Weisskoepfiges Fleischschaf (Eider) - Germany

Weisskoepfiges Fleischschaf, or Whiteheaded Mutton sheep, is a large dual-purpose meat and wool sheep  developed in the Wilstermarsch area of northern Germany.  Originally, the local Wilstermarsch sheep were dairy sheep that were adapted to the cold, wet, windy conditions of the marshland.  There had been many different breeds of sheep raised on the land and different types of shepherding methods used over hundreds of years, depending on the needs of the time.  As the local population grew, the need for more meat and wool grew, so in the 1860's the local sheep were cross-bred with a number of British breeds with the aim of improving the sheep's mutton, improving the quality and yield of the wool so it could be spun into something useful whilst also keeping the sheep hardy enough for the weather and the terrain.    

English Leicester Longwool were used to increase the length of the locks.  Cotswold, another English Longwool breed that would keep the locks long, was used for their mothering abilities, grazing methods and the quality of the mutton.  Oxford Down and Hampshire Down were also used for the quality of the mutton and these would also improve the crimp of the wool. 

Further improvement was made many years later in 1966 with the addition of Texel sheep from The Netherlands which would further increase the mutton and in the 1970's Berrichon du Cher from France were used again for the muton and no doubt their Merino ancestry would improve the wool. Even with all of the improvement breeding they have managed to maintain the desired qualities of the Marsh sheep such as high fertility, rapid development and large size.

These sheep are used to manage vegetation and allow native plant species to return, which in turn brings back wildlife.  They graze on the greenery of German dikes and the stubs of harvested fields on Wilstermarch marsh land and are moved from field to field by the shepherds using sheep dogs along the roads.  As they graze, they flatten the grass and pound down the earth, and this encourages new grass growth and growth of native plants that have already adapted to being grazed upon. All this activity helps to stabilise the dikes and make them sturdy enough to withstand the wind and rain during storms. 

They are large white sheep.  The rams weigh 110-130kg and the ewes about 70-80kg.  Both sexes are polled.  The average ram fleece is 7.4kg and the ewe fleece are 5.5kg.  Fleece is long and coarse but has excellent crimp within a range of 37-41 microns.  The wool is fluffy and easy to spin and nothing like other wools in the same micron range which have poor crimp in comparison.  The wool is durable and perfect for outerwear, blankets and handwoven rugs.  Because they are adapted to specific conditions, there are only around 182 rams and 1734 ewes.

The breed is known by many names in Germany, especially, and for some very mysterious reason, the wool is marketed as "Eider wool" despite having no correlation to the Eider duck, other than perhaps the fluffy white wool reminding someone of the fluffy, luxurious feathers of the Eider duck.

 

I bought this breed as 100g of commercially prepared top.

I started spinning this on 17th October after splitting the braid in half and pre-drafting. I spun it finely, as this breed has some bouncy breeds in its DNA makeup, and there is definitely some bounciness to the fibre, not loads, but it's difficult to judge if it will bounce up after a soak. As it turned out, I didn't need to spin it quite as finely as I did, but it has still turned out within a usable range for the project. I finished spinning on 18th October 2026, and I got 100g/365m. It is soft enough for next-to-skin use but not luxuriously soft.

I started knitting my sample on 28th October and finished on 30th October 2026 and I still have 226m of this yarn for use in the future. Because of the width of the knitted piece, the photos taken to show the lettering are taken in sections along the sample.

Føroyskur Seyður (Faroese) - Faroe Islands

Føroyskur Seyður or Faroese is a small, very hardy breed of sheep from The Faroe Islands that was first introduced in the 9th century and have long been an integral part of the island traditions.  The Faroe Islands are an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean that sits between Iceland (280 miles away), Norway (360 miles away) and the UK (Scottish mainland 200 miles away) and are, in fact, a self-governing territory of the King of Denmark (Denmark 620 miles away).  They consist of 18 main islands and a total of 779 smaller islands, islets and skerries and are situated 177 miles away from the Shetland Islands. The name "Faroe Islands" has been argued to ultimately derive from fær, the word for sheep in old Norse and the sheep is depicted on the country's coat of arms.  It is an ancient dual-coated breed that belongs to the North European Short-Tailed family.  Faroese sheep are closely related to the old-style Spelsau, Icelandic and Shetland sheep.  The breed has the ability to naturally shed its fleece, known as roo-ing, although they are usually gathered to shear the fleece. During the late 19th and 20th centuries, Scottish sheep were imported, mostly to improve the wool, and this has resulted in some Faroese sheep being of a mixed breed, although the majority are still purebred. 

