that come next spring, a whole new crop of grass will appear as if by magic.  There is not much leaf on the grass at this point; that comes later.

We were surprised to find a lot of the seed-laden stalks left untouched by the sheep.  They really are looking for the soft leaf growth, such as it is at first, down by the ground.  Their preference against the seeds seems odd considering how much the sheep love other grains (oats, corn, barley) and how rich in protein those grass seeds must be.  I mentioned it to a professional landscape friend of ours yesterday.  She too was surprised but surmises the seed heads contain something icky-tasting (from the sheep’s perspective) that serves to protect the seed from being eaten before it can get to the ground, rest for the winter, and then germinate in the spring.

It is this reproductive phase of the grass plant that explains why we see the almost ghost-like appearance of the pasture after the Soay make their first pass through — nothing but a lot of greenish-brown sticks topped with fronds of seeds.  And the need to make seed first, and then leaves, serves as a caution against putting the sheep out too soon.  We need to let the seed growth and dispersal happen first, or next year we will not have a lush new pasture.  We could knock down the seed stalks with a mower and make the pastures look tidier, but our timing would have to be at a level of precision – too soon and the seeds are not mature, too late and our sheep miss days on grass — we prefer to avoid when we can.  Better to let the sheep tromp down the seed stalks; their little hooves are just the right size to act as miniature ploughs poking the seeds into the ground.  

Before we stopped to figure out what was happening in the reproductive phase,  I was convinced we had ruined our pasture by incorrect rotation practices.  Have a look at that same first area after our ewes made their first pass through it a few weeks ago:

For comparison purposes, here is the picture of the same part of this pasture that I included in my post last September:

Back then, I was bragging about our expertise in pasture rotation.  Compared to last year’s lush green, it sure looks like the shepherds at Saltmarsh managed to ruin a perfectly good pasture, doesn’t it?

But wait.  Let’s look beyond those dry stems leftover from the Soays’ “first cut” a couple of weeks ago.  Here is how that same section looks up close 18 days later.

  You can still seeing the drying stems, but now there is a wonderful new layer of vegetative growth down closer to ground level.  Not only is it green, it is a good mix of various grasses and nitrogen-fixing clover.  When we return the ewes to this area in a few weeks, their little feet will trample the remaining dry stems as they work their way through the new growth.

Another temptation in the spring, and throughout the summer actually, is to leave the sheep in an area for more than four days.  Big mistake.  Regular readers will recall that grass begins to regrow four days after it is cut/eaten.  Actually, I was told by another breeder in Wisconsin that he has to move his animals every three days — must be the effect of all-summer-long rain.  But whether it is three days or four days where you live, if the sheep remain in one area longer than that, they will begin eating the new growth and the pasture will not recover as quickly or as well, nor will the new vegetative growth have time to store nutrients in the roots for next spring’s reproductive growth.  The cycle continues.  And here is where Electronet comes in so handy.  It allows us to make larger feeding areas for our groups during the spring and early summer to ensure the sheep eat down the grass to the right level, and then shrink the areas later in the summer when the grass growth slows down, but still allowing the proper amount to be eaten. 

Now that our flock, including the newly-weaned lambs, are busy making their way, 3 or 4 days at a time, through all the sections of our pasture, both sheep and shepherds reap the benefits of waiting for the grass to get a good start before starting the rotation a bit later in the spring.  Remember the old folksong, “green green, it’s green they say”?   Green it is on the near and far sides of our hills … for now.     

Anyone learning about Soay sheep for the first time and who embarks on a literature search commonly will encounter numerous references to the Soay ewes’ legendary ability to lamb easily.  In fact, if you find an article about Soay sheep that does not remark about how easy lambing is, I would be surprised.

The good news: it’s not just easy at lambing time.  During the final weeks leading up to lambing, the pregnant ewes loll about, sleep, eat then ruminate, and generally do a pretty darned good imitation of furry blimps.  We hear no demands for trips to town to stock up on chocolate chip praline meringue ice cream, no extra manicures, and no natural birthing classes.  If we give our girls plenty of good quality grass hay to eat, and an occasional scoop or two of COB (a mix of corn, oats, and barley with a smidgeon of molasses thrown in for good measure, should be readily available at your local feed/farm store), they quietly gestate and then effortlessly (on our part, not theirs) produce irresistible lambs.

