The Soay Sheep Chronicles

Not quite, but we know it won’t be long, because our Soay rams are calming down and everyone’s horns — ewes and rams alike — have started growing again.

We put our breeding groups together later this year so we are just now thinking about returning the rams to the Bull Pen.  I must say it’s not a chore I look forward to because the “reunion” between the breeding rams and their celibate brethren is always unpleasant to watch, what with all the bashing and general ill humor.  But I’m hoping the overall air of tranquility out in the breeding areas, and even in the Bull Pen where the unlucky bachelors have been duking it out for two months, means that by waiting to breed later in the year, we will have less chaos when we break down the breeding groups next week.

Ordinarily, I would use the occasion to write about this chore, but not this year.  It seems Steve has taken a notion to writing his own stuff, and darned if he didn’t take my “Ram Class Reunion” post idea right out from under my nose and put it on our farm website.  You can read what he has to say about safely reuniting rams by clicking here.

Another sure sign that spring is on the way is the spurt in horn growth, a subject I managed to write about last year before you-know-who could trump me.  It almost hurts to look at new horn growth on a Soay sheep exhibiting white spotting on the head.  Because the absence of pigment extends up into the horns, the new growth is translucent and the active new red blood vessels feeding the new horn growth fairly gleam in the sun.  It’s a time of year when we are relieved to observe the winding down of aggressive behavior, what with the soft new horn growth right next to the animals’ heads.  Although a broken horn usually is merely an aesthetic nuisance rather than a genuine health issue, the Soay sheep’s graceful horns, and the fact that Soay ewes have horns, is one of the hallmarks of the breed and it always seem a shame when a horn breaks off.

One way I know spring is almost here is that Steve shuts himself in his office and goes into a frenzy of updating our websites, hoping against hope to get it all done before lambing starts.  This winter his efforts have focused, at least so far, on a series of short essays he has wanted to write for a long time, each having to do with one of the discrete aspects of lambing:  managing ewes in late gestation, assembling the right supplies to have on hand before the lambs arrive, and actually working the new lambs.  When we first started raising Soay sheep, reading other more experienced breeders’ websites and talking with them about how they manage their flocks was invaluable.  We hope our experiences also will help newcomers to Soay sheep.  Equally important, we hope putting our experiences out there for everyone else to use and/or take shots at will contribute to the ongoing robust dialogue among Soay breeders that benefits all of us, no matter how long we’ve been at it.

And finally, the annual egg update.  Last year we got our first oval harbinger of spring on January 5.  As you can imagine, I have been watching the nests in the henhouse like a hawk (oh, sorry) for the last two weeks.  And sure enough, the first little bitty egg arrived this morning.  Better two weeks later than never.  At least until I decide what to do with just one precious homegrown egg, it will occupy the place of honor in my grandmother’s egg basket.

Time to go load up the tractor with a pallet of hay for the Bull Pen and count the weeks until the boys can live on new grass.

For now …

Several readers have commented on the notion of “normal” Soay sheep temperature mentioned in the recent post about using temperature to diagnose problems in Soay sheep, specifically, whether there is any difference for Soay sheep because of their small size.
As all Soay breeders know, a lot of lore about the bigger varieties of sheep – the hulking Suffolks and others — must be adjusted when speaking of the hardy, but diminutive Soay.  What about body temperature?  Is there a size-correlated difference, or a difference perhaps based on the Soay’s primitive status?  Or no difference at all?

The sheep books suggest that sheep generally have normal temperatures in the range of 101 or 102 up to 104F, and that anything higher than 104F indicates a problem.  These numbers provide a benchmark for figuring out whether Soay sheep are different.

We take the temperature of every Soay lamb born live on our farm within hours after birth, well over a hundred lambs so far.  We also had the opportunity last fall to record the temperatures of 33 adults, yearlings, and 6-month old weaned lambs during the vet inspections required to ship them interstate.  The results confirm that at least on our farm, the normal range of temperature for newborn Soay lambs and for older lambs and adults is not significantly different than for other varieties of sheep.  For all but the data geeks, you may stop reading now.  For the numerically curious, here’s a summary of the data.  We will be pleased to share the animal-by-animal numbers with anyone who still hasn’t gotten enough of numbers.

Although the “average” Soay temperature is about the same as the normal temperatures reported in the books about the big commercial sheep, there is a small, but noticeable decrease in average temperature from newborn to older lamb to adult.  So far, we have not had occasion to worry about or even take into account these small differences, but just in case any of you can use the information, here’s the data.

Newborn lamb temperatures:

102.7 the mean temperature of 107 Soay lambs born in 2007 and 2008
102.7 the median temperature of the same group
99.3 – 104.3 the range of temperatures in this group

We have had just two lambs with temperatures at or above 104 shortly after birth, a big North American Soay twin ram lamb who came it at a steamy 104.3 and obviously had been hard at his mother’s bag, and one of our AI ram lambs from last year, a big single named Emmett who showed the same single-mindedness about eating.  Neither of these boys was in any way sickly or running a fever; they simply had digestive systems that were at full throttle.

Of these same 107 lambs, 13 had temperatures below 102 within a couple of hours of birth.  Those lambs were the subject of the recent post that provoked the questions about “normal” in Soay sheep.

