When to trim Soay ram horns and when to leave them alone: a photo essay
It’s been a quiet week at Saltmarsh Ranch, at least compared to the recent weeks of frantic downsizing. Temperatures have fallen to normal autumn levels and the fire danger level was reduced from “extreme” to “high,” still scary but a whole lot better than it was all summer. The sheep are making one more pass through the pastures before converting to hay for the winter, and Steve hayed the upper pasture with no equipment malfunctions and no field creatures caught up in the bales, thank goodness.
All of which means it is time to catch up a big here on the blog. I’ve been meaning to share a group of pictures illustrating the dilemma of when to trim a Soay ram’s horns and when to wait and see whether they will clear. I hope you will find them useful.
Our poster boy for this exercise is Saltmarsh Arundel, a 2013 son of Astro x Ossie. Regular readers will recall Astro had a particularly splendid set of horns and we broke our conservation rotational breeding rules to breed him a second time three years ago. He did not disappoint. His offspring have bred for us and most have gone to new homes. Arundel is the last of Astro’s sons left on our farm.
At age 4 and 1/2 months, Arundel had the wide horn set we expected from an Astro son.
At age 1 year, Arundel’s horns still formed a huge arc like Astro’s, which is probably why we failed to notice his right horn starting to aim in as shown in this closeup.
Three months later we trimmed a bit of Arundel’s horns because we decided the right tip was too close to his neck — a tough call!
Blue Mountain Astro, sire of Arundel, showing off his never-equaled rack
Is it any wonder we wanted Arundel to breed here?
By June, after annual horn growth, Arundel’s right horn still cleared nicely – whew!
Picture taken the same day showing the unusually wide head/horn angle on Arundel’s head, just like Astro’s.
A scant two months later, August 2015, as part of a horn check of all our rams, we discovered that Arundel’s pesky right horn has shifted a bit and is once again close enough to his head to keep an eye on him. We still don’t know whether his horn will eventually clear or need a wee bit more trimmed, but even if we have to trim his horn, he still will produce great-looking lambs and the odds are his offspring will not need their horns clipped.
Right horn looks okay from this angle. Let’s check other angles.
Looking straight down, you can see how close the right horn tip is to Arundel’s lower jaw.
Here’s a closeup of the right horn tip.
See how much more space there is between Arundel’s left horn and his jaw?
One thing we know is that Arundel will be breeding elsewhere, alas, and not because of his horns, but because of our need to downsize the flock. Until he is sold and ready to leave our farm, we will continue to monitor his right horn tip and otherwise admire his stud-muffin good looks. Hats off to Astro for giving us such handsome lambs!
For now …