Talk:Boreray sheep

Origin of breed
Several sources reffed in the article state that the Boreray arose from crosses of Scottish Blackface with "Scottish Tan Face" also called the "Old Scottish Shortwool". While these sources are all reasonably authoritative, they are all tertiary ones, and are so similarly worded that they must come from the same primary source – which however none of them gives. I can't find out much about the Tanface, but some sources I can find imply that it was indeed related to the Soay, or alternatively that it may not be an ancestor of the Boreray, and perhaps was not even a short-tailed sheep. For example:


 * Could this be the "primary" source? "The sheep that replaced the Soay on Hirta ... were presumably of Old Scottish Shortwool type ... some of these remain ... on Boreray " (my italics). Looks uncomfortably like guessing – if not, why say "presumably"?  [Later edit: I'd not realised that this is a quote in that ref, and comes originally from Ryder, M L, Sheep and Man 1983.  Richard New Forest (talk) 09:05, 17 May 2009 (UTC)]
 * This source (p 66) says "the old Scottish shortwool sheep ... still survive on North Ronaldsay in Orkney and in the Shetland Islands". These breeds are close to the Soay, suggesting that the Boreray is too.
 * This source (p 156) says "the Cheviot appears to have evolved entirely from the native Dunface or Old Scottish Shortwool". The Cheviot is not a short-tail, implying the Dunface was not.  If it was not (and the Blackface isn't), the Boreray must have got its short tail from somewhere: therefore it would not be derived mainly from a cross of Blackface and Dunface.
 * This source states of the Shortwool that "no trace of these sheep is now found", implying it is not an ancestor of any modern breed (the paper gives a ref, which I can't check).
 * A History of British Livestock Husbandry, 1700-1900 by Robert Trow Smith (on Google Books) says (p 147) that there were short-tailed white-faced sheep in mainland Scotland. It mentions Dunfaced/Tanfaced sheep, but I could find no description of them.  The implication is that the Hebridean sheep were closely allied to the Shetland and the short-tailed mainland sheep (p 150).  Also see p 68, which says that the original Cheviot was "of somewhat mixed type", perhaps conflicting with the other ref.

Two things trouble me. One is that the origin given in the article has no primary source; the other is that other apparently authoritative sources appear to disagree on vital facts. At the very least the situation is much less clear than the current wording of our article suggests. Richard New Forest (talk) 23:26, 16 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't know. The presumed association with the Old Scottish Shortwool or Tan/Dun Face with the Soay feels like synthesis original research. None of the sources here or that I've seen suggest that they mean the Soay when they talk about this breed, and to say so looks like pretty wild supposition. The most reliable of the sources to be found treat the Old Scottish Shortwool/Dun Face as a now-extinct breed separate from the Soay, and that's how Wikipedia should too. In any case, it is completely obvious from the Boreray's phenotype that they have been heavily influenced by the Scottish Blackface, and are not significantly similar to the Soay in any of their traits (other than the fact that they're both short-tailed breeds). Steven Walling (talk) 23:45, 16 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, you're right, it's only my presumption that Soay might be related to the Dunface. The problem is that it looks very much as though no more than similar presumption lies behind the idea that the Boreray is derived from the Dunface, and we need to treat this with caution until we can find a much better primary ref. Speculation is speculation, not fact.


 * Yes, it's obvious that the Boreray has been influenced by the Blackface, though I'm not sure about the "heavily", as the Boreray still has a short tail, and the colour pattern is the only obvious feature from the Blackface.


 * Have you found any sources describing the Dunface/Shortwool? Was it the same as the Shetland/Ronaldsay/Hebridean type? My first bulleted source above implies so (p 6).  It also says that the Scottish Blackface itself arose from crosses of Scottish Shortwools from English blackfaced sheep, and so the Boreray is a "fossilised" early Scottish Blackface.


 * If it is true that the Dunface is the same as the Shetland/Ronaldsay/Hebridean type, then it would be clearer and no less accurate to say "the Boreray is derived from crosses of Scottish Blackface with earlier Hebridean sheep". Richard New Forest (talk) 09:05, 17 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm going to be buying some more rare breeds books in the coming weeks, which may help me find more resources to clear this up. But in the meantime, I agree that it would be no less accurate to use the quote you suggest. Steven Walling (talk) 20:47, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

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