We trim our flock’s hooves at the time we give them their annual Covexin-8 boosters, also a good time to check for runny stools (a sign of worms), ram horns that may be curling in and need trimming (uncommon, but not a big deal when it happens), and a general look at the animals’ health.  You can find a pretty good description of the process in an earlier post on this blog:  here.

Earlier this week we were working our rams and I happened to capture a few pictures that address two of the questions we have received since I put up that earlier post.

FAIRY SLIPPERS: LONG HOOF TIPS ON YOUNG SOAY SHEEP

Normally we do not need to trim our lambs’ feet until they are a year old, which means our ram lambs have their first trim at about age 15 months when we conduct our annual Working of the Rams.  Although the main “platform” of their hooves stays ground down, they often have long points at the tips of their hooves, what we call “fairy slippers,” as though someone pulled straight out on the ends, creating a turned-up hoof tip that looks like the fairy or jester shoes in movies and cartoons.  Here’s a somewhat ratty-looking example:

Yearling Soay ram's fairy slippers

As you can see, Saltmarsh Tarleton’s fairy slippers had started to wear off and break before trimming day arrived.  So far, we have not had any problems with rams tripping over their fairy slippers, and since the main part of their hooves stays relatively flat for the first year, we do not find it necessary to schedule a special mid-year hoof trim for our ram lambs — one less chore during the winter.

RAM DEMEANOR:  CAN I REALLY TRIM MY RAMS’ HOOVES WITHOUT GETTING HURT?

Yes, and the more you do it, the easier it becomes.  Hoof trimming is neither an art nor a science; it is simply a task that takes practice.

Because we regularly walk among our sheep, including the rams, when it comes time to work the rams they more or less cooperate.  The “more” half of the equation is that if your Soay sheep, rams included, are comfortable having you close to them on a regular basis, they will put up much less fuss when you want to get even closer and more personal.  The “less” part is that no matter how much time you spend among your sheep, they still do not like to be caught, and they will put up resistance to having their hooves trimmed if you try to conduct the pedicure with the ram standing up and the person with the trimmer kneeling beside the ram.  That is asking for a pair of broken glasses or a nice bruise on your face.

We have tried a number of different setups for trimming hooves, including sheep chairs.  The sheep chair worked okay for our very large North American rams and it must be wonderful for working the big hulking Suffolks, but it is way to big and unwieldy for our British ewes and rams; they slide down in it, wriggle around, and basically it is useless.  Before we had the sheep chair, Steve used to put a bale of hay in the catchpen and put the rams up on their butts, with their backs resting on Steve’s chest.  This year, he decided to go back to that tried and true method, and it worked just fine as long as he positioned the bale, the ram, and his own rear end in a way that put the ram’s hooves in position.  (It helped a lot that we had Shawn working the rams with Steve, and I highly recommend drafting the nearest strong young person you can find to help with this chore).

The bottom line here (sorry) is to be sure the ram is squarely on his back end.  If you do that, he will be calm enough; he will not get away; and he will not be able to land a direct hit at your face.  Here is Steve working one of our rams this week:

Trimming a Soay ram's hooves

To give you an idea of the hay bale setup, here’s another picture of Steve trimming the same ram’s hooves, with Shawn working the back legs.  If Shawn had not been part of the process, Steve still could have leaned over, with the ram’s head tucked to either side, and grabbed the back legs to work them without undue stress.

Tandem pedicure for a Soay ram

This ram, Saltmarsh Royton, was about average in terms of demeanor, not happy at being turned on his butt, but once upended he just sat there while the shepherds did their work.

I probably should have taken movies of this process, but truth to tell, the shepherds engage in quite a lot of colorful talk when they are working the rams, as you can imagine.  Once all the bawdy talk is over and the hoof trim (the last step in the annual workup) is finished, Steve generally has a few quiet words with the ram before he turns the ram back into the pasture.

A final word with Saltmarsh Royton after his pedicure

A scratch on the nose and a bit of sing-song chat go a long way towards keeping our rams manageable.  And besides, they are sooo handsome!

Side note:  If you are curious about Steve’s bilious green t-shirt, it is from our local ghost town, Buncom, the last standing ghost town in Southern Oregon, just three miles down the road from our farm.

For now …

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.