Older sheep (adult and teenager) temperatures

The 33 animals in our flock that were inspected last fall for interstate transport had a median temperature of 102.4 and a mean temperature of 102.3.  Sorted by gender and by variety (North American vs. full British), the results were virtually identical.  At first blush, it seemed that our “adults” have normal temperatures about .3 degrees lower than our newborns.

But when we cut the “adult” data by age, it became apparent that the average Soay sheep temperature does not settle down completely until the animals are at least a year old.  Here’s what I mean.  The 14 adults born between 2003 and 2007 had a median temperature of 102.1 and a mean temperature of 102.0, more than half a degree below the average newborn lamb temperature.  But the 19 animals born in 2008, inspected when they were between 5 and 6 months of age, had a median temperature of 102.5 and a mean temperature of 102.6, closer to a newborn’s average temperature, even though the older lambs had been weaned and eating exclusively grass (with a much lower caloric value than their mothers’ milk) for at least 6 weeks and, for some of them, 8-10 weeks.

In summary, then, based on 140 of our animals, the differences look like this, with mean first and median second:

Newborn Soay lamb    Older, weaned Soay lamb    Adult Soay

(107 animals)                (19 animals)                          (14 animals)
102.7/102.7                 102.6/102.5                          102.0/102.1

With this number of data points, the small differential in temperature among the cohorts, and experimental protocol flaws I probably have not even thought of, I cannot make any definitive statements about what it all means.  And even if I tried, Steve would fuss, stickler for detail and cautious analyst that he is.  Nonetheless, as we assemble a larger and larger collection of data about Soay sheep on our farm, we will be watching for trends and anomalies just in case something pops up that might make a difference in our approach to Soay husbandry — or that is just plain fun to wonder about.

For now …

There is no more reliable way to start diagnosing a failing lamb, a sick Soay of any age, or shock from injury, than to take the animal’s temperature.  Almost without fail, if the temperature is normal, any listlessness, limping or other indication of a problem will be structural (e.g., rock in foot, temporary diarrhea caused by changing abruptly from hay to green grass) and not pathological.  An inexpensive digital thermometer is the shepherd’s best ally for quick diagnosis.

In our experience, a low newborn temperature always means the lamb has not yet nursed, plain and simple, either because it is taking its sweet time to get started or for some reason (pathological or structural) it is too weak.  The little lamb’s body is behaving as though it were in shock, marshalling all the lamb’s resources to stay warm.  In the last two years, we have had 13 newborn lambs (out of more than 150 Soay lambs born on our farm) with temperatures below 102, what the sheep experts would call “below normal,” during the lambs’ first 2-4 hours after birth.  Of those, only one died, a lamb that started at 99.3F and despite drenching and tube-fed colostrum, never had enough strength to nurse and died within ten hours.  We drenched two more of those “cool” lambs.  The remaining ten lambs each got up and nursed promptly enough that we did not feel the need to intervene.  All twelve are healthy and thriving.

Here’s one of my favorite fully-pedigreed British yearling ewes, Pateley, shown at age 12 months — in the center of this photograph — and looking none the worse for having started out chilly:

Regal and long-legged, Pateley began life quite large, but “shivering” (from my notes on her lambing card) and not very robust.  She had a temperature of only 101.2 about 10 hours after she was born in late April 2007.  We gave her a 2.5 cc dose of Nutradrench and then monitored her temperature — 101.5F an hour later and a reassuring 102.0 seven hours after that.  As I write this post in January 2009, Pateley is about to leave the breeding area she has been in for two months with Finsbay, an equally good-looking 2-year old British ram.  We have high hopes for their offspring!

The other lamb we drenched, Thirsk, had a scary temperature of only 100.6 four hours after he was born, at a time when he should have nursed and gotten his first colostrum.  That one drenching was all it took to get him jump-started.  Thirsk is in line to breed one of our British conservation groups of ewes in 2010.  This picture (Thirsk is on the left) was taken in December, when he was 20 months old, again having more than recovered from his slow start.  The green tape flopping off his right horn is part of a color-coded identification system we are trying out to allow us to observe and evaluate our rams without always having to catch them, but that’s another story for another post.

Once in a while a lamb will start out with a healthy temperature but then fail to “get it” in the nursing department, either because it is born slightly weak or just cannot figure out the nursing routine, with the result that the lamb’s temperature starts falling and it may need our intervention.  Let me give you an example:  one of our ram lambs this year started out just fine at 102.0 shortly after birth in early evening.  Here they are, mother Coda and baby Askham, about 15 minutes after he was born:

By the next morning, little Askham’s temperature had dropped to 99.4.  Thankfully, we had decided to check him because he was listless and just not behaving like the miniature gluttons we are accustomed to.  Steve immediately stripped his mother’s milk and tube fed him; his temperature returned to 102.4 in three hours, but he remained weak for the rest of the day and until late that night.  The morning of the third day, his temperature was fine, but he developed a crusted eye (often a sign of something else amiss), so we treated it with an ophthalmalic ointment.  When his temperature dropped during that third day to 101.5, we again stripped his mother’s milk and tube fed him.  By the fourth day, his temperature had dropped a little more, to 101.3, but his tummy felt full and he slowly regained strength.