Pictures tell the story.  Look at our pregnant girls yesterday afternoon out in the sun of an early spring day.  Lambing has not started here yet, to our dismay, but as you can see, it cannot be far away. 

Carolina is one of our original ewes.  We did not breed her last year, which explains her thick, rather unkempt fleece.  In our experience, ewes that do not lamb often do not shed their fleece that year.  When Carolina does cast her fleece this spring, it should be quite a spectacle.

Next comes one of our British ewes, Catalaya, lying in the barren wasteland that is our young lamb playground.  We long ago despaired of keeping grass in this area, what with all those little rambunctious hooves racing around pounding it to pulp.  We are hopeful that Catalaya is carrying twins, but we know better than to count on it.

Portia gave us black twins last year.  This year we bred her to our one-of-a-kind tan ram Fenugreek, he of the gorgeous fleece.  We can hardly wait to see what their offspring look(s) like.

I cannot resist sharing a picture of Holly, a nearly-polled, beautiful ewe we bred for the first time this year.  She is so regal when she moves through our pastures –check out her other pictures on the OFP Gallery – that it is hard to believe this big lumpy thing is really our lovely Holly.

Finally, pictorial evidence that pregnant Soay ewes are a tranquil lot who will lower your human blood pressure if you spend a little time wandering quietly among them in the week or two before they lamb.  I took this last picture in the late afternoon, shortly before the second hay feeding of the day, when all was peaceful here at Saltmarsh Ranch.  I know our British ewe Sequoia is up there on the left because I recognize her white-spotted face, but I did not want to disturb the matrons’ sleep by getting close enough to confirm who the other three are, especially the one facing away from me.

Whether or not I have convinced you that pre-lambing is a special time on the Soay calendar, at least taking the photos for this post kept me from going crazy yesterday waiting for our lambs to start arriving.

For now …
 

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 the pastures to corner and photograph the girls.

Lo and behold – the yearling ewes also experience the burst of horn growth, albeit proportional to their overall horn size.  Here are three of our yearling ewes. starting with our British gimmer Darrowby, who you will recall is named for James Herriott’s fictional town in Yorkshire: 

I decided not to interrupt the yearling rams’ strutting and preening so that I could actually measure their horn growth against Darrowby’s, but I dare say her horns have grown every bit as much as the boys’ horns.  As with the rams, her new horn material is somewhat lumpy and gnarly-looking right now, and quite a bit larger in circumference than her first-year, “baby” horns.

Ewe lamb Leyburn, also British, shows a similarly robust pattern of growth:

Compare Leyburn’s horn growth to that of her half brother Grassington (both offspring of Jerry Lee Lewis), shown in my original — and obviously incomplete — posting about horn growth a couple of weeks ago.  If anything, Leyburn has more new horn material.  No wonder people were crabbing about the omission of the girls!

My third example of ewe horn growth is our farm website covergirl, Ellerbeck, she of the assymetrical white nose spot, which I just realized I cropped off in this picture.  Sorry about that.   

Ellerbeck’s new horn material is visually more interesting than the boys’ horns because of her partially white horn.  The portion of her new stuff that eventually will be white illustrates through its pink cast just how “alive” the new horn material really is, with blood and soft tissue at work creating what will harden into a good sturdy horn. 

With hopes that my friends from the good old days of feminist activism will forgive me . . .

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 to their final adult size and shape.  In addition to their overall body size, I am thinking in terms of two male anatomies, only one of which — their horns — can I discuss in this family-oriented blog.  The Principal Scientist here at Saltmarsh Ranch tells me growth hormone is behind the overall increase in body size, but the presence of adequate levels of testosterone is required for horn elongation.  The timing intrigues us.  Just like everything else, these little guys hunkered down in the coldest, darkest days of winter in December and stopped growing.  Even though nothing else seems to be growing in January and February, now that the days are longer, brighter and warmer, something remarkable has been triggered in the yearling rams’ physiologies.

Our trusty veterinary medicine tomes and sheep husbandry books occasionally remark on the circumstance that horn growth is correlated with length of days.  And so I assume (and am trying to track this down with an outside expert), once the winter solstice has happened in late December, the combination of increased daylight, hormones, and perhaps melatonin, produces the surge in horn growth. 

