Woodland Creek Farm Soay Sheep

2011 Lambing Results

2011-06-24T08:11:00.000-07:00

Our scaled- back flock gave us a much more manageable crop of lambs this year. We ended up with ten lambs - 6 rams and 4 ewes. Only one set of twins, and quite a few ewes that did not lamb - both due to yearling ewes and yearling rams. A few high points with the lambs, but all In all not the results I had hoped for.

A brief recitation of our 2011 goals and results.
First, we did get the first two registrable full RBST (so-called "British") Soay lambs here at Woodland Creek. This group is actually testing my thinking on how extensive white spotting is inherited in Soay sheep. The ram, Saltmarsh Alston (RBST), has extensive white spotting.

Saltmarsh Alston

While none of the ewes he was mated with showed white spotting, I wanted to get some lambs carrying a copy of his white spotting (as well as producing our first RBST Soays here at WCF). Alston produced ewe lamb singles with our two RBST ewes, and a ram lamb with a 50% RBST ewe. Only one of the lambs had white spotting - and that only a tiny white wisp of white at her poll. Unfortunately this same ewe lamb later got her head stuck through the fence overnight and coyotes on the outside of the fence got her. (Ugh!).
It did demonstrate, however, that the dam carries a copy of white spotting gene, which had not yet shown up in any of her previous lambs. The dam is light phase, and so was the lamb, to my surprise, meaning that Alston also carries light phase (that is, he is BB/Bb).
Our second breeding group is the "Self-colored Light Phase", or SCLP group (the coat color that Kate Montgomery at Blue Mountain dubbed "chocolate"). Having one SCLP ram (Blue Mountain Express) and one SCLP ewe (Blue Mountain Cocoa) "assured" that we would have more SCLP lamb(s), however, for some reason Cocoa did not get pregnant. Both Express and Cocoa have produced offspring, so that's not the problem. It could be a size mis-match. Cocoa is quite large, and Express not.

Blue Mountain Express

He was also penned with "half-SCLP" ewes - ones that in prior years were produced by mating dark-self with light-wild. This HAS to produce offspring that look dark-self, but genetically are A+/Aa and BB/Bb, which then should have exactly 25% odds of each of the 4 possible genotypes when mated with Express as an SCLP ram (Aa/Aa, Bb/Bb, SS/S?). Mated with Woodland Creek Molly, a half-SCLP, she produced a dark-self ram lamb, "Mikey". A very nice ram lamb, but just a solid black with no spotting. He will be retained as a "backup" ram since he has to be Aa/Aa, BB/Bb, that is a "3/4 SCLP". An interesting ram lamb phenotype was produced with the dam Skylonda Imagine. She almost certainly does NOT carry self-colored gene, so the lamb HAD to be wild pattern, but also had to be light phase. The ram lamb, Ish, has such a faint wild pattern marking as to almost appear to be self-colored (but he's not). He too has to be "3/4 SCLP" (A+/Aa, Bb/Bb) and will also be retained both as backup and to see how his coat colors develop.

Woodland Creek Ish (Express X Imagine)

The other yearling ewe lambs from last year that were intentionally "3/4 SCLP", each of whom would have a 50% chance of producing SCLP with Express, were not large enough / mature enough to get pregnant, so no SCLP Soays produced this year at Woodland Creek.
The third (and final) breeding group was our "Black and Whites", or "B&W". That is, adding white spotting to dark-self. This year we took a step back in extending white spotting and instead chose a ram with less white, but better conformation. I am convinced that by too narrowly using closely related parents I had achieved pretty poor conformation, so wanted to diversify and improve that this year. The B&W used ram was Woodland Creek Lightning, who has a poll, forehead, and neck splash of white.

Woodland Creek Lightning '10 (Yosemite X Nisqually)

Lightning produced 4 lambs with 3 B&W ewes (one set of twins). Since all parents were Aa/Aa, BB/BB?, Ss/Ss, all offspring are also B&W. We had one nicely marked ram lamb, Rowdy.

Woodland Creek Rowdy '11 (Lightning X Raven)

The twin B&W lambs, a ram and a ewe, were both moderately marked with somewhat unusual smaller, dispersed bits of white around the poll, forehead, and neck. This is actually the "pattern" of white shown by the dam, Teed's Cinnamon.

Domino - ram and Caldera - ewe '11 (Lightning X Cinnamon)

All these B&W lambs had about the extent of white spotting that I expected / hoped for, but the last B&W lamb contradicted my theories. This ram lamb, born to our most extensively white-spotted ewe Athena, had only the tiniest of a white wisp at his poll. I guess this shows that the extent of white spotting is not exactly predictable or quantitative (and probably that my theory needs refinement(s)).

Ansel '11 (Lightning x Athena)

I'll close this posting with an overview of our assortment of mature rams, showing the diversity of genotypes and phenotypes we have in our flock.

Woodland Creek Farm Ram Assortment

Virtually every combination of Soay coat pattern, color phase, and white spotting is present somewhere in this photo! (Well not every combo, as that would be 2^3 = 8...but you get the idea).

2011 Soay Lambs at Woodland Creek

2011-05-07T08:20:00.000-07:00

While we already have some 2011 lambs already on the ground, the arrival yesterday was one of my favorites and long-time breeding goals - the "black-and-white" (B&W) Soay sheep. I have always liked white spotting on self-colored dark phase (solid black) Soays. After seeking and obtaining self-colored Soays with tiny white poll markings early in my Soay years, I have been increasing the extent of the white spotting in each succeeding generation. Here is yesterday's lamb (a ram) to Woodland Creek Raven '07, by first-time sire Woodland Creek Lightning '09 :

Woodland Creek '10 - Raven's "Black-and-White" ram lamb

The bad thing about B&W Soays is that they are hard to photograph, especially new lambs as they are like black holes - the fresh, often wet black hair barely returns any light, and most digital cameras have algorithms that attempt to balance the overall photo to medium gray tones...but I digress. Here is the new lamb with his dam. You can see that she only has a small poll white spot (the white hair on her nose is age-white, not white spotting gene).

Raven '07 and Rowdy '11 - her B&W ram lamb

Here is the sire - you can see that he has less white than his first lamb, the ram above.

Woodland Creek Lightning '10

As for our other 2011 lambs, we did have another nice "3/4" Self-colored Light phase (SCLP) lamb. Like last year, Skylonda Imagine (a light-wild ewe) was bred to the SCLP ram Express. As before, the resulting lambs express the dominant wild pattern, but (I believe) because they also carry a copy of the self-colored gene recessive, the pattern is very "muted". That is to say, when the lambs are new and wet I almost always think they are self-colored light phase, as the wild pattern is so indistinct. Here is a photo of Imagine's 2011 ram lamb, Ish (click on photo to enlarge and see detail - note the uniformity of coloring on the top of the nose, at the chin, and on his legs).

Woodland Creek Ish '11 - Imagine X Express

I will be saving this ram lamb in reserve in case I need a fallback for producing more self-colored light phase Soays.

Lambing for final light-wild Skylonda Soay ewe at Woodland Creek

2010-05-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

Saturday the last of the four light-wild Soay ewes from Skylonda finally lambed. As with the others, the sire was the self-light ram Express. Another ewe! That makes four ewes and only one ram. All will be what I call "3/4 SCLP" - that is, all are homozygous for light phase, and heterozygous for self-colored. As such each has a 50:50 chance, mated to a self-light ram, of producing more self-light Soays. This is as good of odds as there have been for a long time!

Skylonda Ginger and Dam Skylonda Geege

Only 3 or 4 more ewes to lamb this year. One for sure, the others may not be pregnant. With 17 live lambs on the ground, I don't need too many more this year!

Two new lambs and a stroke of luck

2010-05-07T07:16:00.000-07:00

Two more light-phase Skylonda ewes lambed last week. Each had a single, one a ewe and one a ram. With Blue Mountain Express as sire (self-colored light phase) the lambs HAD to be light phase, and as neither ewe was likely to be carrying self-colored gene, the lambs were both light-wild pattern.

Skylonda Indigo '10 - ewe with dam Skylonda Imagine

Skylonda Escalante '10 - ram with Dam Skylonda Georgianna

My stroke of luck was this. I have the entire ewe and lamb flock accessing the far paddock way up our back hill - which I cannot see from the house and yard. After coming home from work I decided I had better traipse up there and check on one ewe that is close to lambing. After watching them all a while, I spot the lamb Indigo acting funny, then realize that in fact she is stuck. Stuck in the fork of a twin-trunk hawthorne sapling! She had apparently launched herself through the gap, and after getting her shoulders through, wedged just ahead of her hips, with her back feet an inch off the ground. Stuck for who knows how long. And these Skylonda lambs don't cry out much, nor did the dam seem concerned at all. I rescued her and she did not seem stiff or cold, so after a bit of massage she ran to mom and started suckling, so I guess no damage done. Here is the "lamb snare" hawthorne, with a "re-creation" of the stuck lamb using my gloves.

I would have never thought of this (never did, obviously) as a risk. Since I don't count heads every day, and had to work the next couple days, it is likely the lamb would have expired had I not, by chance, decided to go up and visit.
Naturally, the one trunk of the hawthorne was removed to eliminate the hazard. The ewes enjoyed getting their revenge on the "almost killer" hawthorne.

Ten to Fourteen...

2010-04-11T17:44:00.000-07:00

Wow - Thursday noon to Saturday noon we had 5 more Soay lambs at Woodland Creek. Each one was something different, genetically. First, on Thursday afternoon one of our "half SCLP" ewes, (A+/Aa, BB/Bb), Chinook, had a little ram. As the odds would predict, it was a dark-wild, and as our luck has been going, a ram to boot.

Woodland Creek Trout- ram Chinook X Sequoyah

Later that same day we had a "double-first". It was the first ewe that we received from the Skylonda flock dispersal, and also the first RBST Soay that has ever lambed at Woodland Creek. Oh yeah, since the sire was Blue Mountain Express, perhaps the only self-light Soay in North America, maybe a triple-first. At any rate, since there are no self-colored RBST in North America (unless more recent AI efforts have introduced it), the lamb had to be wild pattern, and 50:50 odds for light or dark (Since the dam USA0002 Gwen has to have a copy of the recessive light phase from her dam Celcius). Alas, the RAM was/is dark phase. Cute enough, not special in our flock.