The great news about Askham is that he turned it around and today is one of our most robust 2008 ram lambs.  Just a few more pictures tell the tale.

Here he is with mama Coda on April 11, 2008 at the age of 3 weeks.  His coat is full and clean, and although Coda looks pretty ratty from shedding her coat, she also is healthy and comfortably able to provide him with enough milk without herself becoming too thin or wasted.

A few weeks later, when Askham was just about two months old, he and his now-sleek mother posed together in the middle of this photograph to show off his continuing growth and emerging horns:

By December, the 2008 ram lamb crop had nearly finished their first rut as sexually mature rams (although still too small to try for alpha ram status against the older fellows) and Askham’s horns had grown enough to make him “competitive” with his 2008 buddies.  Here is his strutting his stuff in the bull pen, campaigning to be placed in the lineup to breed next year.  To this day we do not know what was ailing him those first few days or whether he would have made it on his own, but with his breeding potential we didn’t want to take the chance of losing him.

True to the legendary hardiness of Soay sheep, we have had only an occasional diseased or injured animal.  In each case, temperature was one of the clues that the problem was pathological, just as in humans — fever indicating inflammation or infection, or low temperature an indication of shock after injury.  When a sheep has appeared to be injured and we have taken its temperature, one of two situations obtained.  A normal temperature reassured us that the animal was not in shock and we could spend some time observing its behavior before deciding whether to seek professional assistance for broken bones or whatever.  An abnormally low temperature, on the other hand, has sent us to the vet immediately on two occasions, once for a little lamb in shock from being “played” with (an overly enthusiastic puppy simply licked and pawed the little lamb until it went into shock) and once for a ram who apparently had bashed too hard into another ram or a wooden fencepost, leaving him dazed and with what turned out to be a neck injury.

Thankfully, both of the injured animals came back to full health; these little guys really are hardy.  But if you are unfortunate enough to have an accident or sickness occur in your flock, you will have a good first indication of whether it is serious by the animal’s temperature.

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 …

As promised, it is time to share recipes that showcase the mild-flavored, lean taste of Soay meat.  Let me set the stage.

When we decided to start eating Soay sheep meat, I cheerfully headed off to the bookstore and the kitchen stores to get myself a couple of good lamb cookbooks.  To my dismay, there were none — zero.  Being the good capitalistic American that I am, I can only conclude there is no market for lamb cookbooks.  Whether their demise is attributed to a shift away from red meat generally, or the fact that imported Australian lamb is too pricey, or to memories of all those awful, tough muttony meals we were served at “hot lunch” in the school cafeteria growing up, the sad fact is the lamb cookbook appears to have gone the way of the buggy whip.

Now here’s something I have not shared with my readers before:  I used to be a librarian.  Whatever else you can say about librarians, they never take “I can’t find it” for an answer.  Out here in the country, we are a little short on used bookstores, but a quick e-trip to the used book sections of the on-line bookstores turned up three “classic” lamb cookbooks that looked promising:   The Southern Heritage Beef, Veal & Lamb Cookbook, The Great Lamb Cookbook published by the Australian Women’s Weekly, and Madame Benoit’s Lamb Cookbook.  You may remember Madame Benoit as the author of the opening essay on our farm website about the joys of living in the country and raising sheep.  Madame Benoit was the Julia Childs of Canada and equally famous in her own country.  In fact, if you Google her, you’ll find an entertainingly old-fashioned video clip of one of her early cooking shows on TV.  Julia did not have a monopoly on this art form, even back in its rudimentary form in the 1950s.

But I digress.  The problem with the old lamb cookbooks is too many of the recipes call for layers of lard slathered on the roasts before cooking, or lots of bacon tucked in slits of the shanks, and any number of other fat-focused ingredients and methods for cooking the lamb.  I can only assume the lamb Madame Benoit and the other authors had at their disposal was tough, stringy, and dry.   Back to the drawing board.  Time to gather my own set of Soay recipes.

Before we moved out here in 2004, I had the accidental good fortune to come upon one of my all-time favorite recipes for lamb:  Lamb Shanks Reynolds Wrap.  It is just the right recipe to start this collection — tasty and almost embarrassingly easy.  L.S.R.W. came into my life one day when I was standing in the butcher shop near my home in the suburbs of Chicago ordering who knows what, and next to me a pleasant-looking woman asked for “lamb shanks, cracked” in an authoritative voice.  Having never even once cooked lamb at that point, I don’t know whether I was more surprised to hear about lamb “shanks” for the first time, or that the description of them as “cracked” came out of the mouth of such a sweet little senior citizen.  At least I had the presence of mind to ask her what she was going to do with them.  To my delight now, I also wrote down what she said and then had the continuing good luck to find that scrap of paper again when we moved out here and began having Soay sheep on our menu.  Here then, is the recipe, just as originally reported to me at Zier’s Meats in Illinois:

Lamb Shanks Reynolds Wrap

From now on, you will find lamb recipes every week or so in a printer-friendly setting on our farm website.  Look for “Soay sheep on the menu.”

Bon appetit!

