[fiestyredhead331]

Just adopted an orphan lamb just over a week old. He is cheviot x boreray and absolutely gorgeous but didnt realise until doing some late night research that boreray are critical on the rare breeds list with less than 300 left. Anyone got anymore? My neighbour has a small flock of about 6 which he is planning selling in the summer, this lamb is from one of his ewes that was covered by a cheviot tup on the common grazing!

[fletcherreg]

I'm looking to buy a small starter flock of Borerays to keep on my croft on the Isle of Lewis.
 You said that one of your neighbours may be selling his Borerays in the summer. Could you give me his contact details so that I can approach him with a view to possibly purchasing his animals from him?   
Thanks a lot.  Reg.

[fiestyredhead331]

If i dont buy them myself first  dont know if they are registered and he's away just now but will let you know when he gets back reg.

[Fleecewife]

With rare breeds, it is only if you keep and breed registered animals that you are doing anything to support the breed - although it can be argued that by buying wethers from registered flocks to rear for meat you are supporting those who do the breeding.
 
There seems to be a welcome increase in interest in Borerays, especially in Scotland.   Julie Suffolk [email protected] , who is the secretary of the Soay and Boreray Sheep Society, will do her best to get stock up north, especially if more than one person is wanting to buy some.  It's well worth contacting her, and she will also know the whereabouts of any registered animals near you.

[SheepCrazy!]

Sorry Fleecewife I don't agree with that statement of 'only if you keep registered sheep you are doing anything to support the breed.' The Soay's on St Kilda certainly don't have pedigree certificates.

SOMETIMES the better the pedigree the worse the sheep, or the dodger the dealer.

If I hadn't come across 8 unregistered Soay ewe lambs at Carlisle Market I still wouldn't know there was a breed of sheep called  Soay. 

My friend has unregistered badgerface ewes and jacobs along side here commercial flock if people like her didn't have a vast number of females who would buy the unregisterable females, or from the breeders and not keep up the pedigree.  Surely anybody who buys sheep supports that breed.

Taking my unregistered sheep to the local shows lets people see the sheep, research the sheep choose to buy that breed of sheep.

Surely if nothing else my £10 a year subscription to the Soay Sheep magazine helps the breed.

Oh and the fact that I bought a £60 registered tup lamb from you might just of saved his skin to.

Sorry to be blunt but that comment is offensive.

[Fleecewife]

Hi there Victoria.
 
My point is that only registered sheep are counted as existing by The Rare Breeds Survival Trust and it is their records which count towards the official total of breed numbers, which the original poster quoted as 300 for Boreray.  I did say that it can be agreed that by buying surplus, unregistered animals from a breeder of registered stock, for meat, you would be supporting that breeder and enabling them perhaps to keep going.  Most people put their surplus males and any unregisterable females, in the freezer, and usually get more for them as meat than they would for breeding.
However, there is only a finite number of people who want to and do keep any particular breed, so buying registered stock from them is the way to promote the breed as described by the RBST.  Unregistered animals will be just as beautiful, healthy and tasty as their registered counterparts, but they will not officially exist with the RBST, which is the body set up to look after our rare breeds.
 
I am absolutely with you that some unregistered animals can be every bit as good as, or even better than, registered stock (I will probably be in trouble for saying that too), at least from a health point of view.  I am certainly not saying that unreg animals are third rate.  However, it is impossible to know if an unreg animal is purebred or not, because there are no records for them, and this is why the primitives, and maybe other rare breeds too, cannot be worked up to registration.  An example is that a Soay crossed with a Jacob can look to the casual eye very like a Hebridean, but it wouldn't be Hebridean and nor would its offspring necessarily even look like Hebrideans.  In other words, it is the genotype which tells us what breed an animal is, not the phenotype.
 
I have been exactly where you are in starting with unregistered Soay, which we got at Lanark Rare Breeds Sale many many years ago.  However, we soon found out that we couldn't claim they were purebred Soay so although we kept them, and still have one very ancient ewe from that original purchase, we realised that the way forward was to breed from registered stock, and sell the registered animals to other breeders, so they could stand up and be counted.  Incidentally, we have never not had a buyer for any of our registered stock, so Hamish's life was not in danger. I hope he has served your flock well.  We sell at a lower price than some breeders to help new breeders to get onto the ladder.
 
I'm not quite sure why you find my statement offensive, and it is in fact a widely held view, certainly not invented by me.  However, when you say "Sometimes the better the pedigree the worse the sheep, or the dodger the dealer" that could well cause offense.

[SheepCrazy!]