Faroese sheep don't have much of a flocking instinct, as there are no natural predators, so they will freely wander off in small groups, grazing on meadows, traversing rugged rocky mountaintops and lush bird cliffs.  The ears are usually cut with various simple designs to denote ownership and which pastures they should be on.  There are 54 different official cuts which can be paired in a vast number of combinations, and it is not permitted to use the same combination twice on the same island.    The first known law regarding earmarking is from 1298, where, amongst other things, it states: "But if he marks sheep which are already marked and puts his mark over that of the owner, he is a thief."

The wool and products made from wool have been a major economic factor of the Faroe Islands, with several thousand knitted sweaters being exported to the Danish army every year during the Napoleonic wars (1803-1815).  In 1898, the Norwegian parliament made a decree that all Norwegian infantry should wear Faroese sweaters under their uniforms in wintertime.  Meat would be consumed locally in the winter.  There is a saying on the islands which hails from the time when the wool was in high demand: "Ull er Føroya gull", which means "wool is Faroese gold", but these days it might be quoted in a sarcastic tone in lamentation of how little value the wool holds today.

Today, the breed is mainly kept for its meat, with local dishes being favoured over foreign-inspired culinary art.  Fresh meat is not valued as much as an air-dried meat called Skerpikjøt and ræst kjøt, a meat which has dried and become fermented.  

The wool is still used but not in anywhere near the quantities that it once was.  Mounds of fleece are sometimes burnt, and in some cases the sheep are left to shed their fleece naturally to save the cost of shearing, although many frown on this practice.  There are a small number of spinning companies that produce yarn on the islands, and this is mostly for domestic use and the tourist industry, and there are shops that sell sweaters, socks and shawls to tourists.

The time of year that the sheep naturally shed their wool is determined by the weather.  A warm spring with good weather results in shedding earlier, in late May, whereas a cold, wet spring results in shedding around late July or even early August.  If the sheep are gathered for shearing at the optimum time, the fleece can easily be removed by simply sliding a hand between the old and new growth, and it will just fall off, although for the most part sheep that have reached this natural shed point (roo) would have already lost chunks of their fleece on the pastures and would be looking very patchy and scruffy, and it is better for the sheep and for commercial reasons to shear the fleece off in one go.  This weak spot between the old and new growth is known to most as "the rise", especially within the hand-spinning community.

As I already stated, the Faroese are a small breed with the rams weighing 20-40kg and the ewes weighing 20kg.  The rams have horns and ewes are usually polled.  The breed has many different colours, with at least 300 combinations, each with its own unique name, but they are pretty evenly divided between white, black, and grey, with some light-to-dark browns appearing in the mix now and then.

The average fleece weighs 1kg, is double-coated, and has an overall micron count of 34-36 microns. The outer coat, made up of coarse long hairs to repel rain, may be up to 16inches long and is traditionally used for heavy-duty clothing like thick sweaters for fishermen and some of the early Arctic explorers, as these fibres offer waterproof qualities.  The inner coat is shorter, softer, fine, lanolin-rich wool, perfect for underwear and other fine garments.  To show off the best qualities of each fibre type, the coats need to be separated and processed individually, but they can also be spun together.  

I bought this breed as 100g of commercially prepared top back in September 2023.  It is a light grey with a micron count of 34-36 and an average staple length of 9- 10 cm (4 inches).

I started spinning this on 15th October by splitting the braid in half and pre-drafting. I spun as fine as possible, since the fibres are thicker and denser than many other breeds. I removed a number of really long, thick, coarse fibres. I finished spinning on 16th October 2026, and I got a yarn that was 100g/310m, and it feels fairly soft to the hand when you squish it, but it is far too prickly on the neck, so it would not be suitable for next-to-skin wear.

