The gimmers – yearling ewes who we have not yet bred – don’t do this.  They are off in their own pasture minding their own business and enjoying the gradually warming rays of sunshine. You would think they’d be the nutsy ones since they are basically teenagers.  But no, it’s our supposedly “mature” ewes out there making fools of themselves.  We cannot figure it out.  Maybe they are starting to feel their lamb fetuses moving?  Or somehow the lengthening days trigger a goofy response?  Whatever it is, we see it each year.  Back when we were doing AI for the first time and fretting up a storm about coddling our “special” AI ewes during pregnancy, they did the same thing, and a couple of them were carrying hormonally-induced triplets.  Scary stuff, especially when they bash each other from the side.  Fortunately, none of the ewes got up enough of a head of steam to harm their in utero lambs and none of them hurt themselves or their sisters.

I don’t even know how to look for whatever lore exists on this issue.  Imagine the Google search:  “crazy pregnant ewes” or “ditzy sheep”?  Hasn’t worked so far.  If anyone reading this post has a clue what is going on, I’d be grateful for your insights.  Otherwise, we’ll just wait it out, knowing the lambs will be here before long.

For now …

As luck would have it, we were able to quickly give her average weights for 33 lambs weaned at 12 weeks who we happened to weigh after they had been acclimated to grass-only meals for about a month and were physically ready to leave our farm.  Here’s a quick summary of the weight data, which we hope will be useful to other breeders and potential buyers who also are considering air freight or just plain wondering at what rate Soay lambs grow.

These 33 British Soay lambs were born between April 3 and April 12, 2011, and all were weighed on August 5, 2011, when they were within a few days either way of 4 months old.  The data includes lots of twins, whose weights not surprisingly tend to be somewhat lower than single lambs, although not universally so.  The data also includes Peanut, our ram born at 1 pound 15 ounces.  If we had excluded him from the data, the average ram weight would go up about a pound.

The 13 ewe lambs ranged from 22 to 34 pounds, with a mean weight of 26.5 pounds, median weight 26 pounds.

The 14 ram lambs ranged from 20 to 40 pounds, with a mean weight of 32.4 pounds and a median weight of 33.5 pounds (the Peanut effect)

The 6 wether lambs ranged from 22 to 34 pounds, with both mean and median weights of 28 pounds.

For now …

The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook

By now many of you have heard about this outstanding new book by Deborah Robson and Carol Ekarius, but for those of you who might have missed it, here’s why you will want to put it on your Christmas wish list. The F&FS is simply the most fact-packed, comprehensive, fun, and just plain beautiful book available anywhere right now, and not only for fiber artists, but for all sheep enthusiasts and anyone who appreciates elegant writing and elegantly-produced books.

Hyperbole, you say? Overstatement? Not so. Let’s start with the heart of the book – information about fleece and fibers. The F&FS is chock full of important data in a consistent set of categories for every conceivable breed or landrace of sheep and other fleece-producing mammals: fleece weight, staple length, fiber diameters, lock characteristics, natural colors, dyeing, fiber preparation and spinning tips, tips for knitting and crocheting and weaving, and my personal favorite, what the fleece is best known for. Merely writing that last sentence reminds me of how thorough this book is. Note: If you only have time to read two sheep descriptions, make it Soay and Leicester Longwool.

And then there are the samples and illustrations. Want to know what the fleece of a particular sheep (or dog, or goat, or alpaca) looks like – raw, clean, spun into 2-ply carded or singles, and knitted up? You’ll find illustrations for virtually all the animals covered in the book. The photography is so good you want to touch the pictures of fleece samples to appreciate the animal’s fleece texture. The authors cleverly used a consistent background and placement for their fleece displays – weathered wood, always the same color and texture, and a variety of colored felt pieces to contrast with the fleece itself. You have to see these illustrations to believe them.

Many shepherds and fleece artists contributed to the book by sending fleece samples and pictures of their breeds, and the pictures of the animals in their native settings are a bonus for anyone interested in sheep generally, even if you don’t spin or weave or knit. If you own sheep, you’ll naturally gravitate to the section for your breed. I’m pretty sure from reading other reviews that Deborah and Carol maintained a high level of accuracy throughout the book, but I know for certain they got it exactly right in their write-up of Soay sheep and their fleece. It is the best, most nuanced, and (thankfully) non-politicized summary history of the breed in both Great Britain and North America available in either book or online form.

