Soay Sheep

Soay are one of the prettiest, wildest and smallest sheep breeds in the world. I bought a registered Soay ram in 2010 to cross with my Shetland and Jacob ewes - he was unusual for a Soay in that he was spotty coloured and he produced a lot of beautiful and unusual coloured lambs many of whom still live here and others who are now living in pet homes. The Soay crosses are very pretty sheep with amazingly soft primitive fleeces. I no longer have Ben the pure Soay ram having let him go to a pedigree Soay flock to do his bit for the breed. But his daughters Daisy, Daffodil, Blossom, Puzzle and Patch remain here along with some of his grandchildren including Pip & Posy.

Soay are very primitive sheep, they are very pretty, incredibly nimble and light on their feet. Being small of size and light boned makes them easy to handle. Soay are intelligent sheep, full of spirit and life and semi-wild in nature. They can be more tricky to tame and tricky to catch, they aren’t greedy like a lot of sheep so can’t always be persuaded into a pen for food, they are ruled more by their instincts than their bellies! Soay make fantastic mothers, the lambs are very alert and up on their feet in minutes. Soay are very hardy and healthy sheep, very rarely suffering from foot problems or flystrike. They love browsing and eating weeds and shrub making them ideal for conservation grazing. Soay wool is usually short. It ranges from being super soft to more hairy, coarse and kempy. Generally, you get either ‘woolly’ Soay sheep or ‘hairy/primitive fleeced’ Soay sheep. Sometimes you get ‘semi hairy/woolly’ sheep too! Our registered Soay ram Ben, who we now longer own, had a lovely soft woolly fleece, it was very short in length but crossing him to some of our Shetland/Jacob mixed breed ewes produced many beautiful fleeced lambs, with medium length super soft fleeces!