Its offensive as I breed unregistered sheep.

I will  support the RBST when they have an RBST sale in SCOTLAND within 100 miles of me, then maybe I could purchase  some registered  Soay ewes.

I have already offered any assistance I can give them to set up a sale, a Southern Scotland support group or anything else they'd like to do in my area.

But I will keep my unregistered sheep and breed from them as they will be as genetically valuable as any pedigree animal, I didn't take part in the Soay Sheep Society appendix scheme as it was done on the animals appearance and not DNA as I was hoping. Therefore as you pointed out a cross can appear pure.

My ewes  grand dams and sires were pedigree the paperwork was not kept up. 

I am supporting the breed as I raise pure but unregistered soays, I have a website for my sheep, I show my sheep therefore letting the public see the breed. Any body that keeps the breed supports the breed in my opinion. 

And my comment on the better the pedigree the worse the animal ect is taken from personal experience of growing up in the pedigree Texel world and seeing many dodgy dealings, cross breeding pedigree animals, putting in a milk maid to help the lambs grow faster ( lambs on there mothers) swapping lambs at tagging time, breeding daughters with fathers ect its amazing what a child sees when visiting other farms. So yes it may cause offense.

My sheep are healthy, hardy, great mothers and strong that's good enough for me.

Sorry to take over the link, there are Boreray sheep for sale on, 'Farmingads' today hope that helps and your wee lamb is so cute!

[fiestyredhead331]

Further to my original post... I took these on as unregistered sheep unloved and unwanted. I have been in touch with RBST who have been very helpful. At the end of the day was looking for a few more sheep of the non cheviot variety for a change and these 2 just fell into my lap. They are what they are but at least they will get some love and attention, regardless of their lack of registration etc

[Rosemary]

I will  support the RBST when they have an RBST sale in SCOTLAND within 100 miles of me, then maybe I could purchase  some registered  Soay ewes.

Working on it 

[SallyintNorth]

As a keeper and breeder of unregistered rare breed sheep (and pigs)...

I'm sure it's true to say that one would be doing more to support the breed if one only bought registered stock, and bred the best of them purebred and registered the good ones.

However, I''m equally sure that that isn't the only way to support rare breeds.

(And to be honest, I do wonder whether some of the breeds would be in better shape if less of the offspring were registered - but that's a whole other debate. )

My little fleece flock creates a lot of interest in the primitive breeds in our area and through all my spinning contacts.  It has already led to quite a few more enquiries for specific breeds' fibre for handspinners and knitters and will I know lead to a few folk setting up their own flocks, at least some of which will be pure breeds, registered stock. 

I fully expect the performance of some of my crossbred lambs to create more interest in the primitives amongst farmers in our area, too.  Naturally short tails, brilliant feet, good do-ers, easy lambing, active bouncy newborns - what's not to like!  Especially when the market is demanding smaller carcases...

How that can be other than helpful to the pure breeds and their breeders you would have to explain to me!

[Fleecewife]

Just adopted an orphan lamb just over a week old. He is cheviot x boreray and absolutely gorgeous but didnt realise until doing some late night research that boreray are critical on the rare breeds list with less than 300 left. Anyone got anymore? My neighbour has a small flock of about 6 which he is planning selling in the summer, this lamb is from one of his ewes that was covered by a cheviot tup on the common grazing!

To those of you who don't understand my reasoning about the importance of buying registered rare breed stock, please let me try to clarify.  You seem to be taking this as an attack upon your individual animals, but it isn't.  Fiestyredhead331 mentioned that she wants to support Borerays as 'they are critical on the rare breeds list with less than 300 left' - that is an admirable aim.  My input was to help her choose to buy registered stock so she can make a real contribution to that rare breeds list.  She is just starting out so has a decision to make as to whether to go down the registered or unregistered route, which doesn't involve her already owning Borerays - the crossbred lambs would not be registerable and of course are not pure Boreray - although they are instrumental in giving her the interest in the breed.  So she has an open choice of direction.
 
Ruth Dalton who is the Northern Field Officer for the RBST, covering the north of England and all of Scotland, wrote an interesting piece on this subject in the Winter 2011 ARK, so anyone who has a copy of that can read her input there.
 
