Soay Advantages
Soay sheep are small and easy to deal with. At maturity, ewes generally weigh 50-60 pounds
and no great strength is required to handle or work them. Even the rams, which can get to be
70 to 80 pounds, are manageable by one person.
As a matter of fact, it is not necessary to handle Soay sheep much at all. Once a year,
usually in the spring, we vaccinate our animals and trim their hooves, and this requires
that we tip the animals on their rumps for a few minutes. The sheep don't seem to mind too
much, and once in position, they give up whatever fuss they were making and relax. To be
sure, tipping is a bit of a judo move, with leverage and timing being more important than
brute force. But even if you do not have the moves perfected, a fifty-pound Soay ewe handles
way more nimbly than a monstrous Suffolk four times as large. The only other times we need
to really get hands on with our Soay sheep is when we worm them, two or three times during
the year, but this is less of a production for both sheep and shepherd, since the animal
remains standing.
There's another benefit to keeping small sheep. The reason our pastures remain in such good
shape is due in no small part to the lightfootedness of Soay sheep. Even the pasture where
we carry our ewes over the winter, which gets grazed all
the way to the ground and which seems a muddy wasteland by the end of January, recovers and
turns into a lush grassy playground by the middle of April. Soay sheep are so light that
even months of hoof traffic in rainy conditions does not ruin an established stand of
pasture grasses.
It is often said that Soay sheep make wonderful lawnmowers, and they do, but the notion you
can trade in your mower
for a flock of sheep — any kind of sheep — is, sad to say, a bit of wishful
thinking. The trouble is that the grass grows like mad in the spring and then gradually
slows, finally petering out altogether by late fall. If you have a small flock, they will
not be able to keep up with the grass in April and May, and if you have a flock large enough
to handle the spring pastures, you will go broke buying enough hay for them in late summer
and early fall.
On the other hand, your lawnmower is useless in the weed-pulling department, and this is
where the Soay sheep make up for their imperfection as lawnmowers. They are truly splendid
as warm-blooded WeedEaters. They much prefer weeds ("forbs") over grasses, and there are
very few weeds they will not gladly eat, especially when the weeds first emerge in the
spring. Even bull thistle is vulnerable at the seedling stage. And if you are in an area
where blackberry or poison oak is a problem, these little guys are just the ticket. The
most you need to do is mow or chop down the berry vines or poison oak once. Soay sheep
absolutely love fresh blackberry and poison oak as it emerges from the ground. You are going
to be rotating your flock through the sections of your pasture anyway in order to have
consistent grass growth. Your Soay gang will seek out the new weed growth as they move
through the pastures and eat it first before they turn to the grass. After a couple of
seasons the blackberry and poison oak roots starve and die off. It really is that easy;
we've done it and we have the recovered pastures to prove it.
Soay sheep are easy keepers. Their ancestors were toughened by centuries of survival under
brutal
conditions on a 300-acre island way out in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast
of Scotland. Only strong, thrifty, capable and self-reliant animals survived in such a
place. Any physically weak individuals were eliminated by Nature's relentless, merciless
culling. Consequently, today's Soay sheep are tough characters, despite their diminutive
size and seemingly delicate structure. They bear their lambs easily and quickly, requiring
assistance rarely if ever. They are comparatively resistant to parasites, and their shelter
requirements are minimal. Our flock occasionally sleep outside their shelters even in light
snow or rain, retreating only in downpours.
The wool of a Soay sheep is shed naturally in the spring, a characteristic that pretty much
eliminates one of
the biggest hassles of sheep husbandry -- shearing. If you leave Soay sheep alone at this
time, you
will find your fences, gates and trees festooned with gobs of wool. Truth is, Soay sheep
often look quite ratty during this phase, but a little hand-rooing by the shepherd spruces
them up nicely. If desired, the wool can be harvested by hand rooing when the fleece first
begins to loosen. Since sheep can remain standing while their wool is removed, rooing time
presents a nice opportunity for the shepherd to interact calmly and quietly with the
animals, gaining their confidence.
Soay sheep, with their varied coat colors and stately horns (rams and ewes alike) provide living statuary for your pastures. They just look really good out there in the fields. Up close, they have a winning way with their human keepers, becoming tame, comfortable to mingle with, and charming.