Soay Sheep

The Soay Sheep is another breed from the St Kilda archipelago, especially the island of Soay and also the island of Hirta and the breed's story is closely linked to that of the Boreray Sheep, as a breed also having being raised by the St Kildan population.

The Soay, pronounced "So-ay" and means Sheep Island in Norse, is a small, lean and very hardy sheep and is the most primitive of the breeds in the United Kingdom.  There is no wool on the face or legs, the face is dark with lighter makers over the eyes and muzzle.  The fleece sheds naturally every year and is usually a medium to dark brown but much lighter shades can be found up to light tan and then right down the other end of the scale to such a dark brown that it is almost black.  The St Kildans would collect the naturally shed wool once a year. In the early years of the 20th century, the lord who owned the islands at that time took small number of Soay sheep and gave some to his aristocratic friends for their estates and parklands, who then bred them as ornamental sheep and for their mouflon colour.

In 1932, after the evacuation of the residents of Hirta, a group of St Kildan men were sent back to the island of Soay to capture a flock of 107 Soay Sheep and move them to Hirta to expand the population and control the vegetation now growing on the abandoned island after the St Kildans took their own sheep with them when they evacuated.  After The National Trust took over the islands in 1956 scientists were allowed to study the breed and brought some over to mainland UK for study and breeding.  Today on Hirta there is a small number of seasonal staff that work for The National Trust and the island can only be visited through volunteer work programs.

They are, at the time of writing, in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust category 4: At risk (900-1500 registered breeding ewes).  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 1st century.

They produce a small size fleece of up to about 1kg that can vary from very fine to very coarse and hairy or kempy.  The staple length is between 1.5 and 4 inches long (3.8-10 cm long).  Ram fleece are often more coarser than ewe fleece.

Locks are blocky and indistinct with slightly pointed tips.  Sometimes they are double coated and other times they're not.  For spinning, you can spin from gently opened locks or card the locks but there is generally a lot of skin flakes that is difficult to remove and so mini combs is the best way to remove most of that.

Use of the yarns spun from Soay depends on the quality of the fleece and traditionally the St Kildans used the finest fibres to make underwear with the rest being used to make tweedy fabric. 

I bought this in as pre-prepared de-haired roving but there was quite a lot of long coarse white hairs which I removed before and during spinning.  It was also full of black hairs and black kemp which mostly dropped out during spinning and plying and then more dropped out when I skeined it up, snapped it, shook it out, washed it, shook it some more.  The more I shook it out the more kemp dropped out and the softer and softer the skein felt.

My finished yarn is of medium quality to the touch of the hand and you can feel the prickly kemp that is still in there and is 44g/138m of sport weight, so I lost about 6g worth of kemp with all the shaking out.  It's not as soft as the Boreray but it's a reasonable yarn.  My knitted piece for the project only took 8g/25m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Boreray Sheep

The Boreray Sheep are a very small breed of primitive short tailed sheep that is descended from the now extinct Scottish Tan Face mixed with Hebridean Blackface bloodlines.  The females have horns that are thinner than the males and are curved.  Rams grow horns that are especially large and they spiral beyond 360°.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 19th century.   

The history of the breed is quite interesting and very complex.  They are from St Kilda, which is a group of four small islands called Hirta, Boreray, Soay and Dùn, and a number of sea stacks that are about 112 miles west of Mainland Scotland. The islands are thought to have been permanently occupied about 2,000 years ago, although there is evidence of Bronze Age occupation dating back to over 4,000 years ago.  

Due to the location of the islands any population would rely on sheep and fishing for their livelihood with spinning of wool done by the women and weaving done by the men and used the wool from all of the sheep, both feral and domesticated, and all from all breeds within the small group of islands.  The population peaked at just under 200 on Hirta in the 1600's with just 36 inhabitants left by 1930. The Islands were evacuated in 1930 after they all almost died from starvation following a particularly hard winter and they relocated elsewhere. The St Kildan's never owned the land on which they lived and worked for a non-resident lord and ownership changed many times, usually between the MacLeods and MacDonalds of Skye.  After the evacuation ownership was in the hands of Lord Dumfries, the fifth Marquess of Bute until his death in 1956, when ownership transferred to the National Trust for Scotland.

Whilst their sheep and cattle were ferried off Hirta they had kept a second flock of domestic sheep on Boreray as a backup in case anything untoward happened to their main flock.  A group of inhabitants would visit once a year to collect the fleece but the trip was dangerous and a group had been stranded on the island for the entire winter one year.  In the last few years before they were evacuated there were not enough able-bodied men to make the trip and so the sheep on Boreray returned to being wild and feral.  Descendants of those sheep are still there today. 

In the 1970's half a dozen sheep were removed from the island as part of a conservation effort to protect their bloodlines and there are now a few small flocks of Boreray Sheep in other areas of Britain.  In 1999 there was an estimate of just 74 ewes and 10 rams and by 2012 there was 204 ewes registered with The Rare Breeds Survival Trust and the numbers have been increasing year on year and in 2017 they were moved from Category 2: Critical to Category 3: Vulnerable (500-900 breeding ewes), where they remain as of the time of writing.

The fleece are small, usually 900-1600g and is usually creamy white or tan, with a small proportion being grey or dark brown and lambs can be born completely black or with large patches of black and whilst they do occasionally stay that colour they usually change to cream or tan.  Sometimes they have dark rump patches and dark collar, particularly rams.  They shed their fleece naturally, usually by July, although some shearing may be necessary in older sheep who do not moult their fleece as easily as younger individuals.  The fleece can vary greatly with some having a fine undercoat and others having long hair like fibres and everything in between.  The staple length can range between 2 and 6 inches.

 

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared roving which was sourced from a Rare Breeds Survival Trust breeder and my purchase helps to maintain the rare breed sheep.  

There was lots of little bits of vegetable matter in the roving, which I removed before or during spinning, which was a challenge due to the shortness of the staple but its very soft and I am very happy with the results.  My finished yarn is 43g/155m of sport weight yarn.

 My knitted piece for the project only took 8g/29m so I have some left to do whatever with.