Soay silliness

… too frivolous to put in a substantive category

Soay lamb gender split, 2015 edition

Soay lamb gender split, 2015 edition

Regular readers will remember that I went through lambing last year in self-absorbed agony, tracking the percentage of ewe versus ram lambs on a daily basis, reporting weekly here, and generally fussing over something entirely out of my control. Talk about unproductive fretting! Did I learn my lesson? Nope. But this year the results started […]

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Even in the Soay sheep world, truth is stranger than fiction

When I opened the email this morning for “inquiries-at-saltmarsh-ranch-dot-com,” here’s what popped up: Dear Sir/Madam, I’m interested in buying a starter flock of Soapy sheep, Could you please advise regarding the prices and the airfreight cost to Doha, Qatar ? Looking forward to hearing from you, Best regards, Ahmad How could I possibly make this […]

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How to Get More Ewe Lambs:  Could Monty Hall Beat Mother Nature in the Gender Lottery?

How to Get More Ewe Lambs: Could Monty Hall Beat Mother Nature in the Gender Lottery?

No sooner had I first posted about the ewe/ram lamb coin toss than my brother Jim started firing off emails to me on the finer points of odds-making, including an old game show involving cars and goats. Ordinarily I would ignore anything that concerned goats rather than sheep, but I decided to throw down a […]

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Week 4 of the Soay lamb gender split: better but still not good

Remember the notion that the larger the dataset for lambs, the more likely the split will hover around 50%? And the corollary that as the dataset grows, the percentage of ewe lambs should move towards 50% whether it started above or below that figure? Here are the numbers for Week 4: [table th=”0″ colalign=”center|center|center|center|center|center|center”] 2014 […]

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The Soay lamb gender coin toss in action

Not long after I put up the post about gender odds in British Soay lambs, it was pointed out to me that since history is no predictor, what’s going on this year? So far, the numbers are not good, but it’s still early in the lambing season. I thought about putting a daily tabulation here, […]

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It’s March, and the yearling Soay rams love their new spring pastures

It’s March, and the yearling Soay rams love their new spring pastures

Out here in Oregon where we have been spared the endless rounds of blizzards and ice storms, our year-old rams can’t get enough of the emerging pastures. I was photographing parts of our fencing earlier last week for an earnest post about how to construct a fence that will keep Soay sheep safe and happy, […]

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