Here are a few examples of what else you can find in the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, just in case the encyclopedic treatment of fleece and fiber characteristics isn’t enough for you: references to sheep in movies and TV shows, which breeds are especially good for border collie training, a breed that went from only 10 flocks in the 1960s to not even being a conservation breed today (wow!), a call for help in finding additional information for truly rare and inaccessible breeds, breeds that have “litters” of up to 8 or 9 lambs (and we think it’s more complicated when twins arrive!), and my personal favorite in this category – a description of the man who both coined the term “statistics” and founded the North Country Cheviot breed in Scotland. Who knew? And in the same vein, where else can you learn that an economically-important national motorcycle event was cancelled in order to protect moving sheep?

A word about the publisher: we must all commend (and patronize) Storey Publishing for allowing the authors to take the time to make such an exhaustive compendium of fleece and fiber information, and even more so for investing in such high standards of production, yummy-feeling paper (I am not making this up), and all the details that set this book apart as an exemplar of “fine art” quality book publishing.

Speaking of which, you can order your own copy by going to the Storey Publishing website. Here’s the link.  When you have a minute, be sure to let Storey and Carol and Deborah know how much you appreciate their commitment to this monumental project.

Happy holidays!

Peanut stayed in the high, dry feeding area with his twin and mother much longer than most lambs. We like to get them out on green pasture as soon as possible in the spring. But since Peanut started life at under two pounds, we decided to keep him on milk and let him play at eating hay until we were sure he could make the transition to milk and grass. Our friends Leslie and Dennis took this picture.

Peanut as a scrawny lamb

Recently I was down in the ram area taking pictures of rams going to new homes this fall when I noticed Peanut mugging for the camera. Can you tell which ram he is?

Where's Peanut?

Peanut is over on the right, sporting yellow tape on his horns. The disgusted look on his face is because he and his buddies were forced to leave their lush grass for a few hours while we sorted out rams going to new homes.

You wouldn’t think a sheep that started as small as Peanut would need identifying tape, but he’s now the same size as some of our smaller 2011 rams and we still want to keep an eye on him. And not just for his own health reasons, either. A few weeks ago he figured out what ovine puberty means. While he was still with the “little kids group” we were surprised to see him paying way too much attention to the mother of the twins, the only adult ewe in the group. Off to the ram pen he went!

Peanut has nice conformation

At this point, we are confident Peanut, a line-cross full British ram, will be ready to breed when his year comes up. Until then, he’ll figure out how to fend for himself amongst the big boys. We probably haven’t seen the last of his escapades.

For now …

Eight days ago we taped the horns of rams going to new homes this fall, including four adult rams headed for farms in the midwest. At the time, I thought Steve was being a bit fussy by insisting we tape both horns.   Belts and suspenders, he called it, just in case one horn’s tape came off.  Sure enough, he was right.  Here are the four rams waiting in the loading lane for Ron Keener to show up.  As you can see, after just a week of bashing each other for primacy in the bull pen, the only tape left is on the back sides of their horns, and most of that tape is coming loose as well. Talk about battering rams!

Soay rams in rut make short work of horn tape

Looking at these fellows, the two white/blue taped rams bound for Missouri and the two white/yellow taped rams headed for South Dakota, I also was reminded of how much the rams’ appearance changes during rut. The horns firm up at the base where they are attached to the head, giving the ram more strength to bash his pasture mates for primacy. The rams’ operative breeding parts increase substantially in size – I won’t show that picture here just now. But one sign of rut is easy to show in pictures.  Many rams grow a larger and longer mane, presumably to make them more attractive to the ewes, and their necks thicken up, also for strength to duke it out with the other rams. Here is a picture of our 2008 ram Beckfoot taken just two months ago on July 13th. He has a little beard, but I wouldn’t call it a full mane, would you?

Beckfoot at ease in July, pre-rut

Now look at this picture taken on September 16th. Although the light was different each day, the differences in Beckfoot’s mane and the thickness of his neck are easy to spot.

Beckfoot in rut: thick mane, thick neck

Is this fellow ready to breed? He’s headed up to Washington next week where we know he will find good-looking Soay ewes to keep him busy.

