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I have recently seen a registerable 5 horned Hebridean tup lamb ( haven't had hands on yet so don't know if his eyes/mouth/under gear etc are in order). His 4/5Th horn is 2 horns on the rhs vertical horn.  His horns at the stage are fairly vertical / horizontal. Definitely interesting genetically but does any one know -

1. How many Heb's actually have 5 horns - i.e is it exceptionally rare / What percentage have 5/6/7/8 horns ?

2. Is he worth keeping/breeding from( if all else is in order) - definitely a talking point but what would you end up with - i assume 2, 4 and possibly more horned or does the vertical horn being double end up with lots of undesirable heads and a bulging freezer  ?

3. Anything else worth knowing about 5 or more horned sheep?
Thanks
BL

[Fleecewife]

Well, all multihorned Hebs are relatively rare and there are not that many registerable multihorned tups with a good hornset. More than four horns, especially an uneven number, tends to upset the balance of the horns, but two which are growing together will soon fuse as they grow and simply look like one rather deformed horn.
We often have multihorned lambs with more than four horns - in fact we had the only known eight horned ewe lamb.  There is a picture of her on our website (Gladstone Princess Octavia), and of a variety of hornsets on shearling tups destined for the freezer - in that group is a six horned lad who was bought for breeding by a well-known breeder of multihorned Hebs and he has sired some very good four horned offspring apparently.
 
Whether your five horned tup lamb will be good for breeding will depend on how he grows as a shearling, and on a combination of all the factors which make a good tup.  The fifth horn might be more of a negative factor rather than a positive one, but really I would need to see a photo.
 
As to his progeny, he may or may not pass on the fifth horn, or many horns, or just four horns and depending on his ancestry (ie if there are two horned animals there)and that of the ewe, he could sire two horned lambs too.  It is impossible to predict, which is the fun aspect.

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Thanks Fleece Wife - getting hands on next week so will see if can manage - Does seems to be a definite gap between the horns so not sure will fuse (but only seen at a little distance) but as you say looks a little unbalanced. 

Have you bred your 8 horned  / or other over 4 horned sheep and what results did you get? - Did they have more of a propensity to throw multi horned animals?
thanks BL

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Sorry just caught your edit - His mother is a nicely balanced 4 horn 2 vertical 2 horizontal and father is a 2 horned so plenty of genes to be thrown back!

[Fleecewife]

We are trying to breed polled ewes - never had a polled tup yet.  All we have managed so far is to use parents which have sometimes produced polled, then sit back and wait.  Our polled ewes tend to produce four horned offspring with good hornsets, but we haven't discovered yet how to reliably produce polled lambs.
 
The eight horned ewe's headgear eventually turned into an unattractive clump, as the horns fused into eachother.  I can't remember what heads her lambs had and she is now sold.  I don't know if the breeder who bought her is on here and can answer about her more recent lambs.
 
The HebSoc was doing some research into horns and eyes but it seems to have petered out so there is not much real hard evidence of which types produce which lambs.  We haven't kept accurate records ourselves either, which is a shame as we are one of the bigger multi-horned Heb breeders around (except this year when we had to cut right back)
 
By multi-horned, I mean four or more horns.  In our breeding now we are getting fewer and fewer two horned lambs as many of our stock have only multi-horned animals in their ancestry for several generations.  Some we bought in recently have no two horned ancestors as far back as their records go, so they will be extremely unlikely to throw two horned lambs (two horned is recessive to multi-horned).  We do though currently get a small number of two horned lambs from multi to multi mating, and because we use a two horned tup on a few ewes.
 
Oops - got to go, will continue later 

[Fleecewife]

Sorry about that.  I just wanted to mention that multihorned stock often produce scurred offspring, and scurred animals are more likely to produce scurred lambs, but can produce offspring with excellent hornsets too.  Scurs, whilst not very attractive, are important as part of the diversity of the breed, and in Soay have been shown to be important to the survival of the breed.
It used to be that scurred animals could not be registered with the Hebridean Sheep Society, or top-knotted and polled individuals but now the importance of diverse genes within the national flock has been recognised and all of these animals can be registered.
 
Not having an answer to your question about the progeny of our eight horned ewe makes me realise that we have really missed out by not keeping better records in the past 

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Thanks FW,

 will try to post photo in a week or so, I'm taking the twin of the 5 horn who is a nice balanced straight  4 horned and is in order,  will have a thought re the 5 horn, but i guess from what you are saying ( if he is in order else where) unless i took him / allowed him to develop and used him ( if he hit the mark) i won't know?

Re the Scurred other than maintaining the genetic diversity of the breed is there other advantages?

You also mention they assisted in Soay breed Survival - why was that?

Sorry if too many questions
Thanks
BL

[Fleecewife]

Hi BL
Sorry it's taken a while to get back to you but I unexpectedly spent the past few days in hospital  .
 