I started knitting the sample on 26th October and finished on 28th October 2026. I still have 210m of this yarn left. The lettering is not particularly clear on the finished piece.

Roussin de la Hague - France

The Roussin de la Hague is a French sheep breed originating from the north area of La Manche in Normandy.  It is a very old breed, whose presence in the Normandy pastures has been attested since the 18th century, then it was the subject of various crosses with English breeds, before being officially recognised late in the 1980s.  It is well adapted to the windy climate of the La Manche coasts of its pastures, where it still lives mainly today.  It has white wool and a red head and legs.  The ewes are very maternal and have a good milk production, they are raised as pure breeds or crossed with meat breeds to improve the conformation of the lambs.  The breed, celebrated in August at an annual fair in Jobourg, has a dedicated breeding centre in Tonneville, supported by the General Council of La Manche. 

This is the photo from the listing that I purchase the fleece from

The local breed of the North of the Manche, in the region of La Hague, born in the 18th century from a mixture of Anglo-Norman and Ouessant breeds, was first crossed in 1920 with Dishley Leicesters and South Down rams to increase its butchering qualities.  40 years later, it was crossed again with Suffolks.  The departmental establishment of breeding of La Manche organised the first controls from 1976, and qualified the first ewes of the breed in 1977 of approximately 1,000 animals.  In 1978, breeders created an association for official recognition from the ministry which they obtained in 1982, a very late date given the antiquity of this breed.

It is a large sheep with the rams weighing 100kg-130kg and standing 70-75cm at the withers and the ewes weighing 70kg-90kg and standing 65-70cm at the withers.  It has a white fleece and a brown head and legs and both sexes are polled.  Its forehead is wool free as is the head and legs.

The Roussin is not very demanding, particularly adapted to the humid and windy climate of the Atlantic coast.  It can make the most of fairly poor land and is, for example, raised as a salt meadow lamb, but it is on the rich pastures of the Cotentin that its maximum potential can be exploited.

The Roussin de la Hague is generally raised in small flocks, with fewer than 50 ewes per farm.  Lambing takes place in winter.  The lambs produced are light, they are generally fattened on grass.  The lambs remain renowned in their region of origin.  The Roussin de la Hague can be raised as a pure breed, but also in crosses with meat breeds, in order to produce better formed lambs that are more suitable for the market. 

The breed selection scheme was equipped in 2003 with a breeding centre located in Gréville-Hague.  For a long time, it was mainly interested in maintaining genetic variability within the breed, which remains threatened due to its small numbers, and in working on resistance to scrapie in sheep.  Now that these two objectives have been largely achieved , the very recent breeding centre will allow work to be done on increasing the animals' performance. The selection base remains limited, however, with barely 2,000 ewes in the performance test.

The 7,000-8,000 of the sheep breed are still concentrated in its original cradle, in the north of the Manche department.  The Cotentin Farm Museum displays them to the public.  The first Roussin de la Hague sheep were imported to the UK in 1989.

I brought this breed in a 100g bag of washed fleece in May 2022.  It arrived weighing 110g and felt greasy so I washed it myself and when dried it weighed 105g.

I didn't comb this until January 2024 and I got 67g of lovely combed top from it.

I started spinning this on 13th October, and it took me a couple of days to pick out the little nepps the combs missed and spin it as fine as I could, since it is a bouncy fibre. I finished spinning on 15th October 2026 and achieved a yarn that was 65g/298m. It is soft and could be worn next to skin, but it is not luxuriously soft.

I started knitting the sample on 24th October, finished it on 25th October, and I still have 210m of yarn left to use for something else if I choose to.

Tiroler Steinschaf (Tyrolean Rock Sheep) - Austria aka Pecora della Roccia Tirolese - Italy

The Tiroler Steinschaf is a breed of sheep from the mountainous Tyrol area of Austria where they are raised in Tyrol and Saltzbrug but they are also known as Pecora della Roccia Tirolese in Italy where they are raised in Bolzano.  The name means "Tyrolean Rock Sheep".  The breed dates back to the early 19th century and is the oldest of the Tyrolean sheep breeds.  This breed is widespread throughout the Tyrol as well as Salzburg, Styria, Lower Austria, Upper Austria and Bavaria.  They are the second most numerous breed in the Tyrol.