And just in case you think I was making it up about the rams bashing off each other’s horn tape, look at how pristine Beckfoot’s yellow and blue tape was just a week ago. Whew!

For now …

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What we didn’t know was that jugs come in really handy when it’s time for the vet inspections necessary in order for Soay sheep to travel across state lines or the US-Canada border.  Let me explain.

This morning Dr. Rebecca was scheduled to inspect a whole lot of sheep headed north, south and east from here over the next month (so far, not west, that would be Japan).  In preparation, we had marked all the sheep with color-coded electrical tape on their horns – a different set of colors for each customer.  At the last minute, we decided to try putting each group of ewes (the rams were still down in the west end) in a jug. We’re pretty fussy about making sure the right sheep go to the right customer!

Ewes about to go on a trip with Ron

Ewes heading north to Washington

You might think the ewes would get uncomfortable sharing such close quarters, but not our girls. As soon as we put a little hay in the jug feeders, away they went!

Chowing down before heading south to a new home

Can't you see I'm busy eating?

And my favorite photo, for anyone who thinks Soay sheep are too skittish. How’s this for a trusting look?

Oh, is it my turn to be inspected? Okay!

A note about these feeders: we used to feed our jugged ewes out of milk crates on the floor, but of course they kicked over the crates. We tried hanging feeders but the ewes managed to knock them over, too. Our jugs are 3.5′ x 5′ and there just isn’t room for a fulll-depth hanging feeder. What we came up with is what you see here, an angled wooden feeder securely anchored to the wall, with the front face made from scraps of 4×4 wire panel. They are sized to hold a flake of hay horizontally and we can fill them just by walking alongside the jugs; we don’t even need to disturb the ewes with their newborns.

For now …

Catching a ride on a Soay ram's horn

At the time I took this picture last September, I completely missed the butterfly. No clue what kind it is. Because I was concentrating on the ram and didn’t even notice his pasture companion, I did not get a nicely focused shot of the little aviator. Here’s the best I can do:

The hitchhiker

Note to anyone concerned about whether Soay sheep are more “skittish” or flighty than commercial sheep.  Any animal, especially a ram, that will stand still this close for its picture and not even disturb its passenger is calm enough for me!

As small as the butterfly is, it is not the smallest creature I’ve seen sharing space with our small sheep. About the same time last fall that I unknowingly took the butterfly’s picture, I got a call one day from Shawn, who was moving a water tank down in the rams’ pasture.  He announced that the tank had morphed into an aquatic maternity ward.  As loyal readers will recall, we already have a dandy maternity ward for our ewes, complete with jugs and a nursery where the youngest lambs can start socializing in a protected setting, but I don’t think even our spacious birthing quarters could have contained this little guy:

Big hand, wee frog

Just in case you think that’s a piece of bark next to Shawn’s callouses,

rrrrrrrbbbbbttt!

Perhaps this fellow, when he grew up, was one of the Three [Dozen] Tenors who serenaded us all spring as they courted the lady frogs in the area. Makes me kind of wistful for their younger days, when they were content to sit on Shawn’s hand and watch the sheep munching away.

Happy summer!

For now …

tiny British Soay lamb at age ~6 hours

[Note: click on any picture to see a bigger version] We may eventually give this little guy one of our “official” names, but you can see why his unofficial name fits him to a T.  He is almost a half pound smaller than any British lamb we’ve ever had. He had a scary beginning to life in the big world.  Steve had jugged his mother, Rivington, and her small ram lamb.  It was not until an hour or so later that Steve walked around the Maternity Ward making one last check for lambs and he heard a faint sound – like muted squalling — coming from under the accumulated hay on the floor.  Sure enough, Peanut had somehow burrowed his way into the hay and was lying there shivering and wondering how he had gotten lost – and his mother apparently had forgotten about him.

Thankfully, when Steve put Peanut in with Rivington and his twin brother, she immediately accepted Peanut.  Once Steve had taken his temperature (a frighteningly low 98.2F) and given him a slug of Baby Lamb Strength to quick-start his internal furnace, he knew exactly what he wanted and where to get it and headed right back to the udder.  One of the remarkable things about Peanut is his vigor – he’s been healthy, had all his parts fully formed, and ready to venture out into the world from the minute he got that first slug of colostrum.  In terms of health, there is nothing about him that is compromised because of his size.