Skylonda Muskrat '10 - ram

Friday morning, another "Black & White" ewe, Cedarbrook Nisqually, lambed. Unfortunately, ANOTHER ram... but nicely marked.

Woodland Creek Lightning '10 ram

Lightning (guess why the name!) has a nice extension of white spotting compared to this dam Nisqually, but less than his sire Yosemite. Too many B&W rams now!
The real excitement, however, was saved for Saturday. Not only did I obtain my first RBST Soay from Jen Bailey at Skylonda when she dispersed her flock, but she also graced me with many light phase Soays. So the only light-phase RBST Soay that we have at Woodland Creek, USA0002 Fiona, rather suddenly swelled up and decided to lamb.
For my viewing pleasure, she did it mid-day on a Saturday, so I got to observe (and videotape!) the entire birth.
The best part is that she gave birth to twins. Not that uncommon with Soay, but pretty rare at Woodland Creek! We have only had one successful twin live birth here in 5 years and about 65 lambings.
Given that Fiona was light phase, and the sire Blue Mountain Express was also homozygous for recessive light phase, the lambs HAD to be light phase. Since there is no evidence of self-colored in the "legacy" RBST Soay in NA, the lambs had to be wild pattern. Sure enough, they were.

Skylonda Zillah '10 - ewe and Skylonda Trillium '10 - ewe

Dam USA0002 Fiona and Sire Blue Mountain Express

Express, the sire of lambs above.

Blue Mountain Express '08 - self-light NA Soay ram

We should have a breather now for a while before the last 8 or 10 ewes lamb.

Number 9, number 9, number 9...

2010-04-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

Our ninth lamb of this year was already up and dry by daylight this morning. One of our "black and whites", and a good outcome at that. Here is little Woodland Creek Rascal, a ram lamb out of WC Raven and WC Yosemite, both B&Ws.

Woodland Creek Rascal '10 ram

He has almost the same extent of white spotting as his lamb-mates this year, Bandit and the unborn lamb of Thumper's. Very nice result. (Although we are getting a bit overloaded with B&W rams...)

Lambing update - Self-colored Light phase

2010-04-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

We had our 6th lamb a few days ago - a "Black and White". Disappointly little white, given the parents (WC Yosemite and WC Anasazi). The ewe lamb (Ash) has only a "twink" of white (as Kate Montgomery called it).

Woodland Creek Ash '10 ewe

But today we had two more lambs-these from our line attempting to produce the very rare self-colored light phase (self-light for short) NA Soay. Given the non-existence of these in North America in previous years, I had been working toward creating some. One route to this is to breed self-dark (i.e., solid black) Soays with light-wild Soays. Given that the self-colored parent MUST contribute the recessive Aa, and the light phase parent MUST contribute a recessive Bb, the offspring MUST have at least one copy of each of these. In 2008 I did a number of these breedings, and produced 4 ewes and 2 rams of this genotype A+/Aa, BB/Bb. Of course they all look just like "regular" Soays - all dark-wild. But breedings of these genotypes have a small, but finite, probability of producing the elusive self-light.
Of course the odds are not that good. Below is a table showing the possibilities for mating two "half-SCLP" Soays.

You can see that when I bred my four "1/2 SCLP" ewes last fall to a "1/2 SCLP" ram, there was only a 1/16th, or 6% chance of a SCLP. Well, today two of those 4 ewes lambed, and for a moment I was convinced I had hit the jackpot with one. Check out Tahkenitch's ram lamb.

Tahkenitch's ram lamb '10

When I saw the uniformity of color on the legs, belly and under the tail i thought we had gotten very lucky. Closer inpection, though, revealed the telltale light spots around eyes, under chin, and inside ears. Alas, he is not self-colored. He does, of course, have white spotting as both his dam and sire (Sequoyah) do as well.

The second lamb was, as the odds would have suggested, also phenotypically a dark-wild pattern.

Molly's ram lamb '10

A nice enough lamb, but not what I was hoping for! Note that the trouble with breeding for SCLP in this manner is that the genotype of the lambs, for the great majority, will be unknown. Mostly one will get dark-wild lambs with unknown genes for the second allele at both agouti and brown locus, so they can't really be used to further the cause for SCLP. This particular breedign goal may be a hopeless endeavor given the flock size I can realisticall maintain. Given that I have (and can keep alive!) some actual SCLPs, I have a "sure" thing for next year, and very good odds with the SCLP ram as sire, so I will probably go that route.

Lamb status at Woodland Creek

2010-03-26T17:52:00.000-07:00

No new lambs today but with nice weather I sat and watched the 5 new lambs cavort. Here are a few photos from today. First, three separate and distinct color phases of Soay lambs. Left, a dark-self with white spotting, center, a light-wild with white spotting, and last, a "common" dark-wild, also with white spotting. Get the idea that I have lots of white spotting in my flock?

Bandit - r, Santa Fe - r, and Pistol - e

Yesterday's little dark-self ram has now been named - Dakotah. Here he is basking in the sun. You can surely see why I just love the shiny black of fresh new black lambs! Note his mother's light-self (uniform brown) leg in the background. Dakotah has to be Aa/Aa, BB/Bb, SS/S?.

Woodland Creek Dakotah '10 - ram

Our development of light phase in the NA Soays has consisted of selecting those that have less and less pheomelanin (the reddish pigment so prevalent in many PNW NA Soays). Woodland Creek Santa Fe has the least "pheomelanin cast" of any lambs we've had here at Woodland Creek. Bandit in the background. What a contrast.

Woodland Creek Santa Fe '10 -ram

Little Santa Fe has the oddest little face.

Woodland Creek Santa Fe '10 -ram

And finally, since I touted the "4-color" rams shot a few days ago, with some fresh grass as a lure, it was pretty easy to capture a single photo showing all four color phases in ewes. Below, in the foreground from left to right is: dark-self, dark-wild, light-self, and finally light-wild. You can see from my ewe flock that I like a mix of colors and coat patterns!

Lambing count stands at 5 (live) and more on the way within days, I would say.

And now for something completely different

2010-03-25T17:24:00.000-07:00

Another breeding group we have, which I briefly described earlier, is the self-colored light phase, aka SCLP or self-light. Before I obtained the two that are still know to be alive in North America, I was working toward producing them on my own.

One way to do this is to assure that each lamb has one copy of both recessive genes, and this is done by mating a self-black with a light-wild (presuming that the black does NOT have a hidden copy of light, and that the wild does NOT have a hidden copy of self). I did this with a number of pairings for the 2008 lambing season, and obtained 4 ewes and 2 rams with the genotype A+/Aa, BB/Bb. (Some were also homozygous for white spotting as well, but let's keep this simple for now).

When I unexpectedly obtained the self-light ewe Blue Mountain Cocoa last summer, my best bet for a sire was to use my "half-way" SCLP ram, Woodland Creek Sequoyah, with a genotype as described above (and Ss/Ss, so a small white poll spot too, just in case you wondered.)

So here is Cocoa, the SCLP.

Blue Mountain Cocoa '08

and the sire,

Woodland Creek Sequoyah

So what were the possibilities and odds? With the dam genotype of Aa/Aa, Bb/Bb, she had to contribute Aa and Bb, both recessive. The sire, however, could have contributed A+, Aa and BB or Bb. So there was an equal 25% chance of any one of the four basic coat patterns - dark-wild, light-wild, dark-self, or light-self (shown in the order of more to less common). Drum roll... the result was...

Blue Mountain Cocoa and her 2010 ram lamb

I had observed the breeding of Cocoa and knew that if successful she should be due today (+/- a day or two), and she was acting funny yesterday evening. When I searched for her at 4 AM, I found her with this little ram lamb. For some reason I find the sight of a solid black lamb with a "chocolate" ewe to be very odd. So this little ram (not yet named) will has a known genotype - he has to be Aa/Aa, BB/Bb, SS/Ss (the last because the sire Seqoyah has a small white poll spot, but the new ram lamb does not). He would have pretty decent odds for use in a breeding program to produce more SCLP Soays.

Not to make too much of it, but I am pretty sure this is the first birth in North America of a self-black lamb to a self-light Soay!

Mystery solved - missing lamb found

2010-03-25T16:35:00.000-07:00

Well, you had to know this was not going to have a good outcome, right? The dam, good ole Thumper, was looking pretty chipper and eagerly dove into the grass in the new pasture the day before yesterday. However, by the end of the day yesterday she was looking not-so-good. It finally dawned on me that the afterbirth that she was still carrying was not right. She should have passed the afterbirth within a few hours if she had lambed. She stayed up on the back hill by herself last night and when I checked on her at 4 AM this morning, she was a goner.

(Spoiler alert - if you don't like photos of dead lambs, you should stop reading now and go find something more pleasant).

I began to think that in fact, the lamb had never been born, and the protruding membranes were actually just the amniotic sac... so I had to know, and so performed a crude necropsy. Sure enough, poor old Thumper had a large ram lamb in her uterus, and it was turned completely sideways so that the back and shoulders were facing the cervix. There is no way the poor thing could have been born, nor even turned properly for a normal birth.

So, genetically, the lamb was of course a black-and-white, as the sire was Yosemite (same sire as Athena's lamb yesterday) and Thumper was our original B&W ewe. Since Athena was Thumper's daughter, the dead ram lamb was Athena's lambs "half-brother" as well as "half-uncle". The interesting part is the ram lamb's markings, shown below.

Thumper's 2010 ram lamb

If you look back to yesterday's post at the photo of Bandit, you will see that the markings are nearly identical. Oh, I'll save you the trouble. Here is Bandit, and his dam Athena, today.

WC Athena '08 and Bandit-r '10

Well, rest in peace good old Thumper. You had 10 or 11 lambs over 10 years and produced a lot of Black and Whites!

Thumper and some of her family in Apr-2006

(Thumper, her lambs Bunny, Kaya, and all their lambs Pepper, Obsidian and Kip)

Soay sheep lamb weights and owl lift capabilities

2010-03-24T17:42:00.000-07:00

OK, so I'm an an analytical nerd. I did a quick google search on Soay sheep lamb weights and came up with the following article:

Predictors of early survival in Soay sheep: cohort-, maternal- and individual-level variation
Owen R Jones,* Michael J Crawley, Jill G Pilkington, and Josephine M Pemberton, Proc Biol Sci. 2005 December 22; 272(1581): 2619–2625. Copyright © 2005 The Royal Society
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1559978/

Their data set was the 1989 to 2002 surveys of Soay sheep on the island of Hirta in the St. Kildas, so it is "real" Soay sheep.