It is now the third week of February and we have just finished a 2-week stint of 55-60 degree weather, sunny, very little rain, a beautiful spring teaser.  And let me tell you, our little guys’ horns are fairly popping out of their heads.  I love watching them in their pasture, so full of themselves, strutting their stuff, playing pretend-head-butting, and generally looking like a fraternity pledge class parading in front of the sorority house.  Sadly for them, the pregnant ewes in the adjacent pasture could not be less interested.

Yearling rams continue to experience horn elongation each late winter/early spring for about five or six years, but the spike in their first full spring is the most dramatic.  Let me show you a few examples. 

How to interpret the photos:  new growth occurs at the base of the horn, right next to the skull.  That is all you need to know to see what is going on.  Although we did crop these photos, all taken on February 20, 2008, we did not alter them in any other way with PhotoShop or any other software or developing “tricks.”

Here is Saltmarsh Grassington, a handsome little light phase (tan) British Soay sheep, son of Greener Pastures Jerry Lee Lewis and USA0001 Kiger, born April 10, 2007. 

See the gnarly dark stuff on his horns right next to his head?  That is his new growth.  In other respects he still looks great and I am pleased to report that he is slated to breed one of these years.  With the bright afternoon sunlight on his horns, you can really see the contrast between the old and the new.  None of the new growth was visible in early January when last we made a mental note of it.    

Next comes Saltmarsh Stillington, also a British Soay ram, son of Blue Mountain Warwick and Saltmarsh Keverne, born a full month later, on May 11, 2007. 

Stillington’s overall horn size is less than Grassington’s at this point, but the new horn growth on Stillington actually looks more substantial than Grassington’s.  It could be the angle, and I am not of a mind to disturb the young stud muffins to do precise measurements.  

Last but by no means least, Saltmarsh Eloy, an American/British ram named for a town in Arizona, same sire as Stillington (Warwick) and his mother is Saltmarsh Nutmeg.  Eloy was born about a week before Grassington, on April 5, 2007.  Look at the horns on this little fellow! 

Eloy has about the same amount of new horn growth as Grassington, but perhaps because Eloy’s horns were darker to begin with, the contrast between the “older” part of his horns and his current growth spurt is not so great.  Eloy sure looks like he will have Warwick’s wonderfully wide and stout horns, doesn’t he?

If I succeed in finding an authority who can explain the interplay of factors contributing to the unusually robust horn growth in January and February, I will share what I learn with you.  Meanwhile, what I do know is that when we see our yearling rams start to put on their first burst of horn growth, spring — and lambing — is just around the corner. 

 For now . . .

As regular readers of this blog have learned, I am crazy about Soay sheep and so is Steve.  Both of us are prepared to ascribe all sorts of wondrous attributes and talents to them, justified or not.  However, Soay are no good at all in predicting the approach of spring.  Try as we might, we have been unable to discern any appreciable change in their behavior as winter turns towards spring, other than the obvious fact of actually lambing starting in late March.  But who can wait that long to celebrate the approach of spring?  Not me.  The ewes do not even “show” until a few days before they birth.

For harbingers, we are forced to rely on other phenomena.  Take yesterday, for example.  During afternoon chores, Steve called on his walkie-talkie to report that our border collie, Molly, would be coming back with a surprise for me.  Great, I thought, just what I need – a dead gopher, a particularly fragrant layer of pasture mud on her coat, perhaps a deer leg bone extricated from the same ooze.  But no, Molly trotted home triumphant because her boss had in his hands the first two chicken eggs of 2008, irrefutable signs that spring will indeed come to Saltmarsh Ranch before too much longer.

They do look rather forlorn there in my grandmother’s capacious and well-worn egg basket, don’t they?  Nothing to rival the bushels and bushels she lovingly collected and sold year after year to put my father through vet school at Iowa State College.  But two homelaid eggs are better than none, and only the first of an increasing supply over the next few weeks.  Our middle-aged hens go on strike as the days grow too short to maintain their tans, forcing us to resort to store-bought eggs for the winter, a decidedly inferior source of protein and Sunday omelets.  Yuk.  I have not decided how best to use the precious duo, but something appropriately noteworthy will come to mind. 

Yes, yes, I know, Spring Training can serve the same function – heralding spring – but somehow it is just not the same now that we live in a part of the country devoid of major league baseball, even farm clubs, instead of Chicago, with two teams to choose between and complain about.   