Isaac's feedbags - new and old

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:

Khloe's feedbag

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,

Khloe at six weeks

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

Khloe at 8 months

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

Isaac & Khloe keep Steve company

For now …

Here at Saltmarsh Ranch, our lambs live in several different places before settling onto our pastures for the summer. Most of the lambs are born in the Maternity Ward, a large covered area with ample feeders and a lot of straw for the ewes to paw at in their efforts to create a “nest” in which to lamb. A few of the lambs are born with their mothers already in a jug, either because their mothers follow Steve into a jug in the early stages of labor or because they are twins we were not expecting (and thus had already jugged the ewe and her first lamb).

Once the lambs are 2-3 days old, or sooner if we run out of jugs in a lambing explosion, the ewe and her lamb(s) walk down a narrow aisle between jugs into what we call the Nursery, an area about 15 feet by 10 feet where several ewes and their lambs will stay for a few days before moving to our large sunny lamb pen with the older lambs and their moms. Just as the jugs are invaluable (in our experience) for avoiding lamb mixups, allowing the ewe and lamb to bond very tightly, and providing a calm and quiet place for Steve to work the lambs, so too is the Nursery an important second step, a somewhat protected area for several newborns to start socializing with other lambs, and for new mothers to learn appropriate levels of protectiveness towards their lambs (are you listening Patterdale?). A few days ago I sat in the Nursery watching the lambs sizing each other up as their mothers took a break to dig into the hay supply:

After another few days in the Nursery, or sooner if the pace of lambing results in Nursery overcrowding, we move the Nursery brats and their mothers up to the big lamb pen, a journey Steve has dubbed “On the Oregon Trail.” I’m not at all sure I can capture the essence of the trail drive on my pocket camera, but I’ll give it a try next time we move lambs.

For now …

You may be thinking: wait a minute. Mother Nature never supplemented the Soay on St. Kilda against coccidiosis, and those Soay survived just fine. Well, that’s partly right, but the descendants of the Island Soay are robust and hardy today precisely because only the most fit made it. We don’t know whether any of the early Soay got hit by coccidia and died as lambs, but we do know that if a modern-day Soay lamb gets hit with an outbreak of coccidiosis, it almost certainly will die, and a gruesome death at that. So yes, we intervene, but we think with good reason.

Okay, I’m back down off my soapbox … for now.

When we first started with Soay, we knew about worms in sheep, but as novice shepherds — even Steve with all his years of classwork, including parasitology — we simply did not realize our lambs were vulnerable to the one-celled micro-organisms called coccidia. What we did know was that we began to have an occasional sick lamb that withered and died at about 6-8 weeks, not because it lacked milk and not from worms; we had wormed the ewes before lambing. It was awful. The lamb would quickly go downhill, with no real symptoms other than listlessness and what we now know is the tell-tale uncontrolled scours (diarrhea). We would worm the lamb to no avail. Probios was useless. Nothing we did worked.

It took a visit to the vet with one of those very sick lambs to solve the mystery and make the connection for Steve between textbook and hands-on husbandry. Tests of the lamb showed a prodigious load of coccidia. Dr. Jean sat Steve down and in her no-nonsense, but very knowledgeable and caring manner told him that we had not done a good enough job of managing our flock and that we had to establish a program to prevent any further losses from coccidiosis. Her directions were clear and to the point: treat the ewes at lambing, and treat the lambs at weaning.

We took Dr. Jean’s instructions to heart and immediately changed the way we do things on our farm. The good news is that intervening to prevent coccidiosis is really straightforward and easy, not very expensive, and very effective. It has worked wonders on the health of our lambs and our young adults. We no longer have lambs who “fail to thrive,” even though we have a large flock and we have several dozen lambs born each spring in the rain. Our yearlings are strong and thriving.