Just as there are widely varying opinions about when to put breeding groups together, whether to breed a spring ewe lamb her first year, how to manage weaning and at what age, so too are there widely divergent views on whether to eat animals from your flock.

The good news, of course, is that the decision is entirely up to you.  We know breeders who have enjoyed having Soay sheep in their pastures for years and have never even considered eating them.  We also have colleagues who raise Soay sheep exclusively for their meat.  Actually, some of the middle grounders have the most interesting and sometimes complex rationales and policies, e.g., drawing the line at animals with or without names, eating only animals from other breeders’ flocks, and so forth.

For those of you who are thinking about whether to butcher some of your Soay sheep, here are a few statistics and tips we have picked up over the three years we have taken animals to the butcher.   It is only fair to let you know up front where we stand on the issue of eating our own animals, since our views doubtless color what I’m saying here.  It took us a couple of years to feel comfortable with and want to eat sheep from our own fields.  Once we tried rack of Soay, however, we became enthusiastic consumers, primarily because we like knowing what is in the food we eat (or more importantly, what is not) and we like eating locally-grown food.  We also have friends who eagerly purchase their annual lamb quota from us for the same reasons.

Where to butcher.  As with many other aspects of raising Soay sheep, butchering issues can be addressed in several different ways.  First off, you will need to decide whether to butcher yourself, have a butcher come to your farm, or deliver your animals to the butcher in town.  One of the lines we draw is not butchering ourselves, can’t do it, not interested in altering our mindset to accommodate that.  It is our understanding that folks who do their own butchering end up with somewhat more meat because they are pickier about getting it all.  And of course they have no butcher costs.

How much meat will I get from a Soay sheep?  Quite a bit.  But not surprisingly, not anywhere near as much as you would get from the big hulking Suffolks and their ilk.  Let me walk you through some numbers we have accumulated (remember the Chief Shepherd here at Saltmarsh Ranch is a data geek).

An opening caveat.  Because Soay are spring lambers and they are so much smaller than domestic sheep, you really need to wait until they are at least a year old to butcher them.  That means keeping them over a winter and that means buying hay.  We take our animals to the butcher in the fall when they are a year and a half old, after they have had a full summer of free food in the pasture and before they start eating their second winter of pricey hay.

We do not have the occasion or facilities to weigh our full-grown sheep, so the best I can give you in terms of weights is hanging (post-kill, pre-cut and wrap) weight versus the weight of the packaged meat.  I have reliable data (no gaps) for the hanging weights and packaged weights of eight butchered Soay sheep, all between the ages of one and three, with a mix of ewes, wethers, and a couple of rams.  All of these animals were either American or American/British Soay, commonly assumed to be somewhat larger than full-blood British Soay).  Based on our own experience to date, we expect to get about 22-23 pounds of packaged meat per animal, including the bones (for making yummy soups).  The average hanging weight is 36-37 pounds, and our best guess is that the live animals weighed between 50 and 65 pounds.  The only time we have gotten more than 30 pounds of meat was from a very large, intact 3-year old American ram and he came in at a whopping 39 pounds of meat.  Don’t count on this happening unless you are purposely breeding for large size.

What kind of cuts should I ask for?  One of my all-time favorite lamb recipes uses shanks, so we always ask for the shanks intact and “cracked” to allow the marrow to cook – either cook away if you want leaner meat, or cook into the stew if that is how you are using the shanks.  Unless you are really nimble with your grill, you will regret having the butcher make individual Soay lamb chops — they are simply too small and will quickly turn into hockey pucks when exposed to heat.  Ask your butcher to leave the racks intact (there should be four packages of these at about a pound or so each) and remove the “chime” bone so that once you cook the rack, you can cut it apart into what amounts to individual lamb chops.  I will share a couple of great recipes for rack of Soay with you shortly.  As for roasts, our recommendation is to ask for the two leg of lamb roasts, but have what would otherwise be shoulder and other roasts cut into stew meat or ground meat or both.  Only the leg roasts of Soay are easily capable of carving into the lovely slices you can array on your serving platter.  Both we and our customers have struggled to carve any of the other roasts.  The leg roasts will be about 3-3.5 pounds each, plenty for a family or dinner party of eight with a good meaty bone left over for making soup.

What about the strong flavor of ram meat?  At our house, we usually draw the line at eating intact rams because of their strong flavor and because we have the luxury of having ewes and wethers as a source of lamb meat.  On the other hand, we have a loyal, annual customer who gladly takes a ram if one is available, favoring the stronger flavor.  When we butcher intact rams, we only do so in the spring (June) before rut sets in.  As long as the ram is not more than two years old, the meat will still be acceptable with spring butchering.  We also have customers who purchase whole live rams for celebratory barbeques on the spit and they rave about the flavor and clean lean flavor.  For the first time this year, we were approached by a man who could only afford to buy a couple of our oldest rams and wethers for very little cash outlay.  He understood that they would be gamey and tough, but planned to turn them into highly spiced sausage as an economical way to feed his family with the comfort of knowing the animal had lived on untreated pasture grass and hay.  In short, there apparently are as many ways to approach eating sheep as any other food source.  It all depends on what you are looking for.