The Austrian herdbook was established in 1973 and the registered population reported for Austria in 2012 was 2,780 to 3,500, total numbers are estimated at 12,000.

It is one of 42 native local sheep breeds of limited distribution for which a herdbook is kept by the Associazione Nazionale della Pastorizia, the Italian national association of sheep breeders.  In 2013, no total number for the breed was recorded in the herdbook, but the total number in Italy is only about 60.

They are a multi purpose breed, being raised for meat, milk and wool.  They are very hardy making them perfect for life in the high mountain ranges of the Eastern Alpine regions.  Ewes generally give birth to twins or triplets.  They are well-suited for extensive pastures and alpine pastures and they are also good for landscape management.

In the Ziller Valley in Austria it used to be called "the grey sheep" and in Ötztal, probably because of the grey-blue colour it was called "Blobe" sheep.  The white variety of this breed is primarily bred in the valleys of East Tyrol.  Lambs of the grey varieties are born black and their wool turns grey by the age of 2 with the head and legs remaining black.  Any animal that is born black but does not turn to grey are not used for breeding.  The ideal colour is a light silver-grey and is historically determined.  The loden, which was handcrafted on many farms until the middle of the last century, is said to have a beautiful silver-grey colour.  The loden is used to make the "Tuxer Janker", a jacket made of felted Tiroler Steinschaf wool, usually worn by men and a component of the Zillertal traditional costume.  Strangely, the grey loden is resistant to light and does not fade.  "Tuxer" are still proudly worn on festive occasions by marching bands, rifle companies and traditional costume groups throughout the Zillertal and other regions.

Josef Gredler from Barmerbauer in Tux, recognised the need to preserve the breed and in 1965 petitioned the Tyrolean Chamber of Agriculture to enable and promote the organised breeding of Steinschaf.  At the time, his request was rejected, but in 1972, the "pioneer" of Tyrolean Steinschaf breeding, Franz Fankhauser, also from Tux, managed to convince the same board to begin organised herdbook breeding, despite massive resistance from some officials who preferred the Bergschaf.  In 1973, the Tux-Hinteres Zillertal Association was founded as the first breeding association for the breed.  Fankhauser managed to locate remaining animals in other parts of North and East Tyrol and inspired breeders with his idea.  The breed, which was small due to inbreeding and the meagre winter feeding was crossed with the much more vigorous East Tyrolean breed and then purebred according to a uniformly established breeding goal.  After 35 years of organised breeding, the Tiroler Steinschaf is now a stable breed in its appearance.

A Tiroler Steinschaf ram is the heraldic animal of the municipality of Tux in the Zillertal and stands as a symbol for the original, for independence, self-assertion and the austerity of mountain agriculture.

Tiroler Steinschaf are a medium to large size sheep with white, silver-grey to anthracite-grey or black double-coated fleece.  The face is usually black.  They have small heads and straight noses  . The ears are short and pointed, and the tail is long and thin.  Rams weigh 70kg-120kg and ewes weigh 60kg-100kg.  The forehead and belly are woolly in both sexes.  Rams have beautifully curved, strong horns; ewes are usually polled but can sometimes have scurs.   Fleece weigh around 4.5kg-5kg.  

  

I bought this breed as a 100g bag of washed fleece in September 2023; it actually weighed 114g.  This is sourced from the only flock of this breed in the UK.

It is a double-coated fleece, and the longest fibres are very coarse and are in a whole range of colours: white, grey, black and much longer than the undercoat fibres; but there are some shorter outercoat fibres that are the same length as the undercoat fibres, and there are also some shorter black hairs as well.