Worms vs. Coccidia: a Primer

Before I outline our implementation of Dr. Jean’s “treat … treat …” program, I want to share with you the short version of a tutorial Steve gave me on why coccidia are a much bigger threat to your flock than worms, and why it will not work to simply wait and give wormer to a lamb if it starts to scour. For starters, worms and coccidia are entirely different types of organisms. Although both live in the gut, and although they both are found in at least low, sub-clinical levels even in healthy animals, worms and coccidia grow differently and cause very different kinds of damage. The main point about coccidia, the reason why they are so dangerous to our sheep, is that these single-celled organisms undergo a series of replications in the sheep’s gut, producing millions, probably trillions of new coccidia inside the animal at an exponential rate, and they do so by burrowing into the cells of the lining of the gut. When they replicate, the cells burst and die, expelling the progeny back into the gut, where those new coccidia repeat the cycle two or three more times. Before all these cells burst and died, they quite literally provided the transportation system for nutrients to get into the lamb’s blood stream and fuel its growth. The cells’ destruction drastically impairs the lamb’s ability to absorb nutrients, especially since it all happens so quickly. The lamb fails to thrive and usually dies within a few days, before the lining of the gut can begin to repair itself. Even if the lamb survives, it will be permanently compromised and sickly. By the time even a diligent shepherd notices the scouring, the infection is raging and the damage is irreparable. By comparison, worms are hardly a problem at all. True, they either suck some blood from the host animal or steal some of the food in its gut, but they do not outright kill the animal and there is plenty of time to treat for worms before permanent damage is done.

Note: I realize as I write this that it may be either too much information or not enough, depending on your tolerance for hard-core biology. In order to get it right for the post, I recorded my personal tutorial with Steve. For readers interested in a more precise and detailed walk-through of the life-cycle and impact of coccidia, click here:

Now, back to our prevention program.

Treat the ewes in late pregnancy

In the weeks leading up to lambing, we add something called “Deccox” (active ingredient: decoquinate) to our pregnant ewes’ mineral. The goal is to lower as far as possible the load of coccidia they are carrying and shedding in the area where they will lamb. Note: for the same reason, we always muck out a jug once the ewe and her lamb move to the Nursery so that the next ewe and newborn will start out in a nearly coccidia-free zone.

Lacing the ewes’ mineral with coccidiostat is easy. We simply mix 25 parts (by weight, not by volume) of our ordinary sheep mineral with one part by weight of Deccox (6% decoquinate), available at your feed store or grain elevator. We make it by the gallon in a plastic milk jug by weighing out 3kg (3000 grams) of sheep mineral and 120 grams of Deccox, mixing it thoroughly together in a big pail, and then funneling the mix into the clean milk jug. And by the way, the active ingredient is “carried” in cornmeal, plus something to keep it from clumping up, so be sure to store your unused Deccox in a mouse-proof container. If you have only a few Soay sheep, with fewer than 10 lambs a year, the easiest way to get Deccox may be through an online supplier. Pipestone, for example, sells Deccox in relatively small quantities for just this purpose and a pound will go a long way. It takes far less than an ounce for this prevention.

Treat the lambs at weaning

About three weeks after our first lambs are born, we set up a small feeder in a small area with small openings or slats so the lambs can get in but their mothers cannot. This allows the lambs to have free choice of the special lamb food, called for some reason “lamb creep.” Here is an early version of our creep feeding area:

The good news is that adding a coccidiostat to the lambs’ menu for a few weeks gets the lambs past their most vulnerable point. And besides, the lambs just cannot get enough of the lamb/kid creep. Have a look at these pictures, all taken right at the time we were weaning last year’s lambs:

If you’re thinking the container in that first picture looks like a chicken feeder, you would be correct. For up to about 10 lambs, it is just the ticket, as long as you suspend it above ground so the lambs will not tip it over in their enthusiasm.

Here are the lambs at the moment they heard the sound of the creep feed bag. As you can see, the lambs had become little ovine Pavlov’s dogs, racing for the goody.

If you are thinking this chicken feeder is not big enough for all those lambs, you would be correct again. Based on last year’s experience, this year we are using a battered old turkey feeder, same general style, but much bigger and with a wide enough footprint that we do not need to suspend it.

No possible way any of the lambs are going to let their bratty little sisters or brothers have exclusive rights to this trough!

The creep feed we use consists of a combination of grain and forage products, contains about 16% protein, includes all the minerals a lamb needs (including Selenium), and a coccidiostat trade-named “Bovatec” (generic name: lasalocid sodium). Your feed store will have something like this if they have any sheep or goat supplies at all. For the lambs, it is their first solid food; it is even easier to digest than the hay they pilfer from their mothers’ feeders. So it provides a nice transition to solid food. At first, the very young lambs will just nibble at it, but as they grow, you will notice you are refilling the creep feeder more frequently.