For many people the defining trend as spring nears is, of course, the lengthening of the days.  Alas, I am kind of soured on this signal as well.  I grew up proud and a little holier-than-thou, to be honest, about the fact that my birthday, December 21, is the shortest day of the year.  It was not until I married a scientist that I learned the relevant truths about sunrise and sunset, at least for farmers.  Fact is, sunset begins to occur later about December 6, though the sun does not start rising earlier until about January 6.  Scientific accuracy has its place, no doubt about it, but it sure can spoil the romance of what seemed like a particularly special birth date.  Oh well.

One of these days we will start to imagine we can hear our ewes gestating.  Until then, the arrival of the first eggs and the lopsided but palpable lengthening of the days suffice to alert us it is time to print lamb cards, make sure the jugs have bedding straw for the new mothers, and order supplies for the Lambing Kit.  Before we know it, the 2008 lambs will start arriving!

For now …

For those of us lucky enough to have grass pastures in summer, feeding hay twice a day through the winter in the cold and rain is an annual reminder that not everything related to sheep-raising is fun.  In plain fact, it’s a nuisance having the animals’ dietary needs dictate our daily schedule.  How to keep the hay dry.  What to do about the accumulated muck from all those little feet trampling the same spot twice a day.  How to get the hay into either a feeder or a rumen, and not on the ground.  All of this is daunting at first.  The good news?  Enterprising metalsmiths, carpenters, and Soay breeders have devised a goodly number of economically rational solutions to the winter feeding dilemma.

Before I launch into the sampler of feeders, I’ll share with you a few factors you might want to keep in mind when considering what will work best for your setup.  Not surprisingly, there are tradeoffs.  

Purchase or build.  Cost is a threshold factor, of course (assuming you can make a feeder for less than you’ll pay a commercial source), but for many shepherds, time and access to a supplier also enter the equation.  Plus, homemade feeders can be customized in ways that off-the-shelf products cannot. 

Cover or don’t cover.  If you feed your animals in a barn or other building with a roof, skip this one.  If you feed outside, read on.  Chief among the advantages of covered feeders is the assurance the hay will stay dry until the animals eat it.  Also, your gluttons – the big ewes who always shove their way to the front of the cafeteria line – will not be able to stand up and pull great tufts of hay out and spill it on the ground.  Our Soay have no table manners and I refuse to install a TV in their pasture so Martha Stewart can give them lessons.  Here is our “rainbow” breeding group – mahogany, tan, and black — at their small feeder.

The big girls chomping away are Portia on the left and polled Allspice on the right.  They should be grateful they drew stud muffin Fenugreek (the tan fellow in the middle) as their playmate this year and mind their manners.  Not a chance.

The only real downside to covers is they tempt a shepherd to fill a large feeder and then not show up in the field again for two or more days, during which time the sheep will pick through the hay for the goodies and leave all the less attractive stems in the bottom of the feeder.  Despite their legendary stupidity, sheep figure out quickly whether or not they need to be members of the Clean Plate Club and if they get accustomed to cherry-picking, they will waste a lot of pricey hay.

Sizing the slats or grid.  The typical commercial feeder has either vertical slats 4 inches apart or 4-inch mesh fence, too large for Soay.  Although adult rams and ewes probably would do okay with them, a 6-to-8 month old lamb can poke his head through a 4-inch opening in search of hay, get caught, panic, and hurt or kill itself.  Feeders sized for Soay with rigid (steel or wood) feeding slats or mesh must have openings of less than 3 inches.  Another solution is to use flexible pipe such as PVC in vertical slats, which solves the problem of a lamb getting stuck because the pipe will “give” enough to let the lamb’s head work its way back out, but it probably also means replacing pipe more often than if the slats are made of steel or wood. 

Wood vs. metal feeders.  The tradeoffs here are weight and ease of handling, durability in the weather, cost, and the ability to withstand the occasional battering ram.

The Sampler.  Since this is my blog, I get to talk about our feeders first.  Of necessity (the barn is full of hay), our Soay live in the fields day and night, with 12 x 8 roofed shelters in each pasture area.  Here are the older, non-breeding ewes taking shelter from a recent rain.  The contraption in the background that looks like a carnival wagon is a dandy sheep trailer made locally eons ago.