Please consider this:  say there are 50 breeders who want to keep a particular rare breed.  They each have 10 registered females and one registered male.  That is 500 breeding animals, all under the care of the RBST.  If however, only half of these interested breeders keep registered stock and the rest keep unregistered animals, then there would only be 250 recognised breeding females and those numbers are not enough to maintain a species or a breed safely.  When numbers are low a 'bottleneck' occurs in the breed, where there is serious inbreeding, which can cause major problems for the breed.  This happens in wild animals too and can lead to the breed/species dying out - or I suppose it could lead to a new subspecies if their fortunes pick up and numbers increase. In domestic animals the likely outcome is that, without some positive intervention, the breed will die out.  This was the exact situation for many domestic breeds of various species just before the RBST was set up, with expressed aims which included identifying all known individuals of the threatened breeds, offering advice about matings to maintain as great a genetic diversity as possible, supporting breeders, organising special sales to encourage the exchange of stock up and down the country, and so on.  The RBST identified registration as the only sure way to do all these things.  It is clear that if stock is registered then its pedigree is known, and can be checked back for many generations.  In the days before the reading and study of genomes, this was the accepted way to maintain as much diversity as possible.  It was agreed that no further animals could be included in the purebred categories, as all would already have been identified, and there was no way to prove that future unregistered ie without pedigrees, stock was purebred.  Individual lines were named for some species such as equines and pigs, where numbers were very low, to help with keeping a breeding programme fairly simple.   That the RBST has been successful using this strategy can be seen by noting that several breeds of various species are no longer on the endangered lists, as their numbers have increased  sufficiently.
 
A point that Ruth Dalton makes is that all research has to be done on registered stock (this is the same for all domestic livestock, not just rare breeds)  This is because true and meaningful research can only be carried out on animals known to be purebred, without the admixture of 'foreign' genes.  Imagine discovering that, say Soay sheep were found to be resistant to a particular type of worm, but then it emerged that the resistance actually came from another breed which had been 'added' further back up the line - the research would be nul and void.   Similarly with research into the characteristics of every breed, only purebred stock can be used, or the results would be skewed.  Where a particular rare breed is to be used to crossbreed with a view to creating a new breed with certain characteristics (which is after all the main reason to preserve our traditional breeds), the new breed would need to be reliably consistent in producing those characteristics down through the generations.  Unregistered stock might be pure and might share the traits needed, but again, they might not.   This is all known science, so will not change because some people don't understand the principles, hence my attempt at an explanation.
 
It doesn't matter how cute and cuddly, how beautiful and healthy, how similar to registered animals yours are, nor how much you love them, if they are not registered then they don't count in the statistics held for that breed.
 
When the Government has a major disease outbreak to deal with, it has been negotiated by the RBST that rare breeds might, where possible, be considered as special cases because of their rarity - however, this only applies to registered stock because, as I have said already, unregistered stock don't exist.
 
For those of you who already keep unregistered stock of a particular breed, continue to keep them through their natural lives, but please consider when the time comes to replace them to do so with registered stock. For those of you who feel that your unregistered stock is as pure as registered animals, that may or not be so, but they will not be considered so by the RBST, buyers, researchers, or Government departments.
 
When registered animals are bought but the progeny are not registered, the parents have effectively been removed from the recognised breeding pool, and would have been better sold to someone who would breed them pure and register their offspring.  The same applies to a registered animal bred with only unregistered stock - that animal is removed from the genetic pool.
 
So please, instead or responding to this issue led by your emotions, keep an open mind and consider these facts.
 

[fiestyredhead331]

 To clarify my own position, my family have always bred cheviot, and have 100+ due to downsizing the flock. I hadncome across boreray round these parts before so was interested to know if anyone else actually had any themselves. I did some research on the breed before started this thread and understand the situation with regard to there being only a very small number of them registered. I am aware that the little crosses I have rescued can not be registered and I have castrated them both so their only real value is as meat.
I hadn't intented this to become a pro v against rare breed registration discussion though I do find it interesting. I shall just continue to do my own little thing on my own litttle patch of heaven

[Fleecewife]

Sorry to have hi-jacked your thread, feistyredhead331.  I only meant mine to be a small comment, but as you say, it has developed into an interesting discussion.  Good luck with your lambs - the one in the pic is beautiful and I'm sure he will be tasty too.

[SallyintNorth]

... I have castrated them both so their only real value is as meat.

Don't forget the fleeces!  I know several handspinners who'd love to get their hands on Boreray fleece - whether from registered stock or not 

[SallyintNorth]

I almost let Juliet have the last word out of my enormous respect and affection for her 

But that wouldn't be me 

I absolutely understand what the RBST is doing and I support them wholeheartedly (and yes, with money too.)  Whenever I am about to buy stock I do think about whether a rare breed would fit the bill, and whenever I buy rare breed I do consider whether it needs to be, or should be, registered.