More good news: as the lambs eat more creep, they make less demands on their mothers’ milk, particularly nice for ewes nursing twins. Our ewes finish up lambing season these days in much better condition than the years before we started using creep.

Even more good news: apparently you do not have to worry about precise measurements or overdosing the lambs on the coccidiostat. The label says nothing about limitations and instead calls for giving the lambs “free choice.” Once you turn them out into the pasture where they have unlimited access to luscious grass, they won’t exactly forget about creep, but they will be eager to get back to the grass — they are wired to eat grass and hay, after all. The next picture shows just that, the lambs heading out to pasture. I suggested they turn and pose for a class picture, but they would have none of it. With the promise of grass ahead, they were not about to dilly dally for the camera.

While the lambs are eating creep, they get all the mineral they need. As they move off milk and creep and onto grass at weaning time, their bodies still want mineral, so they will naturally gravitate to a mineral feeder in their own pasture area away from their mothers. The last step in our anti-coccidia program is to include Deccox in their mineral for about a month after we quit feeding them creep.

Ready for more good news? Soay lambs gradually develop resistance to coccidia as they grow up, and by the time they are adults you do not need to worry about them falling victim to an outbreak. Strictly speaking, they will never become immune, but they will tolerate the base load always present in your barnyard or pasture (higher in wet climates, much lower in very dry climates). Thus, the goal with the lambs coming up to weaning is to balance their own developing resistance (i.e., allow it to happen) with the need to supplement while their overall resistance drops during the stress of moving from a mostly milk diet to exclusively grass and hay.

Now let’s all close up this blog and head out to the pasture or barnyard to enjoy our healthy Soay lambs!

For now …

You may be wondering, what’s the big deal, since Patterdale obviously lived through her difficult first few weeks. What we didn’t know then was whether she would mature properly and be capable of getting pregnant, carrying a pregnancy to full term, and delivering a lamb successfully. The plain fact is that bottle-fed lambs present issues beyond merely keeping them alive. They really cannot eat on the same schedule as their nursing cousins, who take very small amounts of milk at frequent intervals, up to several times an hour. No matter how diligent we were in feeding Patterdale, we could not match the schedule her mother would have provided had she not rejected Patterdale out of hand. In addition, there is a substantial risk of the lamb scouring because it wants to drink more each time it is bottle fed than its digestive system can accommodate. Later, when Patterdale had no choice but to go out in the pasture with all the other lambs and their big mothers (but without a mother watching out for her), we learned the hard way that she could not compete at the feeders. In short, we had no idea whether her reproductive system had successfully matured in light of her compromised growth process.

Against this background, Steve was delighted when he arrived at the Maternity Ward late in the afternoon of April Fool’s Day to find Patterdale fussing and giving off signals that she was about to go into labor. Because she is so tame, she followed Steve right into a jug and quietly lambed there while Steve went about evening feeding chores. By the time I grabbed my camera and ran over to the Maternity Ward, Patterdale had nearly finished cleaning up her lamb and getting her up to nurse:

Later that evening when we worked the lamb, we were pleased to find her a respectable (especially for a small first-time mother) 4 pounds 4 ounces, warm and obviously having had her fill of the all-important colostrum. We also have been amused to see how ferociously protective Patterdale is now that she and her lamb have re-joined the jumble of newborns and their moms. Any other lamb or ewe that approaches Patterdale’s baby gets butted away and butted hard, as though Patterdale is saying to herself, “my mom abandoned me and by golly, I’m not going to let that happen to my daughter!”

For now …

Every little burg in Iowa back in the 1950s and 1960s had its large animal veterinarian, and my hometown of 1320 people, Paullina, was no exception. Like the legendary James Herriott in Yorkshire and Baxter Black in Texas, Doc Peterson was the town’s vet and a whole lot more. Known to farmers and townies alike, it was he who tended to the pet cocker spaniels as well as the cattle and pigs. If you wanted to hear the latest local news, you watched to see when Doc Peterson’s perpetually dirty Chevy station wagon pulled into the angle parking outside Lange’s Café mid-morning. If you sidled up to one of the red naugahyde-covered stools at the counter for a cup of coffee, you would find Doc regaling everyone within earshot about what he had learned on his first trip to the country that morning – the town crier at work.