While not explicitly publishing lamb weights, they reported them in their analysis on survival factors. From their Figure 2a, shown here:

I extracted their data from the figure above and calculated a mean value for weights in pounds.

The weighted average lamb weight in the above set was 3.94 pounds. OK, call it 4.

Although the data reported was categorical rather than continuous, so no proper standard deviation can be calculated, from visual inspection above one can deduce that about 90 percent of the lambs were between 1.7 and 5.7 pounds - quite a large range.

So, if, as reported, the Great Horned Owl can lift 5.5 lbs, there is a fair probability that any given lamb would be small enough to be taken.

Sadly, it was noted in the birding sites about Great Horned Owls that, uniquely, frequently take skunks. Now just think of a white-spotted solid black Soay lamb. Looks a lot like a skunk in the early morning light....

A much better lambing result today

2010-03-24T17:07:00.000-07:00

When I put my "black and white" Soay sheep breeding group together I noted that the ewe who lost her lamb yesterday (Thumper) was getting the ram's attention the day before her daughter, Athena. True to form, today Athena lambed. First, a photo of Athena, who is so far the most extensively white-spotted self-black NA Soay ewe I've produced, and seen in North America.

Woodland Creek Athena '08

She was mated with WC Yosemite, who was the second-most white-spotted NA Soay ram I've produced / seen. Here is his photo.

Woodland Creek Yosemite '08

Now based upon my theory of white spotting extension (increases with each generation when both parents express white spotting), I expected a pretty white-spotted lamb. When I went out at daybreak, sure enough Athena was in labor, and darned if she wasn't in the same spot, under a shed overhang, as her mother the previous morning. Given the disappearing lamb yesterday, I decided to move her along to the enclosed shed for lambing. She was in long labor (by my experience) - about 2 1/2 hours, and I started to get concerned. Finally a nose and two front feet showed, but Athena was getting pretty worn out, so (for better or worse) I did the James Herriott routine and helped out. Fortunately the little guy (a ram) was alive and so far seems to be doing fine. Presenting, Woodland Creek Bandit, a little ram.

Woodland Creek Bandit -r '10

Since it didn't seem like Athena (first time lambing) was getting the idea of being a mother, and her mother Thumper was pining for her loss, I put them all together to see if Thumper would adopt. Here is a 3-generation shot of Thumper, her 2008 lamb Athena, and Athena's '10 lamb Bandit.

Bandit-r '10, Athena '08, and Thumper '00

Thumper was over her loss and not interested, and eventually Athena got the idea and took to motherhood, so it seems things are on track for a good lambing.

Rare Soay sheep photo

2010-03-23T20:37:00.000-07:00

In all my internet browsing for Soay sheep images, I have never seen this. In one photo (I swear - not manipulated!) all four Soay sheep coat patterns (overlooking for now white spotting). I realized that in my yearling ram pasture I had all four patterns, and what's more, they lined up nicely for a photograph.

Voila: All four coat color phases in Soay Sheep

(click on photo to enlarge)

From left to right: dark-wild, dark-self, light-wild, and then the very rare light-self. (Yes, there are two more dark-self rams in the back of the row - ruined the perfect photo).
Note that the second and third both also have white spotting - another breeding goal I have is to add extensive white spotting to these more rare genotypes.
And to Soay purists, I will acknowledge that the two with white spotting are not the best conformation ever seen. That's a problem with rare genotypes--one tends to keep them all to retain the genetics even if the conformations are not great. But succeeding generations should be able to recover the conformation.

Where oh where has my little lamb gone?

2010-03-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

Here at Woodland Creek Farm we have had about 60 Soay lambs born since we started in 2005. But I have never had anything like this happen.

Yesterday we were pleased to see our first 2010 lamb born to our "light-wild" group. Since this lamb also has white spotting, he is what I call "double homozygous recessive" for two of the three main coat color genes in Soay sheep - light at the brown locus and white spotting. Here is a photo of the little guy.

Woodland Creek Santa Fe (Saratoga X Laramie)

This morning when I checked the ewes just before daybreak, I heard the unmistakable sound of a freshly-lambed ewe bleating mournfully as if it had lost it's new lamb. When I finally found her, it was our good old matriarch of the "black and white" line, Blue Mountain Thumper '00. Yes, after 10 years and many lambs, she was searching frantically for her newest lamb. She had afterbirth hanging out, so I assumed the new lamb(s) were somewhere around and began the search.

First, I could not identify the location where she had likely given birth - usually signified by a "nest" pawed out, and fresh amniotic fluids, etc. None was found in the area she was searching. I began searching all around the hay sheds, in the (now dry) creek bed, and eventually walked every inch of the entire pasture. There was simply no lamb(s) to be found, nor any clear evidence of where she had given birth.

After waiting a bit for more daylight, both Michelle and I went back out and searched all over the pastures --looking in every nook and cranny. There was simply no lamb to be found. Yet Thumper continued to plaintively call for her missing lamb.

I began to worry that a lamb was stuck -- as once before she had a second twin with forelegs turned back -- and I had to intervene to straighten them so she could expel the (by then dead) second lamb.

So after watching her closely for several hours, it was pretty clear she was no longer having contractions nor straining, yet seemed clearly distressed. So I played vet and caught her and did a manual exam and found no lamb present. But her clearly reduced girth suggested that she had clearly expelled significant weight.

So where did the lamb go?

It remains a mystery. I walked the fence line and all the electric on top and ground wire at the bottom was intact. I am (pretty) sure no coyote came inside to snatch the lamb. We have not seen bald eagles around for months, and besides it was before sunrise and pretty dark.

What could have happened? I am stumped. Poor old Thumper.

First 2010 Soay sheep lamb at Woodland Creek

2010-03-16T16:02:00.000-07:00

Finally, our first Soay sheep lamb of 2010 arrived, today. A "regular" dark-wild pattern, but with a white wisp at her poll. I did not know the dam, Rosalina, carried a copy of the recessive gene for white spotting, so a bit of new genetic information.

Rosalina X Juniper ewe lamb 16-Mar-10

Lambing Time - Breeding Groups

2010-03-06T07:21:00.000-08:00

Ah, my favorite time of year for owning Soay Sheep. Although I enjoy the looks of the flock in the pastures all year long, the anticipation of what lambs will arrive, in what color patterns, is my absolute favorite time.
Ever since obtaining my first Soay sheep I have been far more interested in the coat color genetics and the rare (because they are recessive genes) patterns. Consider the occurrance of frequencies of the discreet observable (phenotypic) coat patterns expressed in Soay sheep due to the 3 disinct coat color genes: Agouti (Wild or self pattern), Brown (dark or light phase), and Spotting (white spots or none).

(If you really want to read more about this, you can in this article I have posted: http://woodlandcreekfarm.com/coat_patterns.pdf )

With 3 independent coat color gene loci, and with only 2 mutually exclusive types at each of these, there are (2*2*2)= 8 possible phenotypes one can observe. To give the reader some idea of the relative numbers of these that likely exist in a Soay Sheep population unaltered by human selection, I have extracted various numbers from published studies of Soay on the island of Hirta and combined them to show typical likely relative frequencies. I intend to report these more fully in a technical article, but for now I will post the data here. (Click on image to enlarge it enough to read it).

Note that by total count, for the most rare genotype (triple homozygous recessive - Aa/Aa, Bb/Bb, Ss/Ss, aka white-spotted light-self), there was only one such Soay found out of 1,835 total Soay counted on all of Hirta in 1966. Pretty darn rare. Even the pattern with only two of the recessive genes - self and white spotting, (that is, self-colored blacks with white spotting) showed only 4 individuals present in that same survey of 1,835 animals. The remainder of this blog will discuss our progress on that "line" of breeding.

So my first "relatively rare" genotype was to get some self-colored black Soays. When I realized that some also showed white spotting on their heads, I began to seek increasing the extent of white spotting on the self-colored blacks, as this gave a very pleasing appearance. So this has been one of my longer-running breeding groups - the "black and whites" (B&W).

These will give you some idea of the progress I've made in 5 years. The first B&W ram I had only had a small white wisp on the top of his head.

Sound Soays Kvasir '04

He sired a ram lamb (Woodland Creek Pepper) when mated with a similarly marked ewe, with a nice white spot on his head, and a second (Woodland Creek Obsidian) with both a white head spot and forehead spot.

Woodland Creek Pepper '06

Woodland Creek Obsidian '06

Pepper, when mated with a B&W ewe, produced a ram lamb Woodland Creek Chilcoot, with a white spot on top of his head merged with a white forehead spot.

Woodland Creek Chilcoot '07

Chilcoot, mated with a B&W ewe, produced a ram lamb Woodland Creek Yosemite, that had a white head spot connected with a full white facial blaze. The white additionally extended to some white spots on the side of his neck.

Woodland Creek Yosemite '08

Chilcoot also sired that year a B&W ewe lamb with additional white spotting extent, Woodland Creek Athena.

Woodland Creek Athena '09

In the next year, with a different B&W ewe, Chilcoot produced a B&W ram lamb (Woodland Creek Lakotah) with even more extensive white.

Woodland Creek Lakotah '09

You can see how the extent of white spotting has been increased in each succeeding generation, going from a small white head spot, to a larger head spot, to a head and forehead spot, to a "shield" connecting the head and forehead spot, to a blaze, to a blaze with neck spots, to (with Lakotah above) now a full blaze nearly encircling the horns, including his nose, a full "necklace" and a white bib, and even some white on his ears.

So back to the B&W breeding group and this year's hopes for lambs. Lakotah was too immature to use for breeding last fall, so Yosemite was the sire for our B&W ewe group. We have seven B&W ewes in that group (although a couple are yearling ewes that may not have been mature enough to be bred).

You may be able to imagine the anticipation I have at what unexpected outcome we may get this year for our B&W lambs! Judging by swelling udders this could occur within days.

More about our other breeding groups in later blogs.