The thing with the scurred Soays is interesting.  It probably only applies to Soays on St Kilda or in other feral flocks if there are any. There are all sorts of research projects going on with the sheep on the island and one was to look into mating behaviour, which seems to be a bit like a red deer rut.  The biggest tups, with the biggest horns, will fight to win themselves a harem and all the lesser tups lurk on the edges of the groups, hoping to nip in for a quick bit of loving when the main man is distracted.  All the fighting to win and defend territory uses up a whole lot of energy, which is fine when there's plenty of grazing to go round.  However, the sheep population of St Kilda suffers from periodic crashes when numbers have outstripped food.  This is when the scurred tups come into their own - the big boys have worn themselves out maintaining their positions, and needing extra energy for those horns, whereas the scurred boys, who have always had a tougher life on the less favourable grazing areas, are still going strong when all around them are dropping like flies.  In the absence of big-horned males, the surviving ewes will mate with the scurred tups, so keeping the population alive and also perpetuating the scurred gene, which is present in ewes as well as tups.  I am assuming that scurs are a recessive trait, otherwise there would be no subsequent re-emergence of the big horned males.   I find the whole thing fascinating, especially as previously scurs had been seen as completely undesirable, whereas without them the sheep of St Kilda would surely have died out by now.

The only 'use' for scurs in a farm environment might be that scurred Soay tups fight less than big horned ones - but I have no idea if that is so.  Soay tups are aggressive little fellows, which is understandable given their feral rutting behaviour, but I don't know if because of their different  behaviour in years of plenty, the scurred tups might be naturally less aggressive.
 
As for your 5 horned Heb tup - you are right, unless you give him a go you won't know what he will throw.  I feel that too much selection took place in the Hebridean breed at too early a stage, based only on some big assumptions.  The breeder who bought our 6 horned tup took a big chance in using him over his whole flock, but it has paid off, not to mention the increased knowledge base from using less than 'perfect' breeding stock.   
 
 

Thanks FW,

 will try to post photo in a week or so, I'm taking the twin of the 5 horn who is a nice balanced straight  4 horned and is in order,  will have a thought re the 5 horn, but i guess from what you are saying ( if he is in order else where) unless i took him / allowed him to develop and used him ( if he hit the mark) i won't know?

Re the Scurred other than maintaining the genetic diversity of the breed is there other advantages?

You also mention they assisted in Soay breed Survival - why was that?

Sorry if too many questions
Thanks
BL

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FW
Thanks for the reply, hope all is well with you now, i guess the scurrs may have managed to sneak in with the odd ewe ( to keep genes going) as visually they would not be so distinctive( not sure re smell though) to the big horns

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Fleece wife managed to get some poor quality photos  of the 5 honed lamb and his four horned brother, happy for any views whether brutal or not 

Anyone else please feel free to pass on your thoughts
 

[Fleecewife]

Five horn will end up with the extra one distorting the top horn on that side as they fuse together.  He has a good gap between the side and upright on his left.
Four horn has an overall better hornset - nice and symetrical, but there's no gap between side and top horns on either side.  That's just for the show ring though - if the rest of each one is good eg teeth, conformation, feet, reproductive bits and so on then you could use either.  Four horn looks a bit more amenable but from a picture of course I can't really tell.
 
Aren't they beautiful - how can anyone resist Hebs 

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Thanks FW for your comments and views,  i appreciate it's just a photo and the rest is up to me.
 I take it the 4 horned will have touching horns and they won't spread in time to give a gap like the 5 horned. I assume the little bit of gap is favoured, are there any welfare issues with that or is it just cosmetic
cheers BL

[Fleecewife]

I really don't know the truth of the matter, but the story is that if there's no gap, especially with 2 horned sheep, then the skull can be split in two when they fight.  It sounds a bit extreme to me, more of a justification for a cosmetic preference.   We have never found a tup with a bifurcated skull in our pastures 
 
One thing we have noticed in a four horned Heb with a good gap between his top horns, is that as they have grown, so their 'footprint' on the skull is bigger, the skin/flesh in the gap gets pinched up into a squished mound.
 
The only true significance I suppose is if the lack of a gap is hereditary - so little genuine research has been done into this that a simple opinion is probably no less accurate than the supposed experts      And as we discussed before I think - nobody knows unless someone uses such a tup for breeding and observes the offspring.
 
Sorry I can't give you anything concrete.  I believe it is the case with all the multi-horned breeds that a gap between all the horns is preferred to no gap.  Where the horns are joined away from the skull, then that is fused, so I suppose a lack of gap is almost fused.  But why it's important I don't really know.  Maybe someone else on here knows - there are lots of TASers with Hebs      As far as I can see it is simply judges' preference carrying over into the field

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Thanks FW - Anyone else got a view?
cheers BL