From salt lick to peck stone
Soay sheep were put in for the maintenance of the lawn around our farmhouse. These small, half-wild and sheepfly-free ruminants don't need shearing nor nail-clipping and are very keen on the Black Cherry (Prunus serotonina) and therefore keep their run free of this forest plague.
These little animals (the adult ram weights only about 40kg!) are the last most representative remnants of the European sheep, as kept here by Bronze Age farmers before the Romans had imported the more productive long-tailed Middle-East sheep into our countries. They are most like the wild moufflon, of which they still have the specific colour and marks, but the horns of the Soay turn outwards and not inwards. Furthermore, the Soay has forgotten how to jump over fences, therefore a 1m high metallic fence is sufficient.
The name of Soay means 'sheep' in Celtic, it is believed that sailing Celts or Vikings dropped sheep like that as meat-reserve on this uninhabited Outer Hebrides island during the first millennium, where the sheep went wild. Therefore Soay sheep can be considered as ideal maintenance-free lawn mowers.
From their age-long stay on the Soay island sprayed by Atlantic mist, the Soay sheep still have a permanent salt need
Every day adult animals as well as still sucking lambs go to the salt lick after every meal.
Around 10 April, after lambing, the sheep were brought forth as usual on the pasture in front of the pigeon loft. Because there was only a rather small piece of the salt lick left over, this could not be hung but laid on the grass and covered by two roof tiles.
The pigeons of the first breeding pen, which enjoyed free fly-out after the training session of the young Oriental Rollers, have discovered the salt lick quite rapidly. They appeared to be quite wild about pecking this salt stone, and the whole day round the pigeons flew on and off, fought and battled around the sheep-salt lick. The breeder watched approving all that busy liveliness in the garden: a bit of minerals couldn't harm!
The pigeons were top healthy, the droppings solid, dry and tiny, the squabs of the second round grew up like mushrooms and the first round youngsters flew with pleasure. What more do you want?
