Soay Sheep for Sale

General Conditions of Sale

Pricing

We have a single pricing system these days: $400 for ewes of any age, and $325 for rams of any age. There is one exception: if you are a repeat customer looking to diversify your flock by adding a new ram, we will sell him to you for $275 to help you preserve the diversity of your flock and thus help to assure the continued diversity of the purebred RBST Soay.

Reservations and Deposits

To reserve a starter flock, we ask for a deposit of $200 per animal. This deposit is non-refundable unless we are unable to fill your order. Once the lambs are on the ground in the spring, we will ask for the balance of the purchase price. Lambs can leave for new homes in late August or later depending on the summer heat.

Please contact us if you are interested in reserving a starter flock for 2021 delivery.

Healthy sheep

All of our Soay sheep are healthy and should be consistently successful breeders for you. Our lambs are vaccinated with Covexin-8 at about six weeks and again four weeks later. We administer our adult ewes’ annual booster immunizations about a month before lambing begins. The rams are vaccinated annually.

We use pasture rotation practices to minimize the buildup of parasites in our flock, and we worm strategically from time to time. Our Soay sheep have access to sheep-specific mineral, including selenium, at all times.

Our premises are certified scrapie-free

Our flock has been enrolled in the domestic USDA Voluntary Scrapie Control Program since we began raising sheep. In July 2012, the USDA APHIS program certified our flock and premises as scrapie-free according to their guidelines for this program. All sheep born on our farm carry a round numbered eartag that uniquely identifies each of them and their flock of origin, OR119.

Twin Soay ram lambs Even if you are buying a twin from us, you will know which one you are getting because we also identify each lamb at birth with a little lamb-sized, numbered green ear tag.

For our Canadian customers

As of July 2014, our flock was certified scrapie-free for export purposes and we were able to sell both rams and breeding ewes to Canadian customers for several years. We allowed our formal export certification status to lapse in 2020. If you live in Canada and want to import Soay, we will try to help you find a breeder who is currently export certified.

The Open Flockbook Project

The Open Flockbook Project has an on-line database you are welcome to use to check out the lineage of the animals you are purchasing from us. You can also run test matings of the rams and ewes you have selected. We pride ourselves in providing customers with starter flocks of maximum genetic diversity. If you are buying individual animals to add to your existing flock, we will assist you in confirming that the new animals are suitable for breeding to your other Soay sheep.

Pedigrees and registrations

Soay Sheep and lambs We provide detailed pedigrees and related genetic information for each of the Soay sheep we sell. All of them are registered with the Rare Breeds Survival Trust in the U.K. Their pedigrees can be viewed by other RBST members on the RBST/Grassroots website. Their pedigrees are also available for anyone to peruse on the Open Flockbook Project website. We arrange for transfers of ownership with the RBST upon delivery.

Paperwork

We will provide you with a copy of our records of tetanus vaccination and most recent worming, as well as each animal’s USDA Voluntary Scrapie Program identification number for its flock of origin, the animal’s full pedigree and known phenotypic characteristics, and any other pertinent health information.

If you live outside of Oregon, we will obtain health certificates required for transport to your state; any fee associated with this will be the responsibility of the purchaser.

Top