Separation of church and state

2010-02-13T17:46:00.000-08:00

OK - it's not that big of deal, but I finally realized that not many folks out there combine my eclectic and diverse interests, so combining them in one blog didn't make a lot of sense (not that a blog is about logic anyway...)
So as of today, Woodland Creek Farm Soay sheep blog will only (mostly) deal with Soay sheep, and we will start a separate Raven's Call Vineyard and Winery blog.
So back to the main topic here - Soay Sheep.
We've had some major changes in our breeding program here - mostly prompted by un-planned acquisition of the majority of the self-colored light phase NA Soay sheep in North America....(OK - so there are 2 for sure, and maybe one more - status unknown).
And sure, you have to be a real sheep coat color genetics geek to have any interest at all in this... but here they are:

First, Blue Mountain Cocoa '08 - a self-colored light phase NA Soay Ewe

And then her half-brother, Blue Mountain Express:

Those familiar with sheep coat color genetics will recognize that this is the rare double-recessive homozygous pattern of both self-colored and light phase agouti. There have only been 4 of these (SCLP NA Soay) known to be ever born in North America.

2009 Soay sheep lambing season at Woodland Creek Farm

2009-07-11T06:04:00.000-07:00

Wow - too much going on in the last 6 months to post to the blog!

Our 2009 lambing season here at Woodland Creek is done now. After last year's more-than-20 Soay lambs, and carrying WAY too many sheep through the winter on purchased hay, we significantly downsized the flock and intentionally did not breed quite a few of the ewes. Couple that with a couple too-immature rams that didn't get the job done, and some targeted but immature yearling ewes and we only had 7 lambs this year. But a nice set.

Our final lamb of the year, born 03-Jul-09, was a very pleasant surprise. First, the dam, Woodland Creek Sienna, was not impregnated as planned by my chosen ram (as were none of his target ewes - he's gone now.)

So I did not intend to breed her at all, but in transferring ewes she slipped by me and got in with another group of ewes already bred to a different ram (but the ram had been removed). THEN, the ram in the adjacent breeding group knocked the gate open and "merged" with the supposedly already-bred ewes. Although I didn't witness it, it is now obvious that the escaped ram had an ulterior motive... So here is the surprise. Sienna is a dark reddish-brown mouflon. She lambed while we were out of town, and we returned to the scene portrayed below.

Woodland Creek Sienna and her 2009 ewe lamb, Moenkopi

Obviously, Sienna had a light phase lamb (and happily, it's a ewe). I quickly referenced the pedigrees to see how this could have happened. The sire, Woodland Creek Chico, is light phase, so no surprise there - he HAD to contribute a Bb (light phase brown) gene. But I had no idea that Sienna was carrying a "hidden" copy of the light phase. Looking back, I note her sire was Blue Mountain Juniper. Some may know that Juniper, also dark phase, was identified as carrying one copy of the (recessive, thus "hidden", not expressed) Bb gene when he sired the sort-of-famous Red Deer, who was light phase, thus homozygous Bb/Bb, thus HAD to get a copy of Bb from Juniper. (I have owned Juniper since shortly after he sired that crop of lambs at Blue Mountain).

So the light phase lamb Moenkopi proves that Sienna received one copy of the light phase gene from Juniper (well, sort of "proves" - there is a tiniest of chance that her dam, Maddie, had a light phase gene, although from pedigrees it seems highly improbable).

The interesting thing, (interesting to me, anyway) is that the light phase that Juniper carries came from the RBST ram Triumph. Some feel that the light phase in the NA Soays came from outside the Soay breed, and is somehow "different" from the honest-to-goodness light phase from RBST Soays. Moenkopi then will have one copy of Bb from each, so it will be interesting to see if her phenotype is discernably different from my NA Soay light phase.

Our "Black and White" Soay breeding group produced 4 B&W lambs. Some may know we are trying to extend the extent of coverage of the recessive white spotting onto the solid black coat pattern of the recessive self-colored agouti. We had one very good extent of white spotting in the ram lamb Lakotah, sired by our matriarch B&W ewe Blue Mountain Thumper.

Woodland Creek Lakotah - ram. Thumper X Chilcoot.

Lakotah has a nice white cap, and a wide blaze, a nice throat "bib", and a "necklace". Very similar, but a bit more extensive, than his sister from last year, Athena (same dam and sire).

W.C. Athena-e '08, W.C. Lakotah-r '09 and dam to both B.M. Thumper '00.
We had another nice B&W ewe lamb out of W.C. Raven, a ewe out of the Teed line of Soays.

Woodland Creek Aspen-e '09. Raven X Chilcoot

We also had 2 other B&W rams, but both only had minor white spots, so not too exciting. Our best B&W ram from last year, Yosemite '08, did not mature sufficiently to sire our '09 lambs, so we used the same ram as the prior year, Chilcoot. Yosemite is finally maturing some this summer, so he appears to be in the lineup for this fall.

W.C. Yosemite-r '08. Cinnamon X Chilcoot.

We also had some lambs born into our hoped-for-but-long-odds self-colored light phase group, but no hits on the double homozygous recessive jackpot.
Enough for now.

Black and White Soay lambs

2008-07-12T06:51:00.001-07:00

Our five new "Black and White group" Soay lambs from 2008 are growing nicely. The two blacks with fairly extensive white spotting are just as attractive as I had imagined they would be when I first envisioned creating this phenotype several years ago.
They make a very attractive group of Soay lambs, as you can see below.

Our 5 "Black and White Group" Soay lambs 2008

Left to right above are Yosemite-r, Athena-e, Flindra-e, Tundra-r, and Anasazi-e.
Here is a short video of them playing together recently.

Obviously one of the 5 is NOT a self-colored black. The brown one, Flindra, had a 50% chance of being self-colored black. She is heterozygous for self-colored black (A+/Aa) so will be retained for next year's B&W group - having a 50% chance of producing a black (same genotype as her mother Bunny).

Hay Man

2008-07-04T07:55:00.000-07:00

After putting up loose hay last year with my Farmall Cub and sickle-bar mower, and after raking fields by hand with a custom-made large wooden hay-rake, I conclude I had to get a mechanical rake of some sort. I wanted something vintage - not the more popular wheel rakes, but not so old as a dump rake. That pretty much leaves side-deliver rakes. After searching the internet for a long time, and watching many auctions back east (where it was impractical to ship such a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment) I finally found one locally (Shelton, WA) last winter.

It is a 1964 vintage International 14 side-delivery rake, and although a bit paint-worn, appeared to be in VERY sound mechanical condition. Virtually no repair welds, bent frame members, etc. Only many teeth missing or bent. Here is what it looked like when I bought it.

1964 International 14 Side Delivery Hay Rake

Since I didn't have an equipment trailer, I had to wait a few weeks to find time to rent a U-haul trailer, knowing that I would have to disassemble the rake to fit it in the trailer. Unfortunately, we had a rare snow that weekend, and it turned out to be a bigger job than we expected to get the parts into the trailer! We had to completely turn the frame upside down (yes, by hand!) in order to get the wheels to clear the sides of the trailer. What a job loading!

So all winter I tore it apart--with frequent orders to the Case-IH dealer in Burlington, WA, for parts. Thank goodness most of the parts are still available, albeit very expensive. Take for example the bearings on the ends of each of the tooth bars. There are 5 tooth bars, and a bearing on each end, and a special housing to hold the bearings. Each bearing is $75, and each housing is $75. If all were replaced, yes, that's $1,500 - 5 times what I paid for the whole rake! Then there are replacement teeth (it has 90 - fortunately the seller had a box of about 40 replacement teeth). But even the small metal holders for each tooth - about 50 of which were missing - cost about $5 each!

But the worst surprise was when I tore into the bearing jackshaft in the tooth bar drive wheel (driven from a universal shaft from the wheels). Of course the bearings and seals were all shot - packed full of "vintage" grass, but the woodruff keyway in the short 6-inch shaft had been torn out -- from the wear on the key, this had occurred many years ago and simply not discovered. Worse, the shaft was a discontinued part. A local machine shop said they could not build up and still keep round the hardened shaft, but he could build a replacement for about $100. I told him to go ahead, and begain waiting. After 3 months, the part was done, however, it cost $265. Here is the old and new (actually same size, just funny perspective in the photo).

So after many months of cleaning old grease, sandblasting paint, waiting for weather warm enough to re-paint, etc. Things began to take shape. To get some appreciation of the work involve, here are a few before and after shots of main pieces.

(So I'm having trouble lining these photos up in pairs - heck with it..)

At any rate, It finally all came together, and here is the final result earlier this spring.

And here it is after being put to work raking a field of grass hay. Works like a charm!

Great Finale to the 2008 lambing season

2008-06-29T21:50:00.000-07:00

Our 2008 Soay sheep lambing season went out on a high note. Our last pregnant Black and White ewe, Teed's Cinnamon, was VERY pregnant--she was "udderly huge", so to speak. I was sure for the last 3 weeks that she was close to lambing. Finally Saturday evening I saw her off by herself. I watched her until 10 pm but no action (although clearly she was close). This morning (Sunday) at 5 AM I found her with her handywork. See Woodland Creek Yosemite - ram, below.

Woodland Creek Yosemite '08 - ram

Teed's Cinnamon X Woodland Creek Chilcoot

Yes, after our recently born Athena - this little ram is has the second-most white I've seen in a self-colored black Soay in North America. Cinnamon was our most white-spotted ewe. She has a poll spot, a forehead spot, and a small neck spot. So it was expected that she would give a good white-spotted lamb. (However last year her ram lamb Shoshone only had a few white hairs at his poll, so it doesn't always work precisely).

At any rate, after checking out the little ram Yosemite, I went to find out where he was born, and low and behold, there was a second lamb -but unfortunately it had never made it out of the birth sac. I could see it was another black and white, so I cleaned it up and photographed him (he was a little ram). He was a beautiful little guy too. I named him Sam, for the records.

Woodland Creek Sam - stillborn twin ram

Sam would have been the 3rd most extensively white-spotted self-black Soay (although admittedly only slightly more white than Thunder '01, good old Blue Mountain Thumper's very first lamb.

So more of the good news is that I needed a good B&W ram for this fall to keep spreading the white. Even better, this ram is out of a Tracy Teed ewe, so this brings some new blood to what had previously been a bit overloaded to the Thumper line.

