The Soay Sheep Chronicles

It is common knowledge among Soay shepherds that finding equipment for our diminutive animals can be a challenge:  standard ID tags swamp our lambs’ ears; even our largest ewes get lost in full-sized sheep chairs; 4×4 mesh panels are a hazard, rather than a protection.  But there is one perfectly-sized category of equipment for Soay sheep – airline dog crates.Whether you ship a single ram across country to a breeder looking for new genetics for her flock, or tote a breeding ram from one end of your pastures to the other to service his ewes, a dog crate is just right.  A few examples should make the point.

TAKING A SOAY SHEEP TO THE VET

Despite their legendary hardiness, Soay sheep occasionally need veterinary attention, and when they do, cost considerations mandate that if possible, we go to the vet’s office rather than having her come to the farm.  Steve and I can easily lift a single Soay sheep, in-crate, into the pickup and out again.  If I am not around, Steve heists the crate on the tractor forks.

Even better, the dog crate fits nicely into the garden cart, so if we have more than a few steps to go with the animal here on the farm, the cart becomes the taxi.  Here is Steve bringing Venus home in her cast after she broke her leg.

Among other advantages, crating the animal keeps it relatively immobile, whereas toting the sheep loose in the back end of the pickup in a drop-in stock rack allows the animal to be jostled around at a time when it is uncomfortable at best.  Hosing down a crate is also easier than cleaning the back end of a pickup.

MOVING SHEEP FROM ONE PASTURE AREA TO A DISTANT AREA

Because our pastures are aligned more or less in a long single row, we sometimes need to move sheep through other animals’ areas to get to a pasture several paddocks away, or to move single rams into breeding pens.  We could, of course, try to set up enough panels and Electronet to make a corridor through the neighboring groups’ territories, but that feels too much like work and not very reliable in any case.  Accidental breedings are not allowed on our farm and general chaos is something we try to avoid.  Here again, dog crates are a good solution.

Last summer, our ranch hand Shawn came up with a dandy contraption for moving large numbers of to-be-weaned lambs out of their mothers’ pasture.  Here it is:

I know what you are thinking:  “that’s the sorriest excuse for a triple-wide I’ve ever seen.”  Scoff if you will, but by golly the Saltmarsh Winnebago gets the job done.  Its frame is a single 2×6 plank, slightly longer than the combined width of the three-crate chassis.  In place of bolts, and to facilitate disassembly when we need a single crate, Shawn used red cargo (i.e., ratcheting) straps to lash the crates side by side on the frame.  Voilá – the Soay motor home.

In the next pictures, Steve and Shawn transport fifteen lambs in three crates, crowded quarters to be sure, but only for a few minutes.  Our niece Allison, a city girl from Pittsburgh, looks on in disbelief at the sight of all those lambs being hoisted up and over the fence.

Once the RV arrived in the lambs’ new home

and the disembarkment began, faithful Llucy, our guardian llama, kept tabs as her charges emerged from the crates.

Adults can be moved in the triple-wide as well.  When it comes time to set up breeding groups in October, Molly gathers the ewes from their various summer pastures,  we sort them, and Molly then herds them one group at a time to their assigned breeding areas.

Once the ewes settle in, we use the crates to bring the lucky breeding rams up from the Bull Pen to their assigned ewes.  Compared to the days of dragging those rams one at a time through several pastures to get to the breeding areas, it’s a breeze.

HAVE CRATE, WILL TRAVEL

Tales of shipping Soay sheep by air make the circuit of breeder legends from time to time.  We always thought it sounded way too complex to be feasible.  But last month we tried it and can report two things:  it does work, and it is a lot of work.  Logistics and cost considerations are for another post.  For now, simply enjoy watching Air Saltmarsh in action.

Here are two young rams loaded and ready to leave for the airport at 3:15 a.m.  I make no apologies for the funny “light” in the picture.

As you can imagine, the passengers behind us in line were none too pleased to have to wait for sheep to check in.  Their grumpiness, and the early hour, probably explain the look on Steve’s face.

After much fussing with labels and bills of lading, the rams joined the other luggage on the conveyor belt and were taken away, but not before a befuddled customer rushed up to us and said, “oh aren’t they cute; are they poodles?”

I do not want to leave you with the impression that life with crates is all work and no play.  One of these flights came about because an imaginative Soay shepherd in Pennsylvania wanted to surprise his wife with a new Soay ram for her birthday.  Talk about fun with logistics!  But that’s a story for another day and another post.

Bottom line:  there are as many ways to use your Soay RVs as your imagination can concoct.

For now …

Far be it from me to presume to know, actually, but I do know their shepherds see all sorts of lines and angles and curves in everyday objects that can delight the eye and provide an additional layer of pleasure to what sometimes feels like pretty humdrum stuff — feeding, watering, filling the mineral feeders.

On my way out to feed early one recent morning after a lovely big soft snowstorm — no wind, no drifts, just the fluffy stuff coming straight down — my eyes were greeted by all sorts of arresting scenery and it occurred to me that what we see, and our sheep see, on a wintery morning, is all part of the fascination in raising small livestock on a small acreage.  I hope you will enjoy these images of life in the country.

Corduroy comes in all colors, including “fence beige”

One of Steve’s dreams for our farm ever since we got serious about formal conservation breeding with our British Soay sheep has been to have breeding paddocks consolidated in one place.  He figured it would make chores more manageable, and our livestock guardian dog’s protection more effective, than having the breeding groups spread throughout the pastures.  And besides, he has had a hammer in his hand and a tool kit slung on his hip since he was a toddler, so there generally is no way to dissuade him from taking on yet another project, improving on the 4th generation of shelters, thinking up new ways to protect the mineral feeders from getting rained on — you get the idea.

This year, with the help of our trusty summer ranch hand Shawn, the breeding paddock dream came true.  I have never seen so many angles and Frank-Lloyd-Wright-like surfaces on a farm before, but I find them very pleasing to the eye.  Here is the Saltmarsh Sheraton, a four-star breeding hotel:

Let me know if you are interested in a detailed description of how these pens are put together.  On a flat surface, they actually would be quite manageable to construct.  On land as slopey as ours, that’s another matter.

Not everything at Saltmarsh Ranch is as meticulously constructed as the new breeding pens, nor as pleasing to the eye, but I thought you might smile at this picture of our sheep trailer, which I maintain must have started life as a circus wagon, parked in the snow next to our trusty old pickup Willie (as in Nelson), filled to the brim with snow-covered scrap metal, largely from the building project.  The angular trailer has its own story, but that’s for another day.

And last and most, here is the legendary Berci Box all decked out in its winter finery when it got caught out in the snow, with snags of snow hanging from the air holes on its side.

The Berci box has carried countless Soay sheep up and down the west coast, but one of its earliest and most notable uses was to carry Soay sheep into the U.S. from Athelstan, Quebec a decade ago, a story unto itself and a worthy tale for reading on a winter day.   If you don’t know Kathie Miller’s saga, I commend it to you.  It’s a great tale about legendary sheep (and their crate), and about Kathie, an even more legendary pioneering Soay sheep maven.

For now …