identifying, weighing, and otherwise “processing” new lambs using a “kit”
Nothing we do to keep our sheep healthy is as basic and simple as putting iodine on every newborn Soay lamb’s navel. Just when the poor newborn is staggering around trying to figure out where on earth that udder and nipple are that it so urgently needs to find, the lamb’s moist umbilical is dragging […]
For those of you who landed on this post looking for how to “work” a newborn lamb, or how a Soay ewe manages to nurse her first twin while the second one is coming out the birth canal and greeting the world, let me reassure you that you have not landed in an alien universe. […]
Soay sheep are legendary for their hardiness, including their resistance to disease. They don’t need much in the way of vaccinations — just one per year in our experience — but that one annual immunization is important to their good health. As for other shots, a pair of vitamin and mineral injections for newborns will […]
Soay lambs benefit from a little human intervention shortly after they arrive on the scene and have had their first, critical meal of colostrum. At a minimum, sterilizing the remains of their umbilical cord and checking their temperature to be sure they have been nursing well goes a long way towards ensuring a healthy and […]
Now comes the fun part, working with our lambs instead of endlessly talking about them! I already used up the “every picture tells a story” line, so let’s just say one of our cooperative new lambs and my trusty digital camera will show you how we work our newborns. Remember the Lambing Kit? As soon as our first lamb arrived, the […]
For generations before the internet replaced paper, boys happily frittered away countless hours on baseball cards, memorizing statistics and honing their negotiation skills. At the same time, if they were lucky, they were introduced by their grandfathers, as Steve was, to the insanely arcane world of scorecards, meticulously recording the details of a game with their stubby […]