Our Best Black and White Soay Sheep Yet

2008-06-22T21:40:00.000-07:00

My "black and white" Soay sheep development got a big boost this morning. ("Black and White" means homozygous recessive for self-colored dark phase - solid black coat, but also homozygous recessive for white spotting, thus white spots on an otherwise solid black Soay). All my B&W Soays ewes are late lambing this year as my chosen B&W ram, Woodland Creek Chilcoot '07 (below) was born late (July 30) last year so was not mature enough to breed his chosen ewes until about mid-January of 2008.

Woodland Creek Chilcoot '07

(Blue Mountain Bunny X Woodland Creek Pepper).

Note that my hypothesis about how extensive white spotting will be in each generation, (developed from study of a Soay flock in Wales with extensive white spotting) is that it will be roughly additive of the parents white extent. For example, Chilcoot's sire was Woodland Creek Pepper '06 (see below) who has a nice white poll spot.

Woodland Creek Pepper '06

(Blue Mountain Thumper X Sound Soays Kvasir).

Both of Pepper's parents are self-colored blacks with just wisps of white at their poll.

So on to the good news. The good old grand dame of my Black and Whites, Blue Mountain Thumper (who heretofore had produced the most extensively white-spotted black Soay in North America - Thunder) was found out in a corner of the shed on 22-Jun-08 dutifully caring for my best effort yet - a beautifully white-spotted black ewe lamb (now named Athena). See below. Athena has - to the best of my knowledge - the most extensive white spotting of any self-colored black Soay every produced in North America, stealing the "crown", so to speak, from her 2001 half-sister Thunder. (Thunder died her first fall before ever lambing).

Woodland Creek Athena '08

(Blue Mountain Thumper '00 X Woodland Creek Chilcoot '07)

Athena has white in just the areas that I would have predicted. As the extent of white builds in successive generations, it (typically, not always) starts as a poll wisp, then a poll spot, then poll and forehead spots, then a blaze, then often a "necklace" or wisps at the neckline. Black is retained around the eyes (yeah, like a Panda), tip of nose, ears.

The other feature of the white, as I have seen before but is particularly noticeable with Athena's contrasting colors and extent of white, is the length of white hairs compared to black. The white hairs, at any given point, are easily twice as long as adjacent black hairs. On others I see this relative length difference diminsh somewhat as the sheep ages -- by their first fall the white is somewhat longer but not twice as long.

We still have more B&W ewes left to lamb here at Woodland Creek, so I can hardly wait to see what comes next!

Soay sheep lambs #8 and #9 for 2008 at Woodland Creek Farm - White spotting, light phase, and polled ewes.

2008-03-27T05:51:00.000-07:00

Two more Soay sheep lambs hit the ground on Tuesday. (No offense little lambie, but) one of them is a plain old common wild dark pattern with no white spotting - genetically very uninteresting. (Not sure how that breeding combination occurred in our flock!)

The other lamb is more interesting to me. It is from our "white spotting extent" phenotype breeding group. All these sheep have white spotting and I am testing the patterns of how the extent of coverage and locations of white spotting are changed with each generation. Most simply stated, the hypothesis, (as I have documented more completely here):

http://woodlandcreekfarm.com/Phenotypic%20Expession%20of%20the%20White%20Spotting%20Allele%20in%20Soay%20Sheep.pdf

is that the extent of white on the lamb is roughly a summation of white extent of the parents (not all that surprising, is it?).

Here is little ram Woodland Creek Laramie - DOB 25-Mar-08, and his dam Esperanza.

There is a second objective in our breeding program--and that is to test the hypothesis that light phase at Brown locus, in NA Soay population in the Pacific Northwest, has been traditionally very heavy in the pheomelanin component and this "masks" the light phase. I have been selecting those who show less and less "brassy red" in their coat, and this has been lightening the overall phenotype, bringing them (to my eye) more in line with the classic light phase coats shown by the NA RBST Soays in the PNW (aka "British" Soays).
As examples of this progression, I was convinced that Esperanza was light phase despite her fairly dark phenotype, and one of her twin lambs in 2006, Chico, was particularly light coated and a "flat" brown, rather than "coppery reddish" overtone (which his twin brother Kitsap DOES have). The sire (Teed's Montana) was, I was convinced, also light phase, but with a shocking coppery-red element - note the top of his cape / mane below (shines reflectively in the sunlight).
Here is Montana '05:

When Montana was bred to Esperanza, in 2006 she produced the twin lambs Chico '06 and Kitsap '06:

Chico'06 grew up to be a very nice light color (shown fall of 2007):

In a related line, Esperanza's mother Maria (almost identical phenotype to Experanza, had a light ewe in 2005, Frosty. Frosty, bred to Chico in 2006, gave a VERY light ewe lamb Saratoga. Here is Frosty '05 and Saratoga '07:

Compare the resulting coat colors when in a single image (fall 2007) you can see Esperanza, and Saratoga after some sun-lightening of her mature coat, and in addition Esperanza's 2007 lamb Molly, who in contrast has a self-colored dark sire, so shows a dark coat phenotype.
Unfortunately, Saratoga, (when mated to Chico this last fall) recently aborted her lamb at what looks like about 100 days or so. It was a tiny, very light ram lamb. Too bad.

I guess one other thing to point out in this "line" of Soays - not only are they the rarer light phase, and the relatively less common white spotting, they ALSO are polled ewes. Maria and Esperanza were both truly polled, Frosty, Saratoga, and Molly are all button scurred (so look polled from a distance.) That's a lot of homozygous recessive traits in one line! Now if I can just get self-colored too... just imagine a self-colored, light phase, white spotted, polled ewe... that's almost certainly never been done before in North America with Soays, and maybe never anywhere in the world! I'm probably a couple years from that.

Lastly, with digital photos where the camera tries to auto-expose, and often has a difficult time with very light or very dark animals mostly fill the frame, one can get mis-representative color renditions. One way to get relative coat color differences it to get several patterns in the same photo. Here is one from inside a shed yesterday, but showing a range of our flock coat colors.

In this photo you can see, from lower left to right, the VERY light new ram lamb Laramie, his fairly light, flat brown, low pheomelanin dam Esperanza, the hind end of the VERY heavy red-brown pheomelanin classic "doberman" phenotype from Blue Mountain, in Happy Valley Maddie, then a self-colored black Woodland Creek Olivia, and finally her '08 ewe lamb Madeline, sired by the light phase wild pattern Chico, shown above. Just look at the range of coat colors one can get. (Yes, I realize that when the majority of folks look at the flock they say "Aren't they all just brown?).

...and yet more Soay sheep lambs at Woodland Creek

2008-03-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

Two more lambs born yesterday, both ewe lambs. One is particularly interesting to me, genetically. She is also the "self-colored light phase carrier" phenotype as with some of our other lambs this year, but instead of a self-colored dark phase dam and a wild pattern light phase ram, this lamb is the reverse parent coat colors. The dam, Frosty, is a wild pattern light phase with white spotting. The sire, WC Pepper, is a self-colored dark phase with white spotting. So the lamb phenotype is wild pattern, dark phase, with white spotting, but she is carrying "hidden" light phase and self-colored, so is A+/Aa, BB/Bb, Ss/Ss.

Here is Tahkenitch '08, e, DOB 22-Mar-08, and her dam Frosty.

Note that this ewe lamb has that same "clean" reddish-brown coat that seems to be typical for the "self-light carriers". All 5 so far share this similarity. I realize that to to those not too discerning about Soay sheep coat color variations (which is almost everybody...) these all look like brown sheep. Oh well.

Here is a shot of our first two 2008 lambs, Sequoyah and Madeline, lying in the sun at about 3 weeks of age.

If you want to see all of our "self-light carriers" we have a separate Picasa album set up here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/marrstree/SelfLightCarriers

More Soay sheep lambs.

2008-03-21T21:35:00.000-07:00

There have been 3 more Soay lambs born at Woodland Creek Farm in the last week. Two of those are the same coat color genotype as our first two lambs. That is, a wild-pattern, light phase ram with white spotting is the sire (in fact, the same sire as the first two lambs, Chico). Both dams of lambs 4 and 5 are self-colored blacks, and neither shows white spotting, although one for sure carries white (SS/Ss) whereas the other likely has no white, probably SS/SS. Both lambs have a very similar phenotype to the first two lambs - a fairly dark, red-brown coat with very dark pheomelanic areas.

Here is lamb #4 for this year, Woodland Creek Khyber, a ram, and his dam Deer Park Hjemstads Kaya.

Lamb #5 is Woodland Creek Chinook, a very dark lamb, and her dam Carmen.

Spring 2008 Soay Lambs are arriving.

2008-03-15T05:27:00.000-07:00

Yeah! My favorite time of year for raising Soay sheep. The lambs have started to arrive, and the results of the breeding for coat color genetics are starting to be revealed. Our first two ewes to lamb were both born to self-colored black ewes, each dam with hidden white (from their sire who was Ss/Ss). These two ewes happen to be twins, and oddly, lambed on the very same day. The sire was a wild pattern light phase ram with white spotting, so A+/A? Bb/Bb Ss/Ss.

Here is the sire, Woodland Creek Chico '06. (Click any photo for larger version).

Given the dam and sire coat color genetics, the lambs will be heterozygous at both the agouti and brown loci, and 50% odds at the white locus, that is, A+/Aa, BB/Bb, and 50% odds Ss/Ss and 50% SS/Ss. The phenotype of the lambs will thus be wild pattern dark phase, and may or may not have a white spot. The results are....

First Lamb of 2008 at Woodland Creek Farm: Sequoyah, a ram lamb, born to Woodland Creek Pearl.

He is indeed wild dark pattern, and does have a wisp of white at the poll. Later the same day his "close relative" Madeline, a ewe, was born to Pearl's twin sister, Olivia.

Madeline too is wild dark pattern, but does not have white spot showing.
Thus, the expected genetics and even the statistical odds were borne out precisely, even down to the gender odds. We have two dark wild coats, as they should have been, and "50% showing white spotting", and one ram and one ewe - 50%.
An even more interesting aspect of these two lambs to me is the actual coat colors, particularly the pheomelanic areas (belly, under tail and chin, etc). As I have posted previously, I have a developing conviction that with NA Soay sheep that are heterzygotes at agouti locus (that is, A+/Aa, as there are only two known alleles for Soay sheep at agouti)the coat pattern will be very dark, and the pheomelanic areas that called "copper" or darker. It is essentially the so-called "mahogany" phenotype. (See below in this post for some examples).
Of these two new lambs (although lamb coat colors will usually change somewhat in the firt year, even beyond simple sun-bleaching), Madeline in particular has a very dark pheomelanic areas. They are so dark that when she was freshly born and still wet, I thought for a while that she was actually self-colored, which would have been a BIG surprise as I do not think the sire carries self-color allele (but I can never be sure he doesn't - can't prove a negative, as they say).
The photo of Madeline below shows many of the areas where one would normally expect signals of the wild agouti pattern - kneecaps, under chin, around eyes, belly, inside ears, and except for lighter area between her hind legs, there is almost no pattern discerable (but live, on close examination, there is no question - she is wild pattern.)