Is there any way to get the lean, “sweet” flavor of Soay in a larger animal?  The answer is a qualified “yes.”  Each year we have between one and four lambs born of Soay fathers and one of our Shetland/Icelandic ewes.  A brief diversion about the “Shetlandic” ewes.  They were the result of a fence-jumping ram at Jen Bailey’s farm and we got them originally for their fleece (my mom’s a spinner/weaver).  Not until later did the import of their coat color genetics sink in with my resident geneticist:  both of the ewes are self-colored light phase (”chocolate”) animals, so we can use them to test whether one of our rams carries either light phase or self-coloration or both.  The ewes dutifully produce twins each year, bless their little hearts, with the result that we have a ready-made supply of meat animals each year as well.  In fact, it is the predictable supply of these cross-breds that accounts for how few full Soay we have butchered over the last few years.

If we compare the hanging weights and packaged weights from our Soay yearlings with our “Soaylandic” yearlings, there is about a 10% increase in the hanging weight and also the packaged weight of the cross-breds.  For us, it is nice to have a way to turn our breeding “experiments” into a source of food or a small amount of revenue from meat customers.  Otherwise, the size differential does not seem worth the effort to keep big non-Soay animals in your flock.  Our two Shetlandic ewes are pushy at the trough and generally a nuisance, but Steve loves their genes so we keep cranking out meat lambs from them each year.

The other way to get somewhat more meat from your Soay sheep is to keep them until they are 3 or 4 years old.  The older Soay we have butchered weighed 10-15% more hanging and packaged, especially the 3-year old ram.  If you are lucky enough to live where you have free pasture grass all year round, holding the sheep to a larger size and age makes economic sense.  If you have to feed hay in the winter, the numbers turn bad with the second season of hay.

How should I cook my Soay meat?  Ah, the fun part begins!  This post has gotten long enough, but I promise to return shortly with the first of many tasty recipes.

Bon appetit!

Yesterday one of our neighbors knocked on our door, distressed that a pregnant Suffolk ewe on his nearby farm had become lame about four days earlier and, instead of getting better, she has declined to the point of not eating.  The neighbor was hoping our experience with Soay sheep would carry over into helping him diagnose his sick ewe.  We did the best we could to help him narrow the possible causes and evaluate whether to send for the vet.  I share this with you because we would use the same thought process were the sheep a Soay ewe rather than a big hulking Suffolk.

Symptoms:  pregnant, lame in front right and back right legs, ate and drank adequately for the first three days of lameness but then stopped eating and drinking water.

Steve and the neighbor talked through all of the following:

1.  The ewe did not show signs of scours or other intestinal issues (no yucky stools dribbling down her back end, to be precise), so no need for ProBios.
2.  The neighbor vaccinates his ewes annually for tetanus so that’s not it.

3.  The fact that the two right-side legs were lame seemed to rule out a rock-in-hoof cause and also probably ruled out spinal injuries.  We have had two Soay sheep who bashed so hard into fences or gates in unavoidable fright that they apparently did injure their spinal cords, but the symptoms in both cases were a single dragging rear foot that eventually healed just fine.

4.  There has been no change in feed source (grass, hay, and grain) for the last several weeks.

5.  Probably not an internal infection because no sign of fever or generalized overheating, no panting, no flailing.

6.  But … our neighbor is not diligent about putting mineral out for the sheep, so the ewes are either getting no selenium, or they are pilfering mineral from the black angus who share the pasture.  If they are getting no selenium, that’s a good bet for a diagnosis, especially in pregnant ewes.  Our ewes gobble down their mineral in the weeks before lambing.  If the neighbor’s sheep are eating the cattle’s mineral, they almost certainly are getting copper, which is in virtually all cattle mineral and which is highly toxic to sheep.

This particular ewe regularly delivers two big healthy lambs destined for market, so we’re guessing the neighbor will spring for a visit to the vet for a professional diagnosis.  Given the dangers of selenium deficiency and copper poisoning, we sure are hoping the vet finds something else, less serious, that is causing the ewe to decline so alarmingly.

Reminder to Soay breeders, especially in the weeks before lambing:  be sure your animals have round-the-clock access to mineral specifically designed for sheep.

For now . . .

No sooner had I filed the post on how to make Christmas stockings for the shepherd on your Christmas list than a hue and cry arose from the pasture.  The Soay are outraged that our no-count guardian dogs (from the sheep’s perspective, not ours) get Christmas feed bags and the sheep don’t.  I tried to explain to them that they can eat merely by lowering their heads into the grass or the hay feeder, but to no avail.  They are not about to be upstaged by those smelly dogs.

So in the interests of pastoral serenity, I gave in and made the sheep their own stocking, and you can, too, very easily.  This is one Christmas stocking that does not require counted cross-stitch, a lifetime supply of knitting needles, or even a pattern.  And actually, it is quite a bit easier to make than the dogs’ feed bags.  All you need is the most rudimentary sewing skill, a penny’s worth of electricity, and a half hour of spare time.   Like the shepherd’s “stockings,” this new one is nothing more than a bag made from part of one leg of an old pair of jeans, with an attached loop to fit over your belt, perfect for carrying grain treats out to the flock, your year-long gift.  Steve models:

Find an old discarded pair of jeans.  This pair, which in my opinion still has a lot of wear left in it, was donated by our summer ranch hand, Shawn Olsen.  Cut off one leg about 16 inches up from the bottom hem, keeping the hem intact.  The bottom hem is going to become the opening of the bag.  Turn the jeans leg inside out and sew the open end shut.