What I did was to remove a lot of the coarse outercoat fibres that were longer than the undercoat by pulling on the tips once the locks were loaded onto my combs, and then to remove more with each pass of the combs to the point that the only ones left in are those that are the same or shorter in length as the undercoat.  Some of the shorter black hairs were also removed with each pass of the combs, but I left most of them in as they add to the colour.  It's actually quite soft, considering.  I combed this on 20th January 2024, and I got 49g of hand-combed top from it.

I pre-drafted the fibre, two fibre nests per single, and I noticed that the shortest fibres had a higher concentration of black hairs, making each nest get progressively darker along it's length. I tried my best to even out the colour by pre-drafting two fibre nests together, at the same time, and reversing one against the other so that I pre-drafted light and dark fibres together.  There are a couple of sections that contain a small amount of outercoat, and these sections are more coarse than the rest of the yarn.

I spun the entire yarn in one day, 13th October 2026 and overall the yarn has spun up quite soft, considering that it is a mountain breed. It is very nice and looks a little lustrous or luminous and is soft but ever so slightly prickly. My finished yarn was 49g/188m.

I knit the sample piece over two days, 19th and 20th October 2026.

Galway Sheep - Ireland

The Galway sheep is a breed originating in County Galway, in the west of Ireland and at one point in history, Ireland probably had a fair number of native sheep breeds, but today the Galway is the only officially recognised native Irish breed. They were developed from the late 17th century onwards as a result of the importation of English Longwools into Ireland.  It has been written that in the 1776-1779 period English breeds were not in great favour by the Irish and some of these sheep were actually killed for political reasons.   

Then, in the middle of the 18th century, Lord Roscommon imported large quantities of Dishley Leicesters from his friend Robert Bakewell in England to his estate in County Roscommon.  He heavily crossed them with the old native sheep, yielding the Roscommon breed, which strongly resembled its Leicester roots.  The Roscommon got both very high praise and severe criticism depending on the particular time and the critic.  A flock book of Roscommon Long-Wool sheep was established in 1895, surviving until at least the 1920s.

The Roscommon was a large, white faced polled breed.  Although the sheep were classified as Longwool, they did not have the very long staple characteristic of breeds such as the Lincoln and Leicester Longwool.  It bore, as the modern Galway does, an almost uncanny resemblance to surviving prints and paintings of Bakewell's sheep, signifying it was perhaps more closely related to the Dishley breed than any of  the English breeds which were influenced by Bakewell's stock.

By the early 1920's the Roscommon's numbers had fallen significantly, so in 1923 and after the Roscommon Breed Society had vanished, a group of breeders gathered in the neighbouring county of Galway and selected a small handful of the finest animals from over 6,000 ewes and 200 rams of the Roscommon type to register in a new breed book and founded the Galway Sheep Breeders Society.  The older and less-refined Roscommon's became extinct.

Clearly this was taken on shearing day

The Galway are are large, polled, white-faced sheep, having a characteristic bob of wool on the head and legs.  The outer lips are of a dark colour and dark spots on the ears are common.  They mostly have single lambs but can have twins.  Most ewes weigh 80-85kg but there is a wide variation.  They are primarily raised for meat.  In 1999, there were less than 1,000 true to type Galway sheep in 39 pedigree flocks, a dramatic increase from 14 breeders in 1990, practically all of the breeders are west of the Shannon River. 

Following representations to the Department of Agriculture by the Irish Genetic Resources Conservation Trust, the pedigree Galway is now included in the provisions of the Rural Environment Protection Scheme, and breeders in Ireland receive an additional subsidy payment.  There are just a few hundred Galway ewes in the UK.

Because it is referred to as an Irish Longwool, you might think that the Galway might be like the English Longwools - sleek, lustrous, exceptionally long stapled, and with robust fibre diameters.  You would be wrong, they are more crisp than sleek, they are matte not lustrous and they have moderate staple lengths and fibre diameters.  However, the shape of the locks and the wavy crimp pattern that can be seen in the locks do resemble the more familiar English Longwools.  Locks have the length profile of a Longwool although in miniature, with pointed, slightly curled tips.  The crimp pattern is Longwool style and wavy.  All fleece are white.

