catchall for adult ram issues
Yesterday was a stunningly beautiful early autumn day in the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains, a perfect day to photograph the rams leaving our farm for eight (so far) new homes in the next few weeks. Now I’m back inside with a couple of hundred photos and struck by how many of them show an […]
Where to put Soay rams and Soay ewes on the tame-to-wild spectrum seems to be this summer’s favorite question. Some folks are looking for docile sheep, some for sheep that will mimic life in the wild. Some breeders want to spend a lot of time with their animals, others want to simply watch the sheep […]
Nothing beats luck when it comes to using photos to make a point about raising Soay sheep, or anything else for that matter. Let me explain. A few weeks ago when I was putting together the update about annual ram horn growth, I stumbled across pictures of our ram Hesket taken in 2013, about a […]
Every year at the winter solstice, usually December 21st, sheep horns (and for that matter all heritage sheep and other mammals’ horns as far as I have been able to determine) begin growing, a process that lasts for about three months and then tapers off through the spring and stops until the next December. To […]
I spent much less time than usual in the bullpen this fall, so I missed the gradual “bulking up” of the rams that happens every year as they go into rut for mating. Earlier this week on New Year’s Day, I went out for my first 2013 look at our flock and was startled to […]
In my last post, I talked about how sheep horns grow and what shapes they can take, and I touched on the issue of when horns need to be cut for health reasons. Here I will walk you through a more detailed horn evaluation of two rams and then provide a pictorial demonstration of how […]