But … his eartag is quite another matter.  Regular readers will recall  it was only a couple of months ago that I went on and on about how wonderful the Dalton Minis and Supersmalls are for the Soay breed — small enough for the Soay lambs to accommodate without dragging the ears down.  I need to go back and revise that post.  Even the nearly weightless Daltons are too heavy for a less-than-2-pound lamb’s ears:

Peanut's eartag is too heavy!

Here courtesy of EweTube is a more animated look at Peanut’s floppy little tag:

I’ve struggled to find ways to demonstrate how small a less-than-2-pound lamb is (Peanut of course has no idea he’s small), but here’s a pretty good comparison – wee lamb investigating small adult female hand:

at age 5 days, Peanut is hand sized

two-pound stud muffin Peanut

When Peanut was just six days old, I captured him with his twin, already posing for the camera:

curious miniature twin Soay lambs

Doesn’t Peanut’s twin look positively huge by comparison?  He weighed only 3 pounds 3 ounces at birth, not exactly a giant.  The two of them are forever exploring their new world, thank goodness, and nothing seemed quite as interesting on their 9th day as the big water bucket, placed safely high, in the nursery:

small twins, big bucket

That same day we put Peanut and his twin out in an open area with one of the other lambs from our first round, a stunning grey ram lamb we’ve named Chester.  Chester is only 8 days older than Peanut, but look at the size difference — Chester weighed in at 5 pounds 6 ounces at birth, almost 3 times as large as Peanut – whew!  Chester and Peanut, by the way, have become great buddies, as you can see.

The Three Amigos

Peanut's new buddy, Chester

Peanut continues to pose whenever he can.  To close this photographic journey into the land of the Soay Lilliputians, here are my  favorite pictures of Peanut … so far.

I am Peanut - hear me roar!

2-week old breeder-in-waiting

Peanut wants me to tell you that he is one of our line-cross British Soay ram lambs, so he is a candidate to breed for us in a couple of years.  He also wants you to know he is ready, willing, and able, and is asking for your support in the upcoming election!

Peanut at 3 and 1/2 weeks

For now …

Because we have a large flock and we like to keep detailed and accurate records of data like birth weights, we often are asked by other breeders what an “average” Soay lamb “should” weigh.  Other breeders have asked us if there are significant differences between, for example, twin and single lamb birth weights, differences between conventionally bred Soay lambs and lambs bred by means of artificial insemination (AI), differences between ram lambs and ewe lambs, and so forth.  There is of course no single right answer to what lambs “should” weigh, but we are glad to share the data on our lambs if it will assist other breeders in assessing their own flocks.  Here goes!

Twins vs. single lambs

In three of our last four lambing years, the average weight for a single British Soay lamb was a full 13 ounces more than the average weight of our twins – no surprise there.  In fact, we would have been surprised if the gap had been much smaller, since even with this differential we know the ewes carrying twins resemble furry doublewides; they clearly are carrying more than a single lamb weight.  [based on weights for 65 singles and 40 sets of twins, all conventionally bred].

Lambs from British Soay ewes who are bred for the first time in the same year they are born vs. lambs from ewes at least a year old at the time they are bred

The first two years we had British Soay, we bred all our ewes, including those born that same spring when they were about 6-7 months old.  Although a number of those ewe lambs did not conceive, the ones who did produced offspring much smaller than what the older ewes produced.  The 8 singles from ewe lambs weighed on average 1 pound 5 ounces less than the singles born to older ewes in those two years (19 lambs).  That was a dramatic enough difference to persuade us we should quit breeding our ewe lambs and wait until their second autumn, when they are a year and a half old, to begin breeding them.  Besides giving us larger and more robust lambs, the delay allows the ewe lambs to fully mature and reach their final (or nearly final) adult size, which makes lambing easier for them.