This wool spins up more smoothly than many mid-range wools, producing yarns that have a pleasant, firm reliable-feeling character.  Keep the spin simple, like a straight forward 2ply yarn, and you will get good stitch definition in textured knitted patterns formed by using combinations of knit and purl stitches.  If you favour spinning novelty yarns, which are spun to have more texture, the designer effects like loops, feathery bits of loose surface fibre, slubs etc will have enough body not to be crushed into oblivion,  

Fleeces are white and generally weigh - 2.5kg-3.6kg and they have a staple length of 11.½cm -19cm (4½ - 7½ inches) with fibre diameters of 26-32 microns.  The obvious choice for preparation is to comb although spinning from loosened locks is an option. It can be carded if the fibre length is in your comfort zone for that technique.  The fibres draft easily into your choice or thick or thin singles.  Some are suitable for next-to-skin wear but some are slightly coarser.  If you are dyeing this fibre, it produces clear colours, with apparent depth due to the crimp profile rather than lustre.  It's not very well known but is a lovely white with more density and heft than more comparable wools.

I bought this breed in as a 100g bag of washed fleece back in May 2022 from a lady that I've been buying quite a few of the rarer breeds from.  From the information she gives on her sales page, she states that this was sourced from a member of the Galway Sheep Society but the sheep was raised here in England after they were introduced to Britain in 1990 from top flocks in the West of Ireland and they are considered to be the only native sheep from Ireland.

It felt very greasy and there was no way that I was going to attempt to comb this until I had washed it myself.  I'm glad I did, because the water turned milky white, indicating how much lanolin was still in this fleece.  

This one feels a little special to me as I have recently discovered that I have great-great-great-grandparents that both came from County Galway, although I've not yet discovered the name of the town or towns where they came from, and they would have left Ireland to come to England between 1848 and 1851 at around the time the original Roscommon sheep were being developed using the Dishley Leicesters.

Once it was dry, I combed it, and I got 56g of slightly crisp, hand-combed top ready to spin. 

I spun this over 15th and 16th September 2026. Some small sections of the fibre were quite soft, but for the most part it was fairly coarse wool. It is not for next-to-skin wear. My finished yarn was 55g/243m.

I knitted the majority of the sample piece on 8th October and finished it on 9th October 2026.

 

Pommersches Rauhwollschaf (Pomeranian) - Germany

Pommersches Rauhwollschaf is a breed of sheep that comes from Germany.  They were first called Grauwollschafe, which means "greywool sheep" but this changed to Rauwollschafe by dropping the first letter.  They are also known as the Rough-wooled Pomeranian Landschaf,  the Pomeranian Coarsewool, Pomeranian, Pommernschaf and Rauhwolliges Pommersches Landschaf. 

The first records of similar sheep in Pomerania can be traced to more than 3,000 years ago.  It is a landrace sheep that used to be kept in small flocks along the Baltic Sea in Pommern and Mecklenburg for its wool, meat and milk. The owners ate the meat, the dung fertilized gardens and fields and the wool was made into clothing.  Fishermen especially appreciated the weatherproof wool products.

In the middle of the 19th century, agricultural production was intensified and the existing landrace breeds were modified. The rise of the textile industry meant that there was a high demand for fine wool and the breeders crossbred and kept imported Spanish Merino instead of the landrace sheep and this caused the decline of the Pomeranian.  To give an idea of why so many made the switch from keeping the landrace sheep in favour of the fine-woolled sheep. In 1825 the price of very fine wool paid the shepherd twice as much money as half-fine wool, which in turn paid the shepherd twice as much money as landrace wool so by switching from keeping landrace sheep to keeping very fine wool sheep the shepherd earned 4 times as much money and so the landrace sheep was replaced almost entirely, except for a few small farmers along the Baltic Sea who continued to keep and breed the Pommersches Rauhwollschaf because they loved them so much and thank goodness they did else it may have become extinct.