If I wanted just one breed on a smallholding, and had no other pressures, then I expect I would have established a flock of registered Castlemilk Moorits and would no doubt be now embarked on a breeding programme to improve the fleece quality and consistency in my flock  .   

Anyone in that position, I too would urge to consider keeping a flock of registered rare breed sheep. 

But I passionately believe that, where for whatever reason that is not the option taken, you can still be helping rare breeds in general and your chosen breed(s) in particular.  Not least that your friends and neighbours will see these beautiful, usually hardy little sheep, and eat their wonderful meat, maybe spin their fleece, and all this awareness is very valuable. 

I have a concern that if there is always so much pressure to make it only registered sheep, always to be breeding pure, then quite a few potential keepers may shy away from the rare breed altogether.  And some keepers will take on the rare breed and try to do the registration thing - but not do it well, and end up registering substandard animals, registering animals with incorrect pedigree information, etc.

To me, it would be better to promote an atmosphere of support and encouragement however people want to use the breed, not pressurise people into only buying and breeding registered stock, but then actively encourage and support those who turn out to be good breeders to establish a registered flock.  That way, the people who breed the registered stock are good at it : good breeders - good at picking tups for ewes, at knowing which ewe and tup lambs to register and which to leave unregistered; good at managing the pedigree information so that when stock is registered, the pedigree is correct; probably into showing to promote their own flock; etc, etc. 

I absolutely do feel that I have had to withstand a lot of pressure to own and use an OSB sow, and Castlemilk Moorit and Manx Loahgtan ewes.  In my situation, being a pedigree breeder myself doesn't float my boat and/or isn't an option, so my choices are to not breed at all or stick out my chin, thicken my skin, and buy purebred, whether registered or not, and breed them as I wish.  Because the Saddleback x OSB pigs I've reared have been so spectacular both in terms of meat and of growth rates, and because Meg-pig is such a lovely friendly pig, a heck of a lot more people in my area now know about and might choose Oxford Sandy and Black pigs when their time comes.  Equally, my crossing experiments with my unregistered but true to type sheep could lead eventually to a commercial use for one or more of these rare breeds being established - which surely would be in the interests of the breed.


And as to the scientific stuff about research only being valid when undertaken on registered stock... I completely understand the rationale, my degree is in Biology.  However, having been a hill farmer for a few years now, and having seen a bit of some of the smaller scale breeding of rare breed pigs, sheep and ponies, I also know that, whilst a lot of pedigrees are accurate, they aren't all.  Thankfully so, in some cases, as some of the hill sheep would've died away now but for a bit of judicious crossing on the quiet to reinvigorate the gene pool. 

At the present time there is a lot of 'improvement' of certain native breeds of cattle going on.  The schemes only pay the highest rate of subsidies for the use of registered pedigree animals, so the pedigree stock is being quietly infiltrated by usually undocumented injections of animals with a more commercial stamp - and sadly these are not always purebred, whatever the pedigree may say.  The schemes which were meant to promote and safeguard the native breeds will end up eroding them substantially.  It would have been far more helpful to give subsidies for the use of any native types, which would have left those interested in maintaining the true to type pure stock to get on with that, whilst still encouraging more farmers to consider that type of animal when stocking less favoured ground.

As with so much biological science, nature in the real world doesn't read the books or follow rules.


So my position is this.  I applaud good breeders of rare breed stock who register and breed from only the best, true to type, correctly identified individuals.   To anyone considering taking on sheep, or pigs, or ponies, or cattle, or any livestock, I do encourage them to research the relevant rare breeds and to choose one if it suits their situation.  If they know that breeding pedigree stock will interest them, and that they will be good at the traceability side of it, then of course I would urge that they establish a registered flock.  However, if they do not want to go that route, either because it doesn't interest them or because they know they would not be good at maintaining the traceability and/or making the register/not register decisions, but they still like the look of the breed, then I would say that by all means they should consider buying animals of that breed and breeding them pure if they like, or crossing them if they prefer.  So long as they don't deprive the pedigree breeding programme of good examples of registered animals by only buying top quality registered animals to then breed unregistered or crossbred offspring, I see no problem, quite the reverse, in these people buying registered or unregistered breeding stock and using them as they wish.  I would prefer them to do that than to be pressured into trying to do the registered flock thing and doing it badly, or to be pressured into not using rare breed animals at all because they know they wouldn't be good at doing the registered flock thing and are made to feel that doing anything else with that breed is somehow harmful to the breed.


Just my opinion    - but passionately held.