This style and size of shelter is good for protecting our animals from winter rains and the highest-sun days of summer, but is not designed for, or big enough, to include feeders.  For feeding, we need stand-alone equipment.  Portability also matters because we re-group and move at least part of our ewe flock twice each winter, first in December once breeding is over, and then again in early March when the pregnant ewes migrate to the Maternity Ward for lambing.  Once we figured out how long it would take to build the number of feeders we needed, we decided to purchase ours from Bill and Susan Shaul in California.  Here’s what our biggest Shaul feeders look like in the pasture area we use to winter-feed all our ewes before lambing.

Shaul’s and other commercial feeders of this style do a good job of protecting the hay from tumbling onto the ground.  Our smallest weaned lambs will feed quite adequately from the hay that falls into the trough below.  The next picture shows a mixed group of ram lambs and adults chowing down in the Bull Pen.  As you can see, the little guys are not shy about bellying up to the bar.

In all candor, we did have one enterprising lamb crawl into a feeder recently and somehow she got stuck below the slatted section, a first for us.  Thankfully, Steve was able to extract her without harm, thank goodness.  The shorter Shaul feeders like the one pictured above can be comfortably carried by two people or by one person with a pair of Shaul’s wheels, like a hand truck only the wheels fit into the end legs of any of their feeders.  The really long ones need to be moved using the tractor and forks.

In lieu of covers, Steve is in the process of making ramada-like structures of 4×4 pressure-treated wood posts and corrugated metal placed astride each set of winter feeders.  When we bought our feeders, we elected not to get covered ones, and not just for economic reasons.  Oregon is so mild compared to Chicago that until we had been through a full winter, we simply failed to appreciate the impact on our sheep and our pocketbooks of feeding them consistently wet hay.  Plus, we thought the extra step of opening and closing lids sounded like a hassle.  I don’t really know whether we would get covered feeders if we were starting from scratch now.  But it has worked out well for us anyway because the existing shelters in our winter pasture areas won’t hold all our animals now that our flock has grown so much.  The stand-alone covers Steve is making will provide additional space for the sheep to come in out of the rain.

If they were large enough, our new stand-alone covers also could solve the problem of the persistent deep muck that builds up over the winter where the sheep feed.  For this problem, we decided to keep the covers a smaller size and instead to concentrate on the ground itself.  Look back at the picture of our long feeders.  See that nice raised area surrounding them?  It is the pasture equivalent of rubber shower mats.  Our trusty summer ranch hand, Shawn (”Red”) Olsen, built us a perimeter of railroad ties set slightly into the surface of the pasture for stability, then filled with crushed rock.  I am happy to report that after a full rainy season of experience, these “balconies” mean no longer do either the sheep or the shepherds slip in muck at the feeders.   

And there’s a nice side benefit.  Remember hoof trimming?  We’ve observed a significant decline in the rate of new hoof growth in our Soay who have to walk across rock twice a day to eat.     

On to covered feeders.  The next set of pictures shows the feeder in my friend Anne’s field in Knayton, near Thirsk in Yorkshire, England.  Remember Anne?  She’s the total stranger I heard from out of the blue almost a year ago when I was starting this blog.  Anyway, since last we encountered Anne on these pages, she has acquired a new adjacent pasture, lucky her, and from the looks of her sheep feeder, it should roll next door to the new pasture quite easily if need be.   The first picture is the design itself.

And now the feeder itself.  Look at these wheels.  I’ll have to ask Anne if they are big enough to allow her to move the feeder by herself when it is empty.

In some respects, Anne’s feeder is just a Shaul of a different color, same open sides for feeding, same trough to catch the scraps of hay.  But look at that wonderful roof, hinged on the ends so Anne can simply tip it back on its hinges (marked with an arrow) when she is ready to fill the feeder.

Reminds me of the red and white coolers, Igloos, I think is the brand name, that have the same sort of balanced, roll-back top.  Anne’s hay certainly does not get fouled by rain, does it?

The mesh in Anne’s feeder is 2.5″, small enough to keep her lambs safe, and don’t they look contented facing the camera here.

Although the transportation costs probably eliminate Anne’s supplier for most readers of this blog, in the interests of completion, here is what she has to say about her source:  “They are purchased from our local agricultural supplier. I guess they are made by a local small-time workshop by the look of them. All in this area are the same - we all use the same supplier (”Sam Turner”).”