The Pommersches Rauhwollschaf breed became increasingly rare after the WWII and threatened to fall victim to the trend toward standardisation.  The breed almost completely disappeared.  In 1982, breeders on the island of Ruegen, which was in Communist East Germany at that time, scraped together the remnants of the sheep and created a gene pool with 7 rams and 46 ewes to keep this hardy breed alive.  They had survived because the shepherds appreciated the hardy, easy to keep sheep the grew the perfect hand spinners fleece.  East Germany's Communist regime did not permit the export of ewes into West Germany. The first West Germans to breed Pomeranian sheep had to start with a Pomeranian ram and another landrace - in one case the Rhoenschaf.  Once the East German Communist regime realised that they could make a lot of money with the sale of Pomeranian ewes, they asked for astronomical prices, which nobody paid.  When the Berlin Wall was dismantled in November 1989 and the two Germany's were once again reunited, it was easier to obtain the proper sheep for breeding.  Literally at the last minute, the UN placed this ancient breed on the Red List of endangered domestic animal breeds.  This was achieved in no small part due to the persistent efforts of the displaced Pomeranians, who had found a new home in West Germany.

The Society for the Preservation of Old and Endangered Domestic Animal Breeds (GEH) has classified this breed in Category III (Endangered) of the Red List (as of May 2024).  It has also been appointed a breed supervisor.

They are a medium sized fine boned sheep and both sexes are polled. Rams weigh around 65kg-70kg and ewes weigh around 50kg-55kg.  They have sturdy long legs and hard hoofs.  They have black wedge-shaped heads which should be consistently dark, although a lighter shade of hair is often present around the muzzle, which is not considered a fault.  The head should be free of wool up to the ears which are generally pert.  The legs are also free of wool and almost jet black. The tongue is also black and they have long woolly tails.  They are very hardy and able to live outside all year, even raising lambs in the snow and are perfectly adapted to the harsh coastal climate. They are highly resistant against parasites, have a low susceptibility to lungworms and suffer from very little heart disease.  They are not fussy eaters, being able to thrive on poor forage and can be kept alone or in flocks. They attach themselves to people and are not demanding.  

Ewes lamb by themselves in the pasture without help and can be bred three times in two years.  Lambs are born black and turn steel-grey, blue-grey, grey brown or light grey.  White, brown and black fleece are not permitted.  Fleece become lighter in colour as the sheep age so a silver-grey lamb will become white and should be culled.  As they age, Rams develop manes on the neck, chest, withers or flanks.  In old rams, the mane sometimes reaches down to the forechest.

The fleece are double-coated with an outer coat of 5½ - 8¾ inches (14-22cm) of long wool and a fine undercoat.  Fleeces weigh between 3kg-7kg.  Average fibre diameters are 30-40 microns.  The undercoat wool is soft to medium, like Romney to Shetland. Hand spinners love the wool with its interesting shades of grey and they turn the yarn into rugged, indestructible weatherproof sweaters and jackets.  The hand spun wool turns out softer than the same fleece spun by machine.  It can be felted but takes a lot more work. 

I brought this breed in as 100g of pre-washed lambs fleece in May 2022 but as I have been discovering "washed" isn't necessary washed to my standards so I have automatically been washing them again to ensure that they are not still full of grease, which clogs up my preparation tools.

After washing and drying it weighed 93g.  I combed this on 18th December 2022 and I got 59g of soft hand combed top from it and I don't recall there being any coarse hairs in this, I certainly haven't made any notes to say that there were coarse hairs in the fleece. It is a lambs fleece, so there is less likely to be any coarse hairs in it until it reaches adulthood and is sheared again.

I started spinning this on 15th September 2026. It was a pleasure to spin, very soft with just a slight prickle factor. There are many shades of grey within the hand-combed nests, and each nest appears dark on one end and light on the other. For the first single I pre-drafted the nests all from the same end, starting with the dark end, ending with the light. For the second single, I pre-drafted the nests from the light end to the dark. With luck, the dark fibres will be plied to light fibres and vice versa, and thus evening out the shades of grey in the yarn, at least to some degree. I achieved a yarn that was 59g/191m. It is soft with just a hint of prickliness.

For the knitted sample, I started on 29th September and finished on 5th October 2026, using most of the yarn and only having 16g/51m left to play with.  Because of the width of the knitted piece, the photos taken to show the lettering are taken in sections along the sample.