Gevan Marrs
Owner

Woodland Creek Farm

Puyallup,
Washington

(253) 848-5755

Blue Mountain Express

An exceptionally rare self-colored light phase Soay ram. 

Soay sheep are a primitive, hardy, low maintenance breed of short-tailed sheep.

They are exceptionally attractive and can be found in a wide range of natural color patterns and horn types. The most impressive rams have large, curled horns.

Soay sheep are relatively small and easy to handle. They thrive on small acreages on a wide variety of forage. They rarely require any assistance with lambing and have fewer of the medical problems that seem to plague other more "modern" breeds.

Soay sheep are naturally short-tailed so no docking is needed or practiced. As a primitive semi-domesticated sheep, Soay sheep are partway between the wild hair coat and domesticated wool coat. They have both hair types and the relative amounts of hair and wool fibers varies considerably by individual, and it largely inherited, so there are "hairy" and "wooly" and intermediate coat types. They naturally shed ("cast") their winter coats in the spring and early summer - most completely and cleanly but a few less so.

Although some Soay sheep breeders have them for wool, and some for meat, the principle reasons we have chosen Soay sheep for our flock at Woodland Creek Farm is simply for pasture management and the enjoyment of a flock of beautiful animals grazing under towering Douglas-firs. Additionally the genetics of coat colors has become a main interest of our breeding program.

Soay sheep have evolved largely without human influence on remote St. Kilda island of Soay for thousands of years, with more recent introductions to the island of Hirta in the 1930's, where again it has been survival of the fittest, with little or no human intervention, since that time.

All Soay sheep in North America come from two importations (each with very few individual sheep) into Canada - one in 1974 and a second in 1990. See the Soay sheep links for more information on the history of Soay sheep in North America.

At Woodland Creek Farm our main interest is the genetics and production of Soay sheep in the rare, recessive coat colors and patterns (self-colored, light phase, and white spotting, and any combination of these three).

In particular, one line of breeding has the goal of extending recessive white spotting on the recessive self-colored pattern, with a dark phase base, thus the result is a "Black and White" Soay.

A second line of interest is the far more rare self-colored light phase Soay. There have only been about 4 of these ever produced in North America (as of this writing April-2010), and we have two of those here at Woodland Creek (see photo of Express above).

To see more of the range of colors and types represented in our flock at Woodland Creek Farm, browse our Gallery link. 

See the Soay Information links on this Woodland Creek Farm website for additional informational papers on these sheep.