So where is this particular breeding line headed? To those who know (or care about) the coat color genetics it will be obvious that breeding homozygous recessives at Brown locus with homozygous recessives at the agouti locus is the first step in getting parents that are heterozygotes at both, and thus have a possibility of producing in their offspring the very rare genotype that is homozygous recessive at both agouti and brown, and those will thus be the exceptionally rare self-colored light phase Soays, of which only two are ever known to have been produced in North America (both at Blue Mountain Soays last year - one ram, Hershey and one ewe, Snickers). Now that those two are available as parents (particularly the ram, who can cover a host of "already genetically prepared" ewes that are already either Aa/Aa, BB/Bb, or A+/Aa, Bb/Bb), I fully expect that more will show up this year, as several Soay sheep breeders are known to be seeking this phenotype. At Woodland Creek our main goal is not so much to simply have one or more of this phenotype, but instead to have sought out parents with the potential and bred them over several generations, testing our understanding of the underlying genetics, and to finally succeed in proving (if only to myself!) that I "get it".

Late July Soay lamb - another Black and White

2007-07-31T05:58:00.000-07:00

Our late-season lambing continues with another Soay lamb born yesterday. This one was not a sure thing for coat pattern, as the dam (Blue Mountain Bunny) is heterozygous for self-colored agouti gene, and since it is recessive she does not show it, but instead shows the more typical brown wild (or mouflon) pattern. Since the sire was a self-colored black (Woodland Creek Pepper), she had a 50% chance of having an S-C black, and just like last year, she came through for us and had another S-C black.
But the best part is the white spotting. Many know that one of our flock breeding goals is to extend the degree of white spotting on a self-colored black Soay. As my developing theory on the extent of white spotting would predict, this new ram lamb (now named Chilcoot) does indeed have more white than either of it's parents.
Here is a photo of the dam, Bunny, and ram lamb,
Woodland Creek Chilcoot - r '07.

Here is a photo of the sire, Woodland Creek Pepper '06.

The only unfortunate part, for our breeding program, is that it is a ram lamb. (We now have 6 Black and White rams... way more than we need!).
While white spotting is fairly common in Soays in North American, white spotting on top of self-colored blacks is not very common. Of all the self-colored black Soays with white spotting I have known about ever produced in North America, this ram has the second-largest extent of white spotting I've ever seen. Note how the pattern of extension of white spotting in successive generations follows the (roughly) predicted pattern - first a poll "wisp" (like Chilkoot's grand-sire Kvasir has), then a poll spot (like Chilkoot's sire Pepper has), then usually a poll and forehead spot (like Bunny's '06 ram lamb Obsidian has), then these merge into a "crown" (like this lamb Chilkoot has), and then I predict next generation a blaze (note that this lamb has a tiny white spot on his nose - almost made a blaze), and eventually a white tail tip, and / or white "socks" on one or more feet, and so on.
To be clear here, the white spotting extent does not change on any lamb once it is born - I mean above that the extent of white spotting changes with each generation of offspring - not on any lamb once it is born.

The greatest extent of white spotting that I've ever seen documented on a self-colored black Soay in North America was Blue Mountain Thunder - e '01. She is the lamb in center of photo below, courtesy Kate Montgomery. Note that Thunder had a white tail tip too - the next place I expect white spotting to show up as I continue to "add white".

Note how similar the white markings are on my new lamb and Thunder, above. Thunder's dam was Blue Mountain Thumper (who lives here at Woodland Creek now). Thumper is also the dam of Pepper '06, the sire of my new ram lamb. And guess what - she is also the dam of Bunny '02 - the dam of my new ram lamb. Of course this didn't all happen by chance - it has taken years of seaching out and obtaining the stock to replicate the pattern shown in Thunder. (Thunder met an unfortunate early end at Blackhorse farm before she was registered or ever had offspring.)

Putting up hay with Farmall Cub and Cub-22 mower

2007-07-21T07:50:00.000-07:00

Now that I had the Cub and the sickle mower in apparently working condition, on the 4th of July I undertook mowing a 3-acre field of very tall grass. This field is several miles from our place, and is actually a vacant field next to (and owned by) a bank. Each year prior they paid someone to mow and leave the hay. This year I volunteered to mow it in order to cure it properly and carry it away (loose - I have no baler).
First I had to borrow a flatbed utility trailer from friendly and helpful neighbors up the road. I did get the Cub loaded successfully.

The trip up the hill to the field was un-eventful, and the mower worked very well for me, although it was slow going given the height of the grass (often it was as tall as the Cub - maybe 5 feet tall).

In all it took about 5 hours to knock down all the grass, and only 2 or 3 times did I find surprises in the grass (stumps, deep ruts, big rocks, etc.) but no damage to equipment in any encounter. I did have several mechanical failures on the mower, but each was field-repaired to keep it running. I was very pleased with the way the mower laid down the tall grass and rarely clogged.
Here's the overview at the end of the day.

The hay dried completely over the next day, but when I went to rake and pick it up, I discovered that I had waited too long to cut it - most of the field the grass was so coarse, with so little green, that I was certain the sheep would not eat it. I ended up harvesting perhaps 1/3 of what I had cut - but my committment to the bank was to cut as much as I could anyway, as their objective was simply to clean up the appearance and reduce fire risk.
Here's the nice little stack of hay I harvested from that plot.

At 10 feet wide by 15 feet long by average 8 feet high the pile is 1,200 cubic feet. I estimate the packing density to be about half what it would for a bale of hay. If a typical small bale is about 10 cubic feet, then I harvested about 60 bales equivalent, so not bad for a couple days work. That will save me a fair bit on hay costs this winter!

July Soay Lamb - Another Black and White

2007-07-21T07:28:00.000-07:00

Our late lambing season for 2007 continues. We had our second "Black and White" Soay lamb of 2007 on 5-Jul-07. This lamb (genetically, self-colored agouti, Aa/Aa, Dark phase at Brown (that is, black), BB/B?, with white spotting, Ss/Ss) had to be a Black & White since both self-colored and white spotting are recessive, and both parents were homozygous for these traits, hence the lamb had to be also.
The dam, Teed's Cinnamon, is a "3-spot" Black and White. She has a poll spot, a forehead spot, and a spot on the side of her neck. The sire is Woodland Creek Pepper, a 1-spot Black and White. He has a nice white poll spot (see blog entry below for his photo - he is also the sire of our prior Black & White 2007 lamb.
This lamb was a ram, and he has been named Woodland Creek Shoshone. Here he is at about 2 days old, with his dam Cinnamon.

At first, when I saw Shoshone from a distance, I was very surprised to not see more white showing. In fact, it didn't appear that he exhibited any white at all, which should not be, given the parents genetics. Upon close inspection, Shoshone does have white spotting, however, it is restricted to a total of 5 white hairs on the top of his head. One begins to wonder how few hairs reliably designate the presence of white spotting gene.

The other thing that is somewhat unusual, from our lambing experience, was the developed state of Shoshone's horns. Even from a distance, immediately after his birth, I could surmise he was a ram because his horn buds were already very evident (see the photo above - where he is one day old). It will be interesting to see whether this "precocious" horn development translates into any particularly notable features in the adult ram.

1948 Farmall Cub - first test with Cub-22 mower

2007-07-02T21:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I have cleaned, restored, and replaced all parts critical to getting the Cub up and running pretty well. I have also restored the Cub-22 sickle-bar mower I obtained, and this is how it all looks:

Here is a short movie demonstrating the mower (on short grass - just to get the idea).

June Soay lamb at Woodland Creek Farm

2007-06-30T06:01:00.000-07:00

Normally Soay sheep are done lambing by the last of May, at the latest. But we had a lamb arrive on this last Wednesday (the 27th of June). I knew our new lamb was coming - in fact, we still have quite a few lambs to come. In our main breeding group – that of self-colored (“s-c”) blacks – this ewe that lambed Wednesday is our first s-c black ewe to lamb this year. That leaves 10 more s-c black ewes to go, and 3 heterozygous “carriers” of s-c black, each of which has a 50% odds of delivering s-c black. How did this happen?

Late last summer and into early fall, it was very dry here and the pasture stopped growing completely. I saw many local tall grass pastures in this area being mowed and just left lying (they were mowed for fire control or appearances). I started stopping in places and offering to pick up the hay, intending to store it for winter to offset some of my high hay costs. Instead I ended up feeding most of it in the summer and fall. The problem, I eventually figured out, is that although they were eating the hay (which was not usually picked up promptly after cutting and curing), it apparently was not sufficiently nutritious for them to really thrive. In particular the 2006 lambs did not mature well. Since of course I wanted to utilized the genetics of my newly-produced 2007 ram lambs when I made up my 5 or 6 breeding groups in winter of 2006, only one of those had a mature ram. All the rest had rams that, it turns out, did not mature enough to successfully breed until January or February or even March! (In the most extreme case, I am pretty certain I have a lamb due on September 9th - do the math…)
The same delayed maturity thing also affected the yearling ewe lambs, and I am pretty certain that none of them (7 or 8 of them) are not pregnant at all this year. So I learned my lesson. After I figured out the nutrition problem late in 2006 and got them back on good Eastern Washington grass hay (expensive!), they have matured nicely with no lasting effects, however I sure messed up my breeding season!
So I figure I still have 7 or 8 mature ewes that are pregnant.
I was envious of everyone else reporting all their spring lambs earlier this year (we had 5 in the spring from the mature ram), but now I can still look forward to more lambs to come all summer! (Guess I have to look on the bright side, right?).

