Breeding For Diversity In Coat Color

The vast majority of Soay sheep are greyish-brown with a lighter belly and no spots. Breeding for this “look” is easy – just put your ewes and rams together and you will get little brown sheep.

A few North American Soay owners are systematically creating distinctive “looks” in their flocks by breeding for four less common charactistics – self-colored dark (black), light phase (tan), self-colored light (chocolate), or spotting (either alone in a brown sheep or together with one of the other recessive color genes). In order to breed for color, an owner will need to have breeding pairs that either express, or at least carry, the genetics for the desired trait.

Breeders concentrating on just one of these uncommon traits can maximize the number of lambs with the desired look by purchasing only breeding stock that exhibit the trait, e.g., a starter flock of all tan adult sheep will produce all tan lambs. Breeders interested in all three of the unusual colors – tan, black, and chocolate – can maximize their chances of producing lambs of all three colors by obtaining a starter flock in which the genetics for tan and the self-coloration pattern are known to be carried by several animals.