In the decades before malpractice worries and the urge-to-sue permanently altered the way vet medicine is practiced now, Doc Peterson welcomed children to watch what he was doing, albeit at a safe distance. He would patiently explain why he had to use a form of block and tackle to help a heifer get a big-headed calf out. He would let the farm kids paint the iodine on the pigs’ “armpits” before injecting the piglets with life-saving vaccine against hog cholera. When he returned a groggy, newly-spayed pet dog to its fretful owners, he would patiently explain to the children why they had to be careful with “Spot” or “Muffy” for a few days. And whether or not Doc Peterson wanted them to, the animal-savvy farm kids inevitably took matters into their own hands and proudly rounded up the huge (from a child’s perspective) cattle into the barn so Doc Peterson could figure out what was causing them not to give enough milk, or whatever was ailing them. There were husbandry and life lessons in abundance for the asking.

If only I had paid attention back in those days, I would feel much more confident when something goes awry with my Soay sheep. But alas, I did not appreciate all the wisdom Doc Peterson was imparting as he methodically worked the animals, and instead I couldn’t wait to grow up and move to “The City.” I am undeniably the poorer now for failing to listen then.

Will Rogers’ famous quotation about veterinarians hung on a plaque in Doc Peterson’s office: “The best doctor in the world is a veterinarian. He can’t ask his patients what is the matter — he’s got to just know.” The twinkle in Doc Peterson’s eye when he put one of his big hammy hands inside some part of a cow or pig and, as if by magic, declared what was going on in there was electrifying to any child who would listen.

What many people in my town, me included, may not have appreciated fully were how many ways Doc Peterson’s agile mind manifested itself, and how often his strong moral values and “groundedness” came into play. He never lost sight of the goal in treating the farm animals: maximize the animal’s health so the farmer can sell it for top price and thereby clothe and feed his family. Doc was both gentle-hearted and a steely-eyed realist about the role of farm animals as the major, and often the only, source of revenue for rural Iowa families.

Doc Peterson also knew first-hand the difference between a hard-working farmer who dropped out of school in the sixth grade and a hard-working farmer who graduated from high school. Doc knew the farmers needed a good education in order to be successful businessmen, and he was a tireless supporter of our local school and its teachers. Everyone in Paullina knew the story of Doc Peterson running for the school board because he was upset at the teachers’ low pay and the town’s resulting inability to attract the best teachers. His campaign promise (delivered, mind you, at the same counter stools in the café used for his role as the roving reporter) to raise teachers’ salaries produced a record-breaking voter turnout; legend has it that he lost by the widest margin in Paullina’s history, with folks driving to town to vote against him who had never voted before.

For better or worse, when you live in a town of only a thousand people, your private family stories often become common knowledge. One of my favorites about Doc Peterson is the time a farmer called to have Doc come out to his farm. In the breathless, just-in-from-the-fields voice that typified calls to the Peterson residence, the farmer informed “Mrs. Doc” that she should “tell Doc he needs to get out here and castrate my pigs. I need him right away to cut off those participles.” Those of us privy to the story of course hoped the vet would do a good job so they wouldn’t be dangling participles!

In the good old days, there was no such thing as a night and weekend emergency vet service to take over and give Doc Peterson a day off or a scheduled evening with his family or friends without interruption. His children grew up not knowing what it meant to have a regular dinner hour, since early evening was the time when the farmers came in from the fields, found animals needing help, and picked up the phone to call Doc. In those days, Paullina did not have dial phones and instead relied on Fern Beers, the gravelly-voiced telephone operator, to connect the calls. Luckily for the locals, Fern acted as a non-paid answering machine for the veterinarian, the physician, and the volunteer firemen. When the Petersons were going to a friend’s house for dinner, for example, they would call Fern and tell her where they would be, so that if a farmer called for Doc Peterson, Fern would simply connect the farmer directly to the dinner host’s home and reach Doc immediately.

Readers familiar with the evolution (or destruction, depending on your point of view) of farming in Iowa know that by the late 1970s, the family farm was moving rapidly towards oblivion, and so were the country veterinarians. With their children grown, Doc and Mrs. Peterson used his deteriorating practice as a good excuse to close up shop and do what they had dreamed of for years – volunteering. I think it’s an accurate testament to the high regard the townspeople held for Doc Peterson (despite his “radical” views on teacher pay) that when he headed out to collect all the unpaid bills he had been carrying for some of the struggling farmers for years, he ended his 40 years of practice with less than one hundred dollars in unpaid receivables. Are you listening corporate America?

Even though he and Mrs. Doc moved away from my home town, Doc Peterson never got animal medicine out of his system. One of his volunteer jobs in retirement was inspecting animals that were being shipped overseas by Heifer Project International to help struggling third-world families become self-sufficient; another volunteer post was working in the fishery associated with Sheldon Jackson Junior College in Sitka. He even coaxed the locals in Sitka to teach him how to smoke salmon and ship it back to the States on dry ice.

As you can tell, I admired Doc Peterson and wish I had paid more attention to him when he was in his teaching mode as a veterinarian. If he could see “Prissie” now, he would scarcely believe his eyes. I am confident it never dawned on him that the smart-aleck girl in pink-rimmed glasses who would rather play the piano than get her hands dirty would someday be a Soay shepherd.

Doc Peterson died nineteen years ago today and ever since, scarcely a week has gone by that I don’t I think about him and remember these stories, and countless others like them, of the gentle doctor others called “Doc,” but who I knew and loved as my father. Thank you, dad — wish you were here!

Priscilla Peterson Weaver

For now …

Even though Soay ewes lamb without human assistance and even though we try not to handle the newborns bare-handed for at least a day until they are well bonded with their mothers, it is inevitable that we find ourselves washing our hands far more frequently during lambing. Besides that, during lambing we put on and take off gloves a lot more often — leather or cotton gloves for chores, latex gloves for jugging, rubber gloves for various other tasks. Whatever the material, what little moisture is left in the skin of our hands after the more frequent handwashing gets absorbed into the gloves, over and over again.

There are many more brands of hand lotions than there are Soay shepherds, so I won’t even attempt a comprehensive list, but of course I cannot resist a few comments. I have friends who swear by various Burt’s Bees products, the most industrial-strength of which seems to be their Hand Salve. My all-time favorite that I keep in the kitchen, bedroom, my purse and my shopping bag, the car, the truck, the lambing shed, and just about anywhere else I can tuck a jar or tube of hand cream, is Camille Beckman’s unscented Glycerine Hand Therapy. It is fabulous all-year round yet stands up to the challenges of lambing time, and definitely worth fussing at the stores carrying Ms. Beckman’s products to stock the unscented version. For some reason, it is easiest to find in hospital gift shops and Hallmark card stores, or online. For the worst hand days, those times when your thumbs are like sandpaper, nothing beats the original tried and true Bag Balm.

No matter what brand you favor, lay in a good supply before lambing starts. The bad news is, you’ll need it. The good news is that every time you handle you adult Soay, during lambing or otherwise, the lanolin in their fleece will help keep your hands soft. Now there’s a side benefit for Soay shepherds!

Got a favorite? Let me know and I will add it to the short list here.

For now …

Until this year, we have always supplemented our ewes in late pregnancy with a bit of grain or beet pellets, but to be honest, it is a lot of work to feed lots of ewes with grain buckets. Distributing just a wee bit of alfalfa flakes along with the regular hay is way easier, and less expensive, too. My resident biologist tells me alfalfa is also more “natural” in the sense that sheep are grass eaters, and alfalfa is in the grass family, unlike grain and especially beet pulp, which are farther removed from the diet sheep are accustomed to, especially Soay sheep, who survived for thousands of years on the St. Kilda grass.

And even if it were a close call on cost and hassle factor for the shepherds, the matrons’ vote is the clincher: they are delighted with the menu change.

For now …

From time to time, we hear it said that working newborn lambs is a whole lot of fuss and bother and not worth the effort. For us, it is just the opposite — one of the sweetest, most relaxing, and confidence-building times with our sheep.

A couple of days ago I took my trusty new pocket video camera with me while Steve worked one of our brand-new lambs, a little ewe we haven’t even named yet. I hope you will enjoy this tranquil scene of a contented shepherd, contented ewe, and mostly-contented lamb all together in their jug.

For now …

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 …