The good news about the genotype and phenotype of this first summer lamb is that the lamb hit the mark exactly as far as what was expected from the underlying genetics as I am beginning to understand them. First, both parents were from my “Black and White” (B&W) group – that is – self-colored blacks that also are homozygous recessive for the white spotting gene, thus are “solid black” bodies with pure white, irregular patches. Since both self-colored at the agouti locus and having white spots are recessive traits, if both parents are homozygous for the recessive genes, each HAS to pass on one copy of the recessive allele, and thus ALL offspring have to also be B&W.

What is not well quantified is HOW MUCH white spotting the offspring is likely to have. I have studied this in the near-famous flock of Sue Furness in Wales, where she has over 10 years or so been able to breed some Soays with almost 100% white spotting – that is – they look like white sheep with only. From that data, and my own observations on my flock (for which about 80 or 90% are either heterozygous or homozygous for white spotting). It’s a long story, probably un-interesting to most, but in a nutshell, the white spotting is likely to show up in certain body locations in a certain order, and the extent of spotting increasing with each generation where both parents have similar extents. In a sense the predicted extent of white is additive to the parents extent. Like many Soay subjects, I have a partially prepared document describing all this in gory detail. Someday I will finish it sufficiently to post it.
Here are a couple photos of the dam, the lamb, and the sire.

Teed's Aja '05 and Woodland Creek Raven -e '07

Woodland Creek Pepper - r '06 (Raven's sire)

The new lamb (oh – here is the next good news – it was a EWE lamb! That contrasts against last year where every B&W lamb that I produced was a ram! I have 5 B&W rams! Anybody want one?). The other interesting part, from a genetics point of view, is that dam (Aja) is truly polled. If the ewe lamb (named Raven) ends up polled, she will be a combination of many of the far less common genotype / phenotypes in Soay in North America.

More Evidence for phenotype hypothesis

2007-04-30T21:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I received a phone call from a Soay sheep client from last year. He purchased Massena's Bonita - a self-colored black horned ewe, and Bad Goat Bog Fedan - dark mouflon pattern ram. They produced twin ram lambs about a month ago, and the results add additional support to my contention that "carriers" of the self-colored agouti allele (heterozygous for the recessive allele) tend to be very dark mouflon pattern. Here is a photo of the dam and sire and the twin lambs. (The client also has the two blackbelly crosses shown in the photo - don't be thinking they are oddly marked Soay sheep!). (Click to enlarge photo.)

To be clear, since the dam is self-colored black, she had to give one copy to each twin, so they are heterozygous for the self-colored agouti gene. The twin ram lambs are not only dark, but like their sire they have a very strong load of the reddish-brown pheomelanin pigment. These are going to be quite nice looking rams. You may note that the ram on the left also has white spotting exhibited. Although you can't see it in this photo, the sire Fedan has a white poll spot and a white spot on the side of his neck. But for the ram lamb to exhibit white, he has to be homozygous, thus had to get a copy from his dam Bonita. I had no clue from Bonita's prior 4 lambs (all of whom I own) that she carried white spotting. You may note that Fedan was a ram I included in my Picasa album as a suspect for carrying self-colored black, so I halfway expected black lambs from his breeding with Bonita. (This outcome of course does not prove he doesn't carry black.)

My conviction about the phenotype of very dark mouflon Soay sheep being heterozygous for self-colored is growing stronger.

Phenotype of Soay sheep carriers of agouti self-color gene

2007-04-25T04:57:00.000-07:00

We had another Soay sheep lamb born at Woodland Creek Farm on Monday morning (23-Apr-07). Massena's Rosalina gave birth to a nice little ewe, Yaquina. The sire was Deer Park Hjemstad's Thor, a self-colored black NA Soay ram. Therefore, the ewe lamb has to carry one copy of the self-color allele at the agouti gene locus (controls coat pattern - self-colored (solid coat pattern) or wild (aka 'mouflon') pattern are the two choices found in Soay sheep). Here is a photo of day-old Yaquina.

While it is somewhat hard to tell in a photo of her standing by herself, she is quite dark and to me supports my strengthening hypothesis that there is a correlation between very dark coat colors and s-c agouti carriers. I have assembled a photo folder in my Picasa album showing those NA Soays that lead me to believe there is more than a circumstantial correlation. If you visit our web site and click on the Gallery button, then the Picasa album, you will find the folder.

http://woodlandcreekfarm.com

Now don't misunderstand me - I'm not yet claiming I have proof that ALL NA Soay carriers of s-c agouti will be very dark, nor that all very dark NA Soays are carriers, but IF I had one that was very dark and it were possible that they were a carrier (one parent a known carrier, for example), I would say that it is a decent bet that the dark Soay carried it.
To me this may well explain the observation of many that the Blue Mountain stock is well-known for producing many "mahogany" NA Soays. Since the majority of the NA Soays with self-colored agouti alleles arose from stock from Blue Mountain, it is logical (and known) that many of these "mahogany" Soays carry the s-c agouti allele. This would also mean that if the phenotype of a heterozygote at agouti locus has a distinctly darker coat than homozygous wild agouti pattern, the wild allele is not fully dominant over the recessive self-colored allele.
Of course this is somewhat of a no-risk contention, because given a dark phenotype, one can never prove for certain that a Soay DOES NOT have a copy of the s-c allele, no matter how many lambs they produce.

Oops! I did it again...

2007-04-23T06:51:00.000-07:00

I guess this bottle lamb thing is contagious. Yesterday I picked up yet another bottle Soay sheep lamb - our fourth one for this year. I discovered from a fellow Soay sheep breeder that a lamb had in her flock had been orphaned when the dam died trying to deliver a second, stillborn, breach lamb. This is not just any ewe, but the venerable old Blue Mountain Velvet. Some of you may know that she was a self-colored black ewe and had the distinction of being one of only about 4 or 5 Soays in North America ever known to have triplets - and one of only 3 where all 3 survived.
More importantly, this little ram lamb is marked just the way I like them - homozygous for both self-colored black and white spotting genes. Here is what the little guy (Blue Mountain Orca) looks like. He is with his buddy the bottle lamb Jack: (click photo to enlarge)

Now the only real problem is feeding 4 bottle lambs at once. Everybody is pushing and shoving and near death of starvation, so there is no waiting patiently. I taped two of the milk bottles together with duct tape, making a 'double-barrel' feeding bottle. That way, with one bottle between my knees, the double-barrel in my right hand, and a single in my left, all 4 lambs fed successfully at once this morning!

Bottle Soay Sheep lambs - status update

2007-04-20T05:41:00.000-07:00

The orphaned bottle lambs we took on two weeks ago are thriving. It was a blessing in disguise to get 3 at once, as they have become great chums. We did not have any of our own flock lambs at that time, and without their mothers around to hang out with, I think a single bottle baby would have been very lonely. We keep all 3 bottle lambs in with the ewe flock, and to my relief all 3 are remaining pretty skittish EXCEPT at feeding time. Once they are done, they are off like a shot and cannot be caught (unless you corner them with the infamous salmon net, of course). I don't want the problematic tame bottle-baby ram issue when the two ram lambs grow up.
Here is a photo of the three of them a couple days ago. They are, left to right, Champ -r, Sadie - e, and Jack - r. (Click photo to enlarge)

We have now had two lambs born at Woodland Creek Farm so far this year. They are very late this year for some reason (well, the reason is obvious - they were bred late. I mean the reason for that is unclear...) Here is our first-born 2007 lamb, Woodland Creek Cherokee '07 - r.

Here's a photo of Cherokee standing. He is heterozygous for white spotting (a 'carrier'), but therefore does not exhibit any white.

Our second lamb was from a 'wild' or 'mouflon' pattern ewe, but with a self-colored black sire (Thor) the lamb has to be heterozgous for agouti self-colored (that is, she is a 'carrier'). Here is Woodland Creek Arikara. Dam is Massena's Rosita, sire is Deer Park Hjemstad's Thor.

Very nice to have enough lambs to play with each other on the scrap hay pile.

Don't try this at home.

2007-04-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

Well, after offering up advice on a sheep discussion group at how to readily capture our wild, leaping Soay sheep, I run into, (literally) trouble myself. I was giving yearling Soay sheep rams their annual vaccinations, worming, and hoof trimming. This involves first capturing, then 'man-handling' the sheep into submission. Soay sheep are not very large, particularly not yearling rams, so it is a 'one-man job'. Normally. I had successfully captured, treated, and moved a couple older rams already, and was turning my attention to the third of the rams, a yearling. I chased them all back behind the shed into a dead-end alleyway, then I get ready to capture the one I want by grabbing him by the horns as he rushes by me.
The only thing is that certain Soay sheep love to leap. This one, Woodland Creek Chico, eluded me on the first pass by leaping about 4 feet high (at least it seemed that high) and as he sailed by me, he kicked his back legs and I thought to myself that his hoof came pretty close to my eyes. Probably should be wearing safety glasses (which I usually do, as the ewe horns can stab you right in the eye as you are handling them). But of course I don't want to walk all the way back to the garage to get safety glasses. So I round them up again, and again try to nab little Chico.
(here is the mug shot of the perp)

This time, as he sails by in the air about 4 feet high, somehow his devilish little horns come smack into contact with the bridge of my nose. I go down to my knees like a shot, blood pouring out of my nose. I cannot believe I just did this. It was such a shocking blow that I am sure my nose is broken. I am so mad that I am going to look like such an idiot to get my nose broken by a little 60-lb sheep. I had just previously called my wife on the cell phone to have her bring me the vaccine from the refrigerator (you know - dirty sheep boots and can't go in the house) so I knew she was in the shower and wouldn't answer the phone. I have a handkerchief staunching the blood flow, but tipping my head back I can feel blood running down my throat (sorry if this grosses anyone out - it sure did me!). I can't go in the house with sheep-crap boots, but finally I get them off and go in and holler for my wife. She calls our son, who is a EMT / Firefighter, and he says DON't tip your head back - you'll swallow blood and throw up...
So anyway, to make a long story short, my nose wasn't broken. The bleeding stopped. There is a pretty good chunk out of the outside of my too. And no, I won't be posting any photos of the results to my nose.
Now I recommend using the giant salmon landing net that I have used on previous occasions.