Now it is true confessions time:  I have hay feeder envy, big time.  A couple of weeks ago our friend Kate Montgomery of Blue Mountain Soay, from whom we purchased a major part of our foundation flock, sent me pictures of her brand-spanking-new hay feeders, and are they ever the cat’s meow.  Look at them, first unpainted and lined up in a row,

and then with their first coat of not-John-Deere green paint.

Kate and Bob made these feeders, hinged roofs and all, just before a major, 100+ MPH windstorm struck their farm.  When I asked Kate for a sketch, here’s how she described their work:  “It’s a way-easy thing if you build them in assembly line status.  We used good plywood and 2×4s. 2 people can “rickshaw” them around.   The sheep love them.  Otley has to wait her turn but others are right in there.   For tiny sheep you need to make the ’shelf’ more narrow.”

What versatile feeders these Blue Mountain Beauties are, big enough to feed a good number of Soay but small enough to pick up and move.   Kate and Bob chose to use flexible pipe for their vertical slats.

We’ll be eager to hear how this material works out.  Meantime, I’m seriously considering putting a couple of these feeders on my Santa wish list. 

So much for the brief tour through Soay feeders.   In the course of putting this post together, I came across several helpful websites and I only scratched the surface.  For example, the MidWest Plan Service run by Iowa State University in Ames bills itself as providing “practical, expert agricultural information for 76 years” and we cannot say enough good things about these folks.  The design of our shelters, for example, evolved from a MWPS plan.  In response to an inquiry about feeders for “miniature” sheep, Kathy at MWPS sent me to www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/abeng/sheepplans.htm, which also looks promising for purchased creep feeders, especially for newly-weaned lambs until they can belly up to the bigger feeders. And so on and so on.  If you have another feeder style that works well for Soay, I hope you will share it with readers of this blog, either by commenting directly or sending me a private e-mail and I’ll do an update to this post. 

Best wishes to everyone reading this post for a bountiful Thanksgiving feast with your friends and family.  May your animals’ dinner stay dry and your dressing and turkey stay moist, and let us all give thanks for our good fortune in finding and raising these appealing little creatures.

For now …

It’s post-season in major league baseball and breeding is about to begin on our Soay sheep farm.  While the world awaits the (inevitable?) demise of the Cubs, we are pacing (mentally) in the dugout, wondering how our selection of rams to call up from the bull pen will turn out.   Will our three British “starters” for our conservation breeding program be enough or should we designate a reliever right now to take over in the event of disease or accident?  Will Fenugreek turn out to be rookie of the year with our black and tan-carrying ewes?   Here he is.  What do you think?  Is this young fellow up to the task?

The baseball analogy starts to break down, alas, when we talk about good numbers and bad numbers.  The low ERA of a Roger Clemens is the reverse of what we want in a breeding ram’s Ewe-to-Ram Average in lambing.  General managers and amateur baseball statisticians accumulate years, and occasionally decades, of data on pitchers.  They can trace a pitcher’s development, prime seasons, and decline down to the patterns of individual pitches in single games.  In our Soay world, rams generally get one breeding season and that’s it.  ERAs are calculated on only one trip to the mound.

What about stats on strikeouts, which figure prominently in deciding what pitcher to use?  Not for us, thank you.  We want every single ewe to get on base and hit a double — the exact opposite of the baseball types.  If a breeding ram ever struck out with a ewe, it’ would be lost lamb revenue for us.  Worse yet, by the time the strikeout was known, lambing would be over for the year, way too late to bring in a reliever. 

Nor do we care one whit how many pitches a ram accumulates during the game, in fact, the more the better.  Just put him out there and let him throw his best stuff   Last year Warwick serviced 22 ewes quite nicely and was ready for more, and we recently heard from another breeder who used one ram for her 40 ewes with good results.  If it would make any difference, we probably would conjure up special cheers reminiscent of high school days.  With apologies to all Wisconsin Badgers’ fans:  “On Trenear, on Porkellis, on to victory.  Bring your balls right down the field, boys, on to victory …”

Pedigree and associated genetic ancestry is of course the single most important consideration for us in deciding which rams to use.  We do our best to avoid family histories of rotator cuff and hyper-extended elbows.  But we do like sons of proven fathers and are always on the lookout for the ovine equivalent of Cal Ripken Sr. and Jr.
On a less scientific level, but unavoidable in the age of marketing, we occasionally waste a little time wondering whether our breeding rams should sport goatees and ponytails, the baseball equivalent, I suppose, of sweeping horns.

