When you raise small livestock as appealing and mellow as Soay sheep, you tend to forget that even smaller animals live right alongside them. The other day I was rummaging through our electronic photo “scrapbooks” looking for pictures of one of our rams who is going to a new home in the next few weeks when what should jump off the page but this:
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.
Please welcome the smallest viable British Soay sheep ever born on our farm –OR119-360. Is it any wonder we named him “Peanut”? Here he is the day he was born — all 1 pound 15 ounces of him:
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!