What a day! Now at last I have a Farmall Cub Tractor

2007-04-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

I have wanted for many years to own a International Farmall Cub tractor. I have watched eBay auctions, local ads, farm ads, and it always seemed that the good deals were in Ohio or New York or somewhere back East. It is way too expensive to go that far for a little tractor. There have been a few locally, and in each case there were many mechanical problems, parts missing, cracked radiator bases, welded blocks, etc. etc. So today as I leave our property to run an errand, there, about 1,000 yards down our street, is a Farmall Cub parked at the road with a For Sale sign on it.
After returning from my errands and go inspect the tractor. It is in very good shape. So now I own it. Runs fine - I drove it home! Here it is: (click photo to enlarge).

By the serial number it is a 1948 Cub. It has a faded, worn sticker showing that it was perhaps sold but at least serviced right here in Puyallup, Washington. Nice to have a "local".

First lamb of 2007 born at Woodland Creek!

2007-04-12T08:36:00.000-07:00

I thought this day was never going to come. All my Soay sheep breeder colleagues have seemingly been having lambs for months. Finally, this morning when I went out at 6:30 to feed the 3 orphan lambs we collected over this last weekend, out stepped Happy Valley Maddie - a smooth, hairy coated dark 'mahogany' NA Soay, and at her heels... a self-colored (that is, solid) black lamb! What a surprise.
Most know that I am breeding for blacks, however Maddie was not considered a contender. Although way back in her pedigree is she has Butu, out of Westwood Zeus, whom I consider to be certainly the origin of much of the s-c black in the PNW NA Soays, I know of know evidence for several preceding generations that they actually passed on hidden s-c black. I must say though, that my speculative hypothesis - that very dark wild pattern NA Soays have a high likelihood of carrying one copy of the recessive s-c agouti gene - is borne out by this birth. (Also supported by Atlas, Basalt, Bella, Fedan, and others).
At any rate - here they are: (Click on photo to enlarge).

The little guy's name immediately popped into my head - Cherokee. (Yes, I know there has been or is a prior Soay in the PNW named Cherokee, but this is MY Cherokee). Woodland Creek Cherokee's sire is the self-colored black ram Deer Park Hjemstad's Thor. You can look up all pedigrees on the OFP if you are interested in such things.

I put Maddie and Cherokee off in a little fresh pasture by themselves, but then let the 3 orphan lambs join them. Who knows, maybe Maddie will adopt one of them. Judging by the size of Maddie's udder (that is, huge) she could easily feed another lamb. Cherokee is eating fine and playing already.

Here are the 3 "weekend orphans" meeting their new playmate.

Sunday, 8-Apr-07. OMG - Another orphan Soay lamb.

2007-04-11T04:51:00.000-07:00

Both the new Soay orphan ram lambs, Jack and the newly-named Champ, are feeding well and both go out with the ewe flock for the day. Both look very strong, and although there was some sign of scours developing, we tried the canned goat's milk diet starting mid-Saturday, and that seems to be 'firming them up'. Kaity, our daughter, is quite smitten with the tiny new lambs.

My plan for the day was to visit yet another long-time Soay sheep breeder who lives up north on Camano Island - Tracy Teed. Tracy has a very interesting Soay sheep flock. In many ways she has duplicated, in isolation from other flocks, the "regeneration" of a Soay phenotype when starting with a very small starting base of Soays and utilizing some unavoidable (and unfortunately fairly un-traceable) mixing of other breeds. This is essentially the history of the so-called "North American" Soay group in the Pacific Northwest. (This history can be best read on Kathie Miller's Southern Oregon Soays website.)

At any rate, the current Teed flock arose from only 7 Soays that were carefully chosen (by phenotype) in 1999 from a 11-year "open-flock breeding" that began in 1988 with Soays from Bev Driscoll down in Oregon. Bev got her stock from Dean Lewis (also in Oregon), who brought the first Soay ram into the Pacific NW US in about 1985. I have worked with Tracy to document the flock development, including historical photos, and someday hope to get that information organized enough to post.

So Tracy's flock has grown exponentially since the 7-Soay start in 1999. There have been no outside additions to the flock, and it was always run as a fully open-breeding flock - whatever ram(s) were most persistent were successful at breeding. A few rams were removed fromt the flock over the years, but largely they were left alone. When I first visited in 2005, I was amazed at the phenotypic diversity, which clearly showed presence of considerable genetic diversity for coat color genes. Of course the bulk of the flock was typical dark phase wild (or mouflon) pattern, there was also about 5% self-colored blacks (dark phase), and also perhaps 10% exhibited white spotting. I acquired 5 Teed Soays in that first visit, and intended to re-visit and check out new lambs each year.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, and Tracy tells me she is planning a major flock reduction. I figure I better get up there and check them out before missing out on ones I might like to add to my breeding program. Anyone familiar with my Soay interests will know that one line I am cultivating is self-colored blacks. So not only do I find two very fine-looking self-colored black ewes at Tracy's, she shows me her pen of bottle-fed orphan lambs and I decide to also take an unusual white-faced ewe lamb as well. Here are the 3 new Teed Soay sheep we added to our flock. (Click photo to enlarge).

The ewe on the left, polled, has been named Tlingit. The ewe in the center (one I spied, and coveted, in 2005, and now finally own!) is named Cariboo. She has (for a self-colored black Soay) an unusual very light coloration to her horns. Finally, on the right, unfortunately looking away from the camera in this photo, is white-faced orphan ewe lamb, Sadie.

So here we are, in only 40 hours going from never having a bottle lamb to having 3 going at once.

We have spotted, in the last few weeks around here, one or more bald eagles flying very low, seeming to check out neighboring farms lambs. I am very concerned for our tiny Soay lambs safety. While out checking on the new orphan lambs on Sunday, I was startled when I suddenly realized that a pile of dried leaves I was passing had something alive in it's midst. Here a photo of a pretty effectively camouflaged day-old Soay lamb (Champ). (Click photo to enlarge).

Saturday, 7-Apr-07 – Another Orphan Soay Sheep Lamb

2007-04-10T21:50:00.000-07:00

Still no lambs from Woodland Creek Farm .Soay Sheep ewes. Jack, the orphan lamb, is eating just fine. We introduced him to his new flock companions, putting him in with the ewe flock. There was a lot of curious sniffing, and Jack tried futilely to find an available milk spigot by checking under every ewes hind leg, but alas, none was to be found in working order yet (remember, no lambs yet at Woodland Creek Farm).

So Happy Jack feeds well all day Saturday, and he runs with the ewes, even crossing the (now nearly dry) Woodland Creek several times. One ewe, Kaya, has taken an interest in looking after him, even though she is not showing any signs yet of impending birth of her own lamb. Obviously, she cannot respond to his attempts to feed him, but she crosses and re-crossed the creekbed repeatedly to urge him safely across. Odd to me, as most of the ewes simply ignore him. Kaya is only a 2-year-old, and was honestly only a mediocre mother in her inagural lambing last year. Perhaps she is getting the hang of it.
So after bottle feeding Jack for his bedtime feeding about 10PM, I come back to find my cell phone ringing, and it is the nearby Soay breeder of the orphaned Jack again. With obvious consternation, she describes that she may have gotten mixed up in the confusion of dark of night and 4 nearly-identical lambs with 2 ewes, swirling around while trying to evade capture - and after observing the remaining 3 lambs all day Saturday, she now fears she captured and brought the wrong lamb. So we discuss our options, and to make a long story short(er), she brings a second orphan lamb over late on Saturday night! Since we now fear that the scent of the lamb replacer has now passed through the first lamb and he will be rejected by his mother, we decide not to risk hauling him back and maybe having to "re-orphan" him... so now we have 2 orphan Soay lambs. The second lamb eats greedily from a bottle and is put to bed on a full stomach, so we are confident he too is in good shape.

Friday, 6-Apr-07 - Orphan Soay Sheep Lamb!

2007-04-10T20:46:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems like blogs are here to stay. Having always been conservative in embracing new electronic technological advances (never bought Sony Betamax – Whew!), I stood on the sidelines for a while to see if this World Wide Web thing, this email thing, this Google thing, this eBay thing, would really fly before jumping in whole-heartedly. I guess it’s time for me to accept blogs as well. Seems somehow a bit narcissistic, but I guess it is roughly the modern equivalent of a journal or diary, albeit a bit public.
So here goes….(in blog tradition, newest entries on top – scroll down to older stuff if you want to read in chronological order)

While we are waiting patiently (not!) here at Woodland Creek Farm for our own Soay sheep ewes to begin lambing—while seemingly every other breeder is gleefully reporting nearly daily on new lamb births—I received an email about 9PM from a local Soay sheep breeder whom I visited last summer. She asks for my phone number, saying she needs help with an orphan lamb. Upon calling, I discover that she has half-day-old twins, one of whom does not appear to be getting and “suckling time”, and whom the mother continually butts away in favor of the other twin.
The breeder has no lamb milk replacer on hand, nor any small lamb-size bottle nipples, and at 10PM at night is not likely to find any. I have them, and offer to supply them. As we discuss options though, she cannot (due to upcoming planned travel) take on a bottle lamb for the next couple months. She offers the lamb to me, but…it is a ram, and from fine genetic stock, but not carrying traits that fit with my breeding program goals. And like most breeders, I have a plethora of rams anyway. Last thing I need, I’m thinking, is another ram!
In addition, in the back of my mind, I am remembering last year, when for the first time I tried saving a premature Soay lamb. It was too small / weak to suckle, and due to my inexperience with using a stomach feeding tube I got milk in it’s lungs and it died of pneumonia within a couple days. Not an auspicious start. So I didn’t actually have a great deal of confidence that I could save this orphan either. We agreed that somehow the lamb and the supplies needed to get together either way, so she brought the lamb to our place, figuring we would decide then where both would end up that night (the lamb and supplies, that is).
While waiting for the lamb to arrive, my wife (Michelle) and I discussed whether she was up to caring for the orphan--as it would be mostly her job doing all the daytime feeding while I was gone. Then too there was the notorious problem of bottle-fed rams often becoming too tame and becoming aggressive on maturity. Still, once the lamb arrived, and we saw it, (and Michelle held it) the deal was sealed. There was no way the lamb was leaving, if we had any say. So he stayed, and was named Jack (not my choice, but I’m trying not to get attached to him!). We prepared a bottle of replacer and he immediately sucked down about a ¼ cup. He seemed very strong and vigorous, curiously exploring the back porch and the dog kennel where he would spend the first night. A very good start, (compared to our miserable experience last year with the premature, weak, non-suckling lamb). We went to bed confident we had made the right decision and Jack was going to be OK.