The Independent Stitch

Rare Breeds Survival Trust's 2011 Watchlist for sheep

The Rare Breeds Survival Trust, which monitors the status of livestock breeds in the British Isles, has published its 2011 Watchlist of breeds that need attention to stay, as they say, off the slippery slope to extinction. From the whole list (a PDF), I'm focusing here on the sheep:

Categories are based on numbers of breeding females.

CRITICAL (category 1)

• Boreray

ENDANGERED (category 2)

• Leicester Longwool
• North Ronaldsay

VULNERABLE (category 3)

• Castlemilk Moorit
• Devon & Cornwall Longwool
• Hill Radnor
• Teeswater
• Whitefaced Woodland

AT RISK (category 4)

• Balwen
• Cotswold
• Lincoln Longwool
• Manx Loaghtan
• Norfolk Horn
• Oxford Down
• Portland
• Soay
• Wensleydale
• Whiteface Dartmoor

MINORITY (category 5)

• Dorset Down
• Dorset Horn
• Greyface Dartmoor
• Shropshire

A few random notes:

* The Norfolk Horn is not the original breed, but has been bred back up from near-extinction (just a few sheep), using in part one of the more modern breeds that had previously been developed from a Norfolk Horn foundation, the Suffolk. Called the New Norfolk Horn for a while, the "New" part of the name has now been dropped, even though the successors may only carry part of the genetic heritage of the original breed.

* The Isle of Man cares so much about its traditional Manx Loaghtan sheep that during the foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001 the parliament, known as the Tynwald, cancelled one of the island's highest-earning tourist events (a massive and famous motorcycle race) in order to reduce the possibility that the sheep would be exposed to the illness.

* The Dorset Down and Dorset Horn are not the same as what is often just called the Dorset (also known as the Polled Dorset, which, oddly, originated in two different locations from two different breeding efforts). (The Dorset Down is one of the six basic Down breeds. The Dorset Horn and the Polled Dorset, while they have Down-like wool, are not on that short list.)

* The Southdown is not on the RBST list, but is on the similar list prepared by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC). The two organizations have different criteria for evaluating populations.

The information released with the new edition of the watchlist notes that some livestock breeds have recently become more vulnerable because of world economic conditions. People who could previously have kept a small flock have had to sell their animals.

I like the format of the new list. It also notes that, over time, the following sheep breeds have progressed from category 1 (critical) to category 5 (minority) and currently have large enough populations to have been discharged from the equivalent of the breed ICU (intensive care unit), at least for now:

• Black Welsh Mountain
• Hebridean
• Jacob
• Kerry Hill
• Lleyn
• Llanwenog
• Ryeland
• Shetland
• Southdown
• South Wales Mountain
• Wiltshire Horn (a hair sheep)

A separate section of the RBST site tracks breeds of sheep that are vulnerable because their populations are concentrated in very limited geographic areas. The categories are based on how small an area contains 75 percent of the breed's population. Breeds at risk for this reason include:

CRITICAL (category 1)

• Exmoor Horn 
• Whiteface Dartmoor

ENDANGERED (category 2)

• Rough Fell

VULNERABLE (category 3)

• Herdwick

AT RISK (category 4)

• Devon Closewool

MINORITY (category 5)

• Devon & Cornwall Longwool

You'll note that the Whiteface Dartmoor and the Devon & Cornwall Longwool face the double whammy of limited overall numbers and high geographic concentration.

Changes among the sheep from the previous list

I need to keep and archive copies of the official lists, marked by the year (the RBST PDF for this year is clearly labeled, but I think that's new). I do have extensive notes, and copies of web pages, and (somewhere) dog-eared copies of pages pulled from old copies of RBST and ALBC publications.

Breeds don't tend to move quickly up or down on either the ALBC or RBST lists: conservation is a slow process. For The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, co-author Carol Ekarius (the livestock person, to my fiber side of the equation) wisely suggested that we provide a label for "conservation breeds" instead of listing specific categories for the individual breeds. That overall status isn't going to change quickly, whereas the breeds' specific locations within the population assessments do move over broad swaths of time.

Handfuls of individuals can make a major difference in a breed's prospects—in either direction. Any shift in status, either up or down, is worth remarking on.

According to my notes, there were two shifts among the sheep from 2010 to 2011.

• Cotswold moved to category 4 (at risk) from category 5 (minority)
• Whitefaced Woodland moved to category 3 (vulnerable) from category 4 (at risk)

These breeds have both moved in the more vulnerable direction, toward lower populations. They are breeds with very deep histories, each located with a specific landscape.

Cotswold

Cotswold, one of the luster longwools, comes from the Cotswold Hills, on the western and southern edge of central England (how's that for a confusing description? check the map for the area I'm talking about). The breed once was a major support of the British economy.

It is a lovely handspinning wool, excellent for knitting and crocheting and exquisite for weaving. The breed contains genetics for a range of shiny fleece colors from black through a variety of grays to glistening whites.

Whitefaced Woodland

Whitefaced Woodland, from sheep with durable constitutions that originated in the southern part of the Pennine mountain range, produces fiber that is quite variable from animal to animal, with some coarser and some relatively finer (although none gets past "medium" in feel). The wool, like their faces, is white.

I knitted