Carpenters Barn Sheep - The Garth Flock

We started our small flock of Soay sheep by accident one year around 20 years ago when we rescued them from a friend who was moving to another part of the country and couldn’t take them with him. We needed a lawnmower for our paddocks so it seemed like a good idea at the time.

The brief was “If you can catch them, you can have them.” – not easy when they were feral and roaming a 10 acre field but nearly 4 hours of chasing, cajoling, herding, puffing and a lot of patience with 11 sheep we got them into our trailer and brought them home. Then we fell in love with them!

Soay are a rare breed of sheep, they are listed as Category 4 “At Risk” with the Rare Breeds Survival Trust as there are only up to 1500 registered breeding ewes in the country. Our original flock were really good examples of the breed but frustratingly not registered.

Soay are probably the oldest breed of primitive sheep in the UK, dating back to the Bronze Age and originating from the island of St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides where they probably were introduced by some marauding Vikings. They are small, hardy, very self sufficient (important when you live on a huge rock…) and great characters. Originally coloured dark brown or pale brown with creamy points and legs with the occasional self-coloured black or chocolate individuals, in recent times there has been a popular trend to introduce white facial markings and even all over pied colouring which may look pretty to some but have diluted the gene pool of the original species and in our view are not representative of the true Soay.

Our aim was to increase the flock size and gradually develop a registered flock of true to type Soay. We bought in three quality registered ewes and our first ram and the following spring our first registered lambs appeared, as did some unregistered ones, but we keep them all to maintain the flock size and fulfil their role as lawnmowers! The unregistered ram lambs are castrated, the registered ram lambs have been sold on to help introduce strong genes to other flocks and avoid cross-breeding.

All of our original sheep have lived a long and happy life and passed away with us. We buy in rams every two or three years to continue our breeding programme, checking genetics very carefully to avoid inbreeding, and our proportion of registered sheep has now increased to around 65% of the flock of 22 in total. Our registered rams and ram lambs have been sold around the country and are doing their job as far afield as Essex and Scotland.

 Luckily the ewes lamb very easily and prefer to the job themselves without human help. They hate being indoors so we learnt very quickly to leave well alone, watch from a distance and dive in to help only when necessary.

Our latest ram, Stanton Herriot, is a lovely looking and kind lad and we hope to have a good crop of lambs next spring to help develop our Garth flock. Watch this space!