Now cut off another piece of the leg about 4 inches wide and 10 inches long.  Hem each of the long sides.  You can leave them unhemmed but they will fray and you’ll never win the Martha Stewart prize for artistry.  Attach one end of the hemmed strip to the still-existing hem of the pant-leg-turned-bag.

Hook the strip under your belt and adjust its length so that when the loose end is sewn to the bag, you will be able to slip the bag on and off your belt easily.  Sew the other end of the flap to the same edge of the bag opening (what used to be the jeans hem) so that you can easily reach your hand into the bag of grain.

Finally, go out and enjoy walking among your flock, feeding them as much or as little as you like, with no fear of the grain bucket tipping over.

Oh yes, we do not recommend feeding coal to your Soay sheep, even if they misbehave.

Happy holidays!

When I started this blog, it was my intention to write only about subjects on which Steve and I felt we had a basic grasp of the research or professional writing about the problem confronting us.  This time, I am stumped and so is Steve, and we can rely only on our own observations of a number of our Soay sheep.  The topic:  lambs who do not reach sexual maturity in time for fall breeding, and who frankly evoke an image of “runts.”  Let me explain.

During the last three lambing seasons, we have had over 170 Soay lambs born on our farm, and three or four of the ram lambs, and a couple of the ewe lambs, have failed to mature by fall.  We have been unable to find anything in the literature or on the web about why this happens or how we can prevent it.  We know it is not a case of breeding too late in the year, because the vast majority of our ram lambs go roaring through ovine puberty right on schedule in late summer, early fall and cannot wait to show their stuff, and show it they do! 

But occasionally a ram lamb does not butt heads, sniff other animals’ private parts, show dramatic horn growth or impressively-sized you-know-whats for his age.  Or a ewe lamb simply does not grow anywhere near as quickly or as much as the other ewe lambs and her horns do not grow, either. It is as though, if they do not reach a certain hormonal point by, say, September, their hormones go into arrest and they do not mature sexually until the next spring.  Let me say right up front that we have not figured out the biological explanation for this phenomenon, but we have found ways to address it successfully on our farm.

The first couple of times this happened, we assumed it was worms even though the little ones did not have dirty bums, and we dutifully treated them with Ivomex.  Nothing happened.  We also noticed that the apparently stunted ram lambs were much less asssertive about bellying up to the feeder once we took them off grass for the winter.  In one or two instances, we have moved a slow-growing ram or ewe lamb into a small pen with some other small sheep and supplemented them with grain until we felt it safe to return the small lambs to the general melee of the bull pen or the ewe pasture.  The nutrition boost at least keeps them growing generally so they will not fail to thrive, but does not provoke them into puberty and does not kick-start them into the kind of rapid growth we expect from our lambs for at least a full year.  Quite apart from their small size, they are clearly way to immature to breed.

In each case, thankfully, once the days began to lengthen in the winter, and especially when the dramatic increase in daylight started in March, the slow-growing lambs began catching up with an impressive growth spurt in all respects.  By their second fall, the rams were stomping their feet to get at the ewes and the ewes were ready to breed.

How do you know if you have one of these slow-growing Soay lambs?  Not surprisingly, they are unusually small (even more so than some lambs who have sexually matured quite nicely by fall), generally they have far less horn growth than their sexually mature pasture mates, and most conspicuously, they will not assert themselves at the feeder and none of the more mature ram lambs will butt heads with the slow-growing lamb. 

We do not want to lose even one healthy lamb, of course, so we devote enough time to watching our littlest lambs’ behavior to catch problems before the lambs give up and wither away.  In fact, this year we had the mixed fortune of having both a little ewe lamb — our cute bottle baby Patterdale — and a little ram lamb who needed to be sequestered for a few weeks because they simply were not keeping up in the big pen.

Since I have done all the talking about Patterdale in the past, I think I’ll let her pick up the story from here and explain the problem of being a slow-growing lamb and how to deal with it. 

Dear readers,

You are such nice people to keep reading Priscilla’s blog.  But she really talks too much, especially about me.  I wanted to be the one to talk this time so I can tell you how to help your sheep if you have a little lamb who grows too slowly, like I did. 

As you know, I arrived in less than ideal circumstances and frankly, it has been a struggle ever since to catch up.  Once Priscilla and Steve took me out to the Maternity Ward where I did not have to live in their kitchen in a dog cage, I was very happy.  Whenever Priscilla would ring the dinnerbell, I would let out a loud “whoopee” and come running for my bottle.  I loved being in the nursery with Sedgwick and Threlkeld and their moms because they had just been born so they were my size (I’m very small for my age, but I’m really smart).  I missed my own mom, of course, but since I never really knew who she was, I didn’t know who to look for so I was content just being in the same small area with my friends and their moms and they were very nice to me. 