Here are our big guys in the bull pen waiting for the phone to ring, meanwhile agreeably posing for our friend Leigh Hood.  Will their offspring appeal to buyers? We sure hope so.  

As I write this, I of course have no idea who will win the playoffs and whether we will win the lambing gender lottery next spring.  What I do know is it’s time to finalize the breeding roster and take stock of our popcorn and beer supply.  Game 1 of the World Series will be here before we know it and we put our breeding groups together next Friday.   Batter up!

For now … 

Perhaps the greatest initial investment a Soay keeper needs make is decent fencing to keep the little darlings home and safe.  Alas, the aesthetics of a run of taught, newly-installed wire fence fastened neatly to precisely aligned, precisely vertical fence posts is of no concern to the rams, especially during rut.  They bash away without shame when they are trying to court the ladies on the other side of the fence.  Let it be said, in fairness to the rams, that ewes also engage in this most unattractive behavior, with more persistence if less power.  Ordinarily they do not actually broach the fence, but clips come loose, unsightly bulges develop, and the bottom of the fence raises up to the point that stupid lambs will get their necks caught reaching underneath.  All most annoying to an otherwise agreeable shepherd.

Consider the options.  You can sell the sheep and take up some other hobby.  Or you can always just eat them.  Less drastic, if expensive and back-breaking, you can replace the trashed fence entirely with a stout board fence of 2-by-8’s bolted to railroad sleepers.  Better yet, make use of the fact that a sheep will not bash what he, or she, cannot see.  That is, provide a View Block.

A View Block is just that – something, anything that keeps a sheep on one side of your fence from seeing, and trying to get at, what is on the other.  There are any number of strategies.  A friend of ours came by a great stack of used plywood sheets some years ago.  Every autumn she lugs the whole lot to the fences separating her various breeding groups and ties the pieces together end on end with scraps of baling twine from last year’s hay bales.  Economical to be sure, but only if you have a source of free plywood and a strong back you are willing to sacrifice to the cause. 

Last year about this time, just as the rams were gearing up for their annual testosterone-driven display of head-butting, we stumbled on a less strenuous and for us more practical alternative.  Steve was out one day laying black landscape cloth along one of our fences to keep grass and weeds from shorting out the electric “scare” wire.  A gust of wind blew a loose flap of the cloth up against the fence, blocking our view.  Eureka!  If it blocked our view, it also would block the animals’ view. 

For readers not familiar with this stuff called “landscape cloth,” here is a modest description.  It is generally black, somewhat the texture of thin felt except made from a woven synthetic fabric, water permeable, UV-resistant so it lasts a long time, and mechanically strong so it does not stretch – all desirable characteristics.  At our farm store it comes in 3, 4, 6, and 12-foot widths, the 4-foot size being just right for our fences.  It is sold in 100 or 200 meter rolls (go figure).  Landscape cloth usually goes under a gravel lane or walkway to keep weeds from growing up through the rocks, or under the mulch layers of flower beds much tidier than the ones found on our farm.  (We like to think of its new use as keeping our ram or ewe “weeds” from getting through the cloth to the other pasture.).

Steve folds the cloth over the top of the fence, leaving a 4-inch flap (somewhat akin to a selvage if you’re a tailor or seamstress) on the other side, and secures it with cable ties, the doodads electricians use for bundling wires.   Here’s a picture of one of our View Blocks with the flap folded over and held down by cable ties. 

Any scraps of wire or twine also will do to secure the cloth.  Using a 10-penny nail to poke a hole through the main sheet of cloth and the flap, as close to the top wire as possible to provide a snug closure, we zip up a cable tie every 2 feet or so across the top length of fence.  The goal is to keep the cloth flat against the fence and tightened down so the wind cannot allow any flapping or billowing pieces to get started and eventually tear off.  Here’s a closeup of the cable tie securely anchored.
 

Our first fence outfitted this way was equipped with a stout flat board – a batter board actually – about 15 inches above the ground that we originally installed against the actions of a particularly determined ram.  After securing the top edge of the cloth with cable ties, Steve simply nailed the bottom edge of the cloth to the board with wide-headed roofing nails.  Although we fretted the winds would pull the cloth through the nails, we got through breeding season last year with no mangled fences and nary an attempt at bashing through the cloth. It has been nearly a year and so far the View Blocks are intact and ready for another rut, which is fast upon us.   Here is the full expanse of our most needed View Block from last year.  It kept Warwick, who had been favored with over 20 ewes in his own pasture, from bashing through to get at the additional ten or so ewes who were being courted by Jerry on the other side of the fence.  Good grief.

