When I first started keeping rare breeds on Coll more of the breeds were rare than is now the case. This is mainly due to the growing popularity of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, begun in 1973, which is successfully persuading an increasing number of people to take an interest in the survival of rare breeds of domesticated animals - pigs, poultry, goats etc. as well as sheep and cattle. A lot of the members are farmers like myself, plus other people with a few acres of ground, who want something to keep the grass down. It is more of a hobby than a commercial enterprise, though many breeds can be commercially viable. You keep a Flock Book showing the pedigrees of all your sheep. and send in a form to register every lamb, which is then given a number. The main venue for buying rare breeds is the Royal Agricultural Showground at Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, where the R.B.S.T. holds its annual show and sale every September, but there is now a small rare breeds show in Edinburgh too, though there are not many rare breeds kept in Scotland as yet.

The rarest breed of sheep I have at present are Portlands with sandy-coloured faces; they only produce one lamb each and are quite expensive, as they had almost become extinct. The Black Hebrideans with two or four horns I have are pretty rare too -they are descended from the original Hebridean sheep stocks. Then I have about a dozen Soays from St. Kilda - my ram came from the warden there; they are rather like delicate goats or deer, and are often kept in parks because they look picturesque. The brown 4-horned Manx Loghtans from the Isle of Man are also fairly scarce.

A breed with a great deal of character, not necessarily pleasant, is the North Ronaldshay. They come from that island, of course, and in the past, apparently, a wall was built round the interior of North Ronaldshay to keep the sheep out, so they were forced onto the foreshores and learned to eat sea-weed, - which they still do in large quantities. They are quite small and produce one or more lambs that are like a wee rabbit, and their fleeces are black, white and an almost pinky grey. Pure Ronaldshays are of little commercial value, but when crossed with a Suffolk ram produce very useful lambs. They are "fly" as can be, and when you are trying to catch them they will run towards the sea and hide in wee holes or behind rocks!

A while ago I acquired a number of Shetlands from Foula, - the island which is supposed to produce the purest original Shetland sheep with the finest wool; the most popular colour is basically white, and also Moorit - which is a kind of reddishbrown. Shetland rams have horns, but the sheep are polled, - ie. naturally without horns. A breed where neither the rams nor sheep have horns is the Gotlands from Sweden; their wool is black on top and silvery-grey underneath, very soft and of high quality.

There is always a small demand for good Quality fleeces from the rarer breeds, but the difficulty is finding the individual spinning ladies who want to buy, and are willing to pay extra cost for transportation of small quantities.

All the breeds I have mentioned so far are what we Coll primitive sheep, and they thrive on Coll, - some are very prolific. I also have some long-wool sheep from England, -Cotswolds, English Leicesters, Lincoln Longwools, Wensleydales and Teaswaters for instance. They are much bigger animals, and produce massive woolly fleeces like rugs, but, (except for the Cotswolds,) they do not take so kindly to our Coll climate, and you can seldom rear all their lambs. The reason the Longwools have become rare is because they produce large, overfat carcasses on good land, and people today want smaller joints and leaner meat. All these breeds are fairly rare, especially the English Leicesters and Wensleydales which are in Category One, that is, in rare breed terms, an 'endangered species'. There is a category for the rather less endangered, and a third category to keep a watching brief. A few breeds like Black Welsh Mountain Sheep and Lleyns have lost their earlier rarity value altogether, and have ceased to be rare as they are commercially viable, and very prolific, - in fact our present Lleyn ram was one of quads!