When Steve let us all out onto the pasture grass in early July after the other lambs were weaned, I was even happier.  I love grass.  It is just my size.  I can put my head down, see the grass, and snarf it up whenever I am hungry and I get to behave just like the bigger lambs and their moms.  It is really nice to be on grass.  There is plenty of room for everyone to have her own space on the pasture. 

And that is why I was so sad when fall came and the grass ran out.  Steve puts a lot of hay out in the feeders for the ewe group — a whole bunch of big sheep who are not very sympathetic to us wee ones.  It’s not that easy for me to get my head up high enough to reach the hay and to make matters worse, those rude old ewes shove me out of the way all the time so they can have my share of the hay to themselves.  It’s not fair.

So I went out into the barren pasture by myself and kept trying to find enough grass to stay alive.  It got really cold out there way before winter was supposed to start.  I have a spunky personality for such a little sheep and I was trying so hard to be like the big girls that Steve and Priscilla didn’t realize how much trouble I was having.

We have a big dog named TJ who lives with the ewes and takes care of us so the coyotes don’t eat us for their dinner.  I really like TJ.  He’s really furry and sometimes he lets me lie down beside him when it’s extra cold outside.  He dug a big hole in the ewes’ winter pasture so he can have a place that feels like a bed to him.  One cold day Steve found me in TJ’s hole all by myself.  I didn’t understand that if TJ was not in his hole with me, it would be too cold to be there alone, but I was so tired from trying to find enough little grass nubs to fill my tummy that I just could not get up enough gumption to stand up any more and I figured I was done for. 

But Steve never gives up.  He took me back to the nursery in the Maternity Ward and put me in there with another little sheep — my buddy Sedgwick actually — who also was having trouble being with the big kids, especially for him because rams are supposed to be tough but he isn’t.  He’s just a nice little guy and I like being with him.  Now the two of us are living happily in the nursery together.  Sedgwick has not grown up yet, if you know what I mean, so it is okay for us to be together for now.  

Steve gives us our own grain

 and our very own customized hay feeder, a scrap of “hog” panel tilted up on the batter boards of the nursery.  I don’t know why shepherds call it a hog panel when it is so perfect for a little Soay sheep like me.

We can reach right up and get all the grass we want and there are no big ewes or rams to push us around.   I hope Steve will make more of these beginner feeders for the lambs next spring because they are a really fun way to practice eating hay without having to compete at the regular feeders.

I’m glad you were willing to listen to my story.  I have to ask you something, though.  Please watch out for your little Soay sheep who avoid the feeders after they have lived on grass for awhile.  It is scary to look up at those big feeders and at the same time be careful not to get stepped on or shoved by the grownup sheep.  It just seems easier to try to make it on the old grass in September but we can starve if you don’t pay attention to us and help us make it through until we grow some more.  And by the way, Steve says that even though I think I am precocious (it is the longest word I know), I really am not, and that I am both physically and psychologically immature.  I call it being scared. Me and Sedgwick are growing okay, I guess, but Steve says we have to eat a lot, and that is why I can’t go back to the winter pasture with the ewes until later.  I really need to pay attention to eating and besides, I don’t do very well with grownups yet.  But I am determined to become a big sheep so I can have lambs and Steve thinks I will grow up much faster when the seasons change in the spring and my body tells me it is time for one of those growth spurts you humans talk about in serious voices with your teenage children. Maybe you can come out and visit me in my new home, which is really my old home but I am much bigger now than when you saw pictures of me as a Soay bottle baby last summer.

Looking for a gift for your favorite shepherd, especially a slightly clumsy one?  Can you sew a straight seam?  I have just the one-hour project for you.

Experienced shepherds, of Soay sheep or otherwise, and almost any do-it-yourselfer will sympathize with what I am about to say.  When you feed your livestock guardian dogs in the pasture, there is nothing more annoying than to have your bucket tip over, requiring a trip back to the barn for more goody.  Not the kind of catastrophic event that puts a flock in jeopardy, of course, but enough to make you grit your teeth and who needs that?

Same thing if you are in the midst of a home fixup project, your selection of nails-in-old-coffee-cans is sitting on the workbench, and your sweatshirt sleeve knocks a couple of them over onto the floor.  Or you are trying to repair a fence and your can of fence staples tips over in the lush pasture grass.

Wouldn’t you rather have a no-cost, tip-proof container for this stuff?

Luckily, as with so many other aspects of keeping a flock of Soay sheep, help is readily at hand, this time in the form of a square-bottomed cloth bag, a transportation system for your dog food or nails that cannot tip over and spill.  Here are two of our dogs’ “stockings” filled with half their daily ration and ready for the evening feed:

As you can see, Chuy and Isaac’s stockings are tip-proof.  You just pick them up and off you go. 
 
Why don’t these bags fall over and spill?  The secret is in the square-shaped bottom end, illustrated by Isaac’s upended stocking: 

The bottom really is more or less a square, and whatever its geometrically accurate name, that bottom surface keeps it upright just fine.  In fact, when the top of a longer bag droops over, it helps keep out rain, dust, and inquisitive border collie noses. 

