Shetland

The Shetland Flock Book Society formed in 1927 to defend the island type against crossbreeding, and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust listed the breed as endangered in the 1970s before its recovery. In 2011 native Shetland wool was granted protected geographical status.

North America has a couple of centuries of documented imports, including a small flock Thomas Jefferson kept at Monticello. None of those historic flocks survived as purebreds. Every Shetland here today traces instead to a single 1980 importation of 32 sheep by the late G.D. Dailley of Ontario.

The North American Shetland Sheep Registry began keeping a flockbook in 1991, and the North American Shetland Sheepbreeders Association formed in 1994.

They are small and fine boned, rams at 90 to 125 pounds and ewes at 75 to 100, and they grow slowly. Most rams carry spiraled horns and most ewes are polled, and the naturally short tail needs no docking.

The wool is the breed's fame: fleeces of 2 to 4 lb in eleven recognized colors, with names like moorit, shaela and emsket, and thirty recognized patterns, katmoget and gugmoget among them. Fine single-coated lines average around 23 microns; primitive double-coated lines pair a coarser 30 to 40 micron outer coat with a 12 to 20 micron undercoat.

Docile and calm, with the primitive survival instincts of a landrace still intact. Ewes are excellent mothers with ample milk, and twins, triplets and even quads occur. One honest caution from the Conservancy: after age two, some rams become aggressive.

Handspinning wool above all; the color range is the reason small flocks exist. Meat is real but small and slow, and the breed also earns its keep in conservation grazing.

Not much: the Conservancy calls them an easy-care breed. They are seasonal breeders, cycling in October and November and lambing in spring or early summer, so plan the calendar around one lamb crop a year.

Recovering on the Conservation Priority List, which is the good end of it, and the breed is no longer considered endangered in Britain. The open question the Conservancy flags is genetic diversity within the population, a real concern for a North American flock built from 32 animals.

Ask whether the animal is single or double coated, and what color and pattern genetics it carries; those decide what the fleece sells for and what the lambs will look like. Fleece samples and micron counts are reasonable things to request.

Registration runs through the North American Shetland Sheepbreeders Association. Given the narrow 1980 foundation, a seller who can talk about line diversity is worth finding.

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