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Hog Island Sheep
In the 1930’s a string of hurricanes and “northeaster” storms washed across the island and discouraged humans to continue life as they had in their island community. By 1945 all of the residents of Hog Island had migrated to the Eastern Shore of Virginia and had taken most of their livestock with them. Many sheep remained on Hog Island and continued to thrive as they had for centuries. The annual shearing and notching in the spring was generally the only contact between the owners and their sheep. The sheep roamed freely upon their “floating” pasture consuming the marsh grass at will and imbibing fresh water from small pools that had been dug ankle deep into the sandy soil. The sheep were removed from Hog Island in 1974 when the Nature Conservancy purchased the island. Four years later, Virginia Coast Reserve agents found, to their surprise, a thriving flock of sheep on the island. This is a testament to the extreme hardiness of these animals. The Nature Conservancy removed the last of the sheep in late August 1978. Ten rams and twenty ewes traveled to Virginia Tech for research into the breed’s parasite resistance. The year long study indicated that isolation, not resistance, had kept the sheep virtually parasite free on the island.
Hog Island sheep vary in physical appearance. Most of the sheep are white wooled, though about twenty percent are black. Newborn lambs are frequently spotted over the body, but the spots usually disappear as the lambs mature. The face and legs of these sheep can be speckled brown, white, and black, or have black faces and legs. Wool from this breed is of medium weight with fleece yields ranging from two to eight pounds. The sheep will naturally shed their wool slowly each year, but most owners choose to shear them in order to collect wool and create a more even looking coat on their sheep. Ewes may be horned or polled. Rams can have horns or are somewhat polled, with only small scurs on their heads in the place of horns. Mature animals weigh between 90–150 pounds. The ewes make excellent mothers and most often give birth to twins. Hog Island sheep are excellent foragers and prefer to browse rather than graze, if given the opportunity to do so. They stay in very tight flocks and are extremely alert in nature. Status: See CPL Breed clubs and associations: Hog Island Sheep Association, Jeff Adams, 449 Kellogg Mill Road, Falmouth, VA 22406, (540) 752-2909, jvadams@verizon.net, www.hogislandsheep.org
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