Hog Island

By the early 1900s there were hundreds. A run of hurricanes and nor'easters in the 1930s drove the people out, and by 1945 the last residents had moved to the Eastern Shore with most of their livestock. The sheep stayed. For years the only human contact was a spring gathering to shear and notch. They grazed marsh grass and drank from pools dug ankle-deep into the sand.

The Nature Conservancy bought the island in 1974 and removed the last of them. Four years later, agents found a thriving flock still living there.

In 1978 ten rams and twenty ewes went to Virginia Tech for research into the breed's parasite resistance, and the flock was later moved to George Washington's Birthplace National Monument. Living history museums have kept most of the population since.

A small sheep, 90 to 150 lb. Most are white and about 20 percent are black; faces and legs run speckled brown, white and black, or solid black. Newborn lambs frequently carry body spots that usually disappear as they grow.

Horns are unfixed, which is what an unimproved population looks like: ewes may be horned or polled, and rams likewise. The fleece is medium, two to eight pounds, and the wool sheds naturally each year, though shearing is still the recommended practice.

They stay in very tight flocks and are extremely alert. That is island survival behavior, not tameness, and it is the main handling fact about them.

The ewes are excellent mothers, most often twinning, and the breed as a whole is hardy and easy to raise once you accept that it manages itself.

Wool, and living history. Most of the Hog Island sheep you will ever see are at museums and historic sites, where an authentic colonial-era sheep is the point.

They browse rather than graze, which also makes them useful on rough ground that a grazing-only breed would ignore.

Very little management: they are self-sufficient, excellent foragers, and they prefer browse to grass, which is worth knowing when you plan pasture for them. Give them something to browse rather than a lawn.

An annual shearing, even though the fleece sheds on its own, keeps the wool usable.

Critical on The Livestock Conservancy's Conservation Priority List. The breed came within one Nature Conservancy removal program of not existing at all, and the population has been small ever since.

Because museums hold so much of the breed, private working flocks are scarce, and every new breeding flock matters.

Registration runs through the Hog Island Sheep Breeders Association. Ask which flock the animal traces to; with this breed the answer is often a specific museum or historic site, and that provenance is part of what you are buying.

Buy them as what they are: a small, alert, self-reliant wool sheep. If you want a heavy lamb or a calm club project, this is the wrong page.

Recent sale prices on HoofnHorn, where there are any, are further down this page.