The ideal raw material is old jeans, so heavily worn that the owner can no longer go out in public in them (holes you-know-where) or torn enough to make them unsafe to wear near moving machinery parts.  And there is a side benefit.  If you do not make bags out of them, you eventually will have to throw the jeans away, so these sewing projects should qualify as “green” even though they are a sorry excuse for blue.  Here is a good example of a recent candidate for reinicarnation.

The only other materials you need are a sewing machine, a few straight pins, and any color thread.   No zigzag or button hole or other “foots” to discourage the novice seamstress in this project.

Before I launch into the illustrated directions for making a square-bottomed feed/nails sack, a credit is in order.  We adapted this idea from generations of rock climbers, including Steve in his younger, more agile days, who use stuff sacks to keep their carabiners, pitons, ropes, and legendarily minimal toiletries organized in their backpacks.  You can still find this kind of sack in outdoor gear stores, but you will pay a relative arm and leg for them, and why not use your own free jeans legs instead?

Making the Saltmarsh All-Purpose Carrier

Step 1.  Cut one leg off the jeans, leaving the bottom hem intact, or what passes for intact.  An initial length of about 14 inches will yield a bag about 10 inches tall that easily can hold a quart and a half of dry dog food or a coffee-can’s worth of nails and still have enough fabric to grab onto. 
 
 

Step 2.  Turn the severed leg inside out and lay it flat with the existing side seams more or less forming the edges.  If you are using a tapered jeans leg, this will not be an exact science. 

Sew the open end (not the already-hemmed bottom edge of the leg) shut with a plain straight seam about one inch from the raw edge.  Here’s what the prepped material looks like and how you sew it: 

Step 3.   The goal now is to create a box-shaped bottom that will not tip over.  First, put the new seamed edge in front of you running vertically — up and down. 
 
Grasp some material on either side of the seam and pull outwards to form a diamond/box shape.
 

You want to turn the pointed ends at the top and bottom of the diamond into the sides of a square, which, when you turn it back rightside out will form a box.  Take my word for it, please.

Figure out where you can hem crosswise to create the sides for your box.  In the following picture, I have marked with a black dotted line the two “sides” you will create by sewing these two new seams.  I recommend you mark yours as well, unless your dogs will be offended at having the seams of their stockings show.  We girls endured black-seamed stockings for decades without permanent emotional damage, as I recall.   

Now sew each of the marked seams.  You will be sewing through quite a bit of heavy fabric, so use a heavy needle and your trusty straight pins. 

 
Be patient and gently work the machine through the material.  Don’t forget to sew both seams.

  
 
Here is what it looks like, still wrong side out, when both “sides” have been made.  For reference, I marked the very first straight seam with a wiggly line so you can see how the various seams fit together.

Once you’ve got both seams done, turn the whole thing right side out again.  Nudge the fabric into the corners to see if you have made two decent-looking square corners.  We’re not talking engineering precision here, just something that will work.

Step 4.  To check your work and my directions, fill the bag with some rocks or beans to be sure it is stable.  Hint:  it will be!

To tidy up the inside of your new stocking and leave more room for goodies, turn it inside out one more time and trim off the extra hunks of material, always leaving about an inch of material outside the seam so it will not ravel.  
 

Be careful, of course, not to cut off the working parts , or you will dribble dog food down the lane and have nothing left for your loyal protectors to eat. 

  
 
Turn the whole thing right side out one final time, wrap it with festive Santa wrapping paper, an artsy bow, and you’re all set. 

Accessorizing your stocking.  What, you thought I was going to stop at the basic bag?  Not a chance. 

Monograms.  If you have two or more dogs who eat different kinds or amounts of food, or more than one kind of nail, you can make a good-enough identifying monogram by cutting an initial (as in “i” for Isaac or “C” for Chuy) from any contrasting scrap of cloth you have lying around.  Sew it on near the open end of the bag, high enough to let you slip the open end of the bag over the sleeve arm of your sewing machine. 

This one would work nicely for oatmeal for the birds, or a sack of “O” rings if you are putting together your own satellite.  

Drawstrings.  In the days of yore, pre-velcro, the climbers’ stuff sacks had drawstrings with jim-dandy clamp-like things to keep them shut.  Are you are going for the Martha Stewart award here?  If so, you can add rickrack, or use extra jeans legs for fireplace sachets (I am not making this up), or you can add drawstrings by cutting off the hemmed bottom edge of the jeans and making your own open-ended, tube-like hem, with those little slits for threading through a drawstring, etc.  Personally, I would rather clean gutters than thread drawstrings through anything, much less a jeans leg, but if you’ve got a good movie to watch, have at it. 

Once you figure out how to make these bags, you can crank them out in assembly line fashion and have a selection of sizes to pick from when you need to take a handful of insulators, a few nails, and a spool of electric tape out to work on your fence, or when you need to take a couple of irrigation pipe fittings and a small or medium-sized wrench or two out to a malfunctioning riser or rainbird.  And when the winter rains or snow arrive in earnest, you can fritter away whole days re-organizing your nails, nuts and bolts, screws, all those PVs (Potentially Valuables) in your tool shed.

If I don’t get back here before the end of the year, may your Christmas stocking be coal-free and not tip over.

Happy holidays!