Conventionally bred lambs vs. lambs bred using artificial insemination

The data sets for these weights are both small and not as susceptible to analysis as are some of the other comparisons, but here’s the data for what it is worth.  In 2008 and 2009 we had 21 lambs born using AI.  Of those 21, there were 3 sets of triplets, 5 sets of twins, and 3 singles (one triplet was stillborn, which accounts for the 22nd lamb).  We have no way to compare AI vs. conventional weights in the triplets, since triplets are extremely rare in British Soay in this country, at least so far.  The AI twins (5 sets) weighed on average 3-4 ounces more than our conventionally-bred twins (16 sets)  in those two years, not a significant difference and also a pretty small sample.  Our 3 single AI lambs outweighed their conventional counterparts (32 singles) by 5-6 ounces each, but the sample is even smaller.  The differential may be explainable by the fact that for our AI project, we purposely selected ewes that were twinners and in their prime, neither beginners nor ewes approaching senior status.  And even if Steve had not hand-picked which ewes to use for AI, he would not have expected to see much difference in any case, since lamb size most depends on the size and maturity of the mother and how many lambs she is carrying.  Whether or not the AI lambs and succeeding generations of their offspring turn out to be measurably larger than their conventionally bred counterparts will not be known until there are several generations of adult AI sheep and their adult offspring from which to glean enough data to have statistical significance.

Ram lambs vs. ewe lambs

Over the last three years (after we quit breeding our ewe lambs), our average single British ram lamb and our average single ewe lamb have either weighed the same or the ram lambs average only one or two ounces more.  For the same reasons we do not expect significant differences in the average weights of our AI vs. conventional lambs, we are not at all surprised that our ewe lambs and ram lambs are about the same size.  Again, it is the size of the mother and how many lambs she is carrying that are the principal determinants of the lamb’s birth weight. [55 singles and 40 sets of twins analyzed for this data].  Once the lambs head into puberty, the rams of course rocket ahead in weight and horn size.

Health issues affecting lamb weight

We know of two husbandry practices that have dramatically increased our lambs’ weight — ramping up the gestating ewes’ nutrition in the last month of their pregnancies, and treating both the pregnant ewes and the lambs with a preventative against coccidiosis and other cloistridial diseases, which can bring down very young lambs within a matter of a day or two — but are easily prevented.  See here for why this is so.

In 2007, we had a particularly rainy lambing season, minimal facilities that required our pregnant ewes to be in the wet mud much of the time, and no program to prevent a coccidia outbreak.  That year, our British single lambs averaged 4 pounds 12 ounces and our twins averaged 3 pounds 15 ounces.  Beginning in 2008, we had a completely covered area for our pregnant ewes (The Maternity Ward) with largely dry dirt “floor.” We began supplementing our pregnant ewes with either beet pulp or a little alfalfa hay.  And most importantly, we began adding coccidiostat to the pregnant ewes’ mineral and feeding medicated lamb/kid creep to our lambs until about a month after weaning.  In 2008, 2009, and 2010, our British single lambs averaged 5 pounds 2 ounces and our twins averaged 4 pounds 6 ounces, an increase of half a pound for the singles and almost a half pound for the twins.  If we needed evidence to confirm that heading off coccidia and boosting our ewes’ nutrition pays off, here it is.

Whew – I have fulfilled my responsibility to share weight data.  Now the fun part begins.  Lambing is winding down on our farm, but I can’t wait any longer to share a few pictures of our smallest viable lamb ever — a handsome and  robust ram who weighed in at only 1 pound 15 ounces.  We’ve named him Peanut, not too original but it fits him.  We  have already learned from him that even the miniature Dalton tags are a heavy burden for such a tiny creature, and more importantly, that great Soay things can come in very small packages.  Have a look!

For now …

The third in a three-part series

Part I:  our 2008 AI lambs, posted March 10, 2011

Part II:  our 2009 AI lambs, posted March 12, 2011

If you’ve been here recently, you know I  talked at length about the increased variety of coat color and pattern in British Soay sheep as a result of bringing in new genes via artificial insemination starting with the 2007-2008 lamb crop.  Last year, our 2010 lambs included several AI grandlambs and sure enough, the color fun continued.  Our light phase Mustard son (Dean) from the first year of AI served as one of our six breeding rams. I think I mentioned in the earlier color posts that as a lamb, Dean was a typical light phase Soay and he still is as an adult:

Dean, age 2 (Mustard son)

We hoped Dean would produce some pretty light phase lambs for us, and he did not disappoint.  First up, his twins out of Buttermere.

