Protection

catchall for everything non-health related for keeping your animals secure

Vespers on a Soay sheep farm: sweet music to our ears

Vespers on a Soay sheep farm: sweet music to our ears

Our indispensable livestock guardian dogs are an endless source of delight and amazement, and never more so than in the late afternoon when they provide a brief recital that echoes across our Little Applegate River Valley. It is so lovely and so sweet we have dubbed it “Vespers.” Let me explain. We have six Anatolian […]

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A farewell tribute to Hank, guardian llama for our heritage sheep

A farewell tribute to Hank, guardian llama for our heritage sheep

Our junior llama, Hank, went to a new home a few days ago and we owe him one more blog post before he fades from our collective memory. Never as storied as his mother Llucy, Hank simply hung out with our British Soay rams in the bull pen and kept them safe from the ever-present […]

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Happy Birthday, Hank!

Happy Birthday, Hank!

We occasionally pause in our lives as Soay shepherds to celebrate notable anniversaries or milestones, this time the eighth birthday of our guardian llama Hank, and to recall how dumb, and dumbfounded, we were when he arrived on our farm. Let me explain. Shortly after we began our heritage sheep adventure, we fell heir to […]

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Exploring and exploding myths about Soay sheep: Can they be herded?

Exploring and exploding myths about Soay sheep: Can they be herded?

Without doubt the longest-standing widespread myth about Soay sheep is that they “lack the flocking instinct of many breeds. Attempts to work them using sheep dogs result in a scattering of the group.” As far as I know, this statement first appeared in an old writeup about Soay sheep on a site associated with the […]

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Feed bags for Soay guardian dogs revisited

Feed bags for Soay guardian dogs revisited

Loyal readers may recall an earlier time in my life as a Soay shepherd when I went through a frenzy of making feed bags for our four livestock guardian dogs and for Steve to hand out occasional treats to the ewes and lambs. Believe it or not, one of the bags already wore a hole […]

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Soay Sheep RVs

Soay Sheep RVs

It is common knowledge among Soay shepherds that finding equipment for our diminutive animals can be a challenge:  standard ID tags swamp our lambs’ ears; even our largest ewes get lost in full-sized sheep chairs; 4×4 mesh panels are a hazard, rather than a protection.  But there is one perfectly-sized category of equipment for Soay […]

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