Wild Flock
Many shepherds are finding the appeal of keeping a "Wild Flock" hard to resist. A Wild Flock is managed much as the sheep on Hirta and Soay are managed, or NOT managed, actually; rams are kept with the ewes and lambs year round. On Hirta it has been found that the rams will keep to themselves in their own little flock, only mingling with the ewes during breeding season. Nature decides which rams will mate with the ewes.
The advantages to keeping such a flock are ease of management; you won't have to move the sheep around at the start of breeding season, nor will you have to reintroduce your rams after breeding season is over, and you won't need to deal with weaning your lambs.
The disadvantages to keeping a Wild Flock are that you won't know who the sire is of your lambs, that it's possible that one ram will sire all the lambs, and that they will all be very closely related. This may hamper sales, as buyers will want unrelated breeding stock for their starter flock. You might also have lambs out of season, as the rams will have access to the ewes year round, but lambs out of season is not the norm.
How to start a Wild Flock? First you will need at least 3 unrelated or distantly related ewes and at least 3 unrelated or distantly related rams. It would be best to begin with ram lambs, so that they can establish their hierarchy with little or no damage to each other. Adult rams can kill a ram lamb if they are just tossed in the same pen together.
How to keep the flock from becoming a genetic bottle neck? Remove the oldest ram(s) at periodic intervals, either by selling him or by culling. Bring in new rams, preferably in groups of at least 2, as two or more ram lambs will have a better chance of coping with the adult rams of the flock, until a pecking order can be established, and camaraderie enjoyed by your rams. See our Rams page for more information about ram introduction and how to avoid problems during this process.
We have spent many years working at preserving nearly a dozen bloodlines in both American and British Soay sheep and have not yet had an opportunity to run our sheep in a Wild Flock, although this is our plan for the future; ease of management! In the meantime, we have kept such a large number of rams in a bachelor flock while they wait their turn to be utilized in the gene pool, that we are very familiar with how rams interact. We have the same experience with running large or small numbers of ewes together.
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