In the Soay world at least, good fences do indeed make good neighbors.  Warwick and Jerry finished their appointed tasks without a single dustup, and who knows whether the splendid bunch of really good-looking lambs that ensued was thanks in part to the fact that their daddies were not distracted by the possibilities just beyond the fence.      

The other method we tried came about when Steve noticed a pair of ornery ewes, known troublemakers, deep into an extended dispute back and forth along a 150-foot fence, making a mess of the whole length of it.  Indifferent to the source or explanation of such unappealing female behavior, Steve quickly threw up a cloth View Block.  This fence was not fitted with battering boards, so he used cable ties both top and bottom.  It worked for awhile, until the ewes were moved to another location.  But over the winter, the bottom edge of the cloth tore loose, creating an undulating but ineffective length of fluttering black cloth still attached at the fence top.  Here it is in all its useless glory.

The Engineering Department is at work on a solution.

As for our friend the plywood queen, we are pleased to report she has become a landscape cloth convert.  She reports that poultry wire clips also work quite nicely to hold the cloth to the fence.

Here’s [not] looking at you, kid.

For now …

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 it yourself.

If you have kept up with your reading here, you already know about the Sheep Chair we use at the Saltmarsh Beauty Parlor.  So now the ram or ewe is strapped in and ready.  You lift up the first hoof, only to be greeted by an irregular-shaped black thing that looks like a partly-melted piece of black plastic embedded with hay shards and grass bits and suffused with the ubiquitous sheep poop.  Gaak!  Where to begin?  What to do?

Off-hand, I cannot think of anything related to Soay husbandry that depends more on trial and error, or benefits more from a little practice, than hoof-trimming.  Unless your animals are on gravel 24/7 year-round, their hooves really must be trimmed or the animals will go lame or get impacted or infected hooves.  At a minimum, they will be uncomfortable.  There is good news on two fronts:  the learning curve is steep and fast, and you can find quite a few well-illustrated guides in the sheep literature.  Our current favorite, including photos, is at www.fiascofarm.com.  Let me just briefly introduce you to trimming and then send you off to the experts.  Here is Steve as he starts one hoof:

No two hooves are alike, so I cannot give you a formula or a rule based on inches or centimeters about what to cut off.  But the goals are always the same.  First, try to end up with the bottom of the hoof flat and the two halves trimmed so that together they form a nice flat platform for the sheep to stand on.  We do not want our sheep listing off to one side or favoring one leg over another because of grossly uneven hooves.  Remember run-down heels in the bad old days of high-heeled women’s city shoes?  Ouch!  We want to avoid the ovine equivalent of that curse.

Second, try to leave no flaps of horny material on the sides, or an overly thick heel pad, to get impacted or sore.  If you achieve either of these goals, you usually will have achieved the other one, too. 

In the next picture, Steve takes off a protruding edge.  On some animals, the “heel” portion also will have grown too thick and must be trimmed off.  The flaps are easy to spot; judging the thickness of the heel really does take practice, so err on the side of taking less off at first.

Here is a close-up to show you how a small trimmer operates with more finesse than the bigger pair designed for Suffolks and other hulks.

In the next picture, Steve works on the edge closest to him and the fresh edge looks shiny, appearing almost white with the sun glinting off the new surface.  Notice the surface of that part of the hoof is now more or less level, with no offending flaps.

The last photo shows a pair of hooves with all edges and the heel pads in need of trimming.  Steve has taken off some of the edges on the animal’s right hoof (on your left, of course), where it is shiny, but there is more work to be done.  The hooves are not so overgrown as to cause limping at this point, but another year of growth without trimming probably would cause problems.

Just as your pedicurist needs to judge how much cuticle or heel callus to trim off, my resident Soay pedicurist (Mr. Steven to his valued customers) needed to learn how far to trim without drawing blood.  He still misses sometimes, and the sheep register their displeasure by sauntering right past the “tips” jar without breaking stride or even turning their heads. 

Maybe next year we will experiment with the latest shades of hoof polish or even massages, but for now …