Hepworth & her twin brother Fouldon (Mustard grandchildren)

Next up, Ellerbeck x Dean twins,  another lovely light phase ewe lamb and … and …

Blakeney & her twin brother Barwick (Mustard grandchildren)

You may be asking yourself, “wait a minute, Dean is light phase.  Where did that dark charcoal son come from?”  Well, remember his grandsire, Mustard, carries the gene for self-coloration, and we know that whatever form of “self” came over with Mustard, it expressed itself in Buckley in 2009 and then Barwick in 2010. Are these four lambs the sweetest-looking Soay you’ve ever seen? Wow.

Since I have focused so far on the contributions made by the sires, it is only fair to point out that the mother of tan Hepworth and Fouldon is a plain brown ewe with extensive white spotting — Buttermere — but she is a carrier for light phase.  And so is the mother of tan Blakeney and charcoal Barwick, a plain brown ewe (Ellerbeck) with white spotting, carrier for light phase.  Isn’t color genetics fun?

Dean kept producing interesting colors for us right through the end of lambing last year. Remember our pretty black ewe Heywood from the 2009 lamb crop, daughter of Xanthoria, a plain brown ewe, and Curtis,the dark charcoal son of  Norris?  Last year we bred Xanthoria to Dean and what should appear but another black lamb.

Cley, age 7 weeks, Mustard granddaughter

Cley, age 3 months

Cley, age 6 months

There’s a video of Cley the day she was born if you’re interested in seeing how totally black she was when she came out.  She has the same unusual eye “ring” we saw in Cantrall and Buckley the year before, and the same white “dot” on her lip (but this time on her right lip) that we saw in Heywood.  But Heywood is out of Norris, and Cley is out of Mustard.  What’s going on here?  Genetic diversity at work!

One of the most intriguing parts about all this new color is what role the ewes play in the transmission of colors and patterns to their offspring.  Here is another picture of Xanthoria, mother of two black ewe lambs (so far), one a granddaughter of light phase Mustard, and one a granddaughter of brown Norris:

Xanthoria, mother of Heywood & Cley

Too bad you can’t see Xanthoria’s white belly and dark legs in this picture – typical British pattern and markings.  She was described as “very dark brown with black legs” as a lamb, so she must contribute color genetics to her black lambs.  But look back at the picture of her with Heywood.  Who knew she would throw black lambs?

Remember Keverne’s triplets from the 2009 lamb crop, the black/tan/chocolate trio? Look back at Keverne in the picture of her triplets; she also is a plain brown ewe with a white belly and white triangular eye markings.  Nonetheless, two years running she produced a light-phase lamb with eye rings, first Cantrall in 2009, and then Westerfield in 2010.  Here’s Westerfield:

Westerfield, age 10 weeks, Mustard grandson

Westerfield never was as “chocolatey” as Cantrall, and Westerfield’s eye rings faded as he matured, leaving him looking much more like a conventional light phase British Soay sheep.

Last year (2010 lamb crop) we also used a Norris son, Glen, as one of our breeders. His lambs are not as distinctive in color as the lambs out of Dean, but at least one of Glen’s offspring, a pretty ewe named Mattishall, shows some of the darker color we first saw in Norris’ daughter Vieva and his son Curtis, Glen’s father:

Mattishall, age 5 months, Norris granddaughter

I need to circle back to something I said much earlier in this group of posts:  our Norris and Mustard progeny and grandlambs are by no means all new colors.  In fact, our last lamb in 2010 came out a textbook mouflon brown, but as you can see, her “common” coloring slows her down not one bit:

Yarmouth, age 5 weeks, Norris granddaughter

Hmm, Yarmouth’s legs look pretty dark in this picture, don’t they?  I need to get back out into the gimmers’ pasture and see how her legs and face look by now.  Maybe she has some of the darker coloring from her grandsire after all.

It’s no secret that a lot of the lambs from the AI project, both generations, remain on our farm.  What else would you expect from a geneticist?  But we have sent AI grandlambs to new homes in seven states and British Columbia (so far) and we expect these ambassadors of diversity to contribute to the important work of genetic conservation and preservation in the flock throughout North America.

With 2011 lambing set to begin this week, who knows what new color adventures await us and where they will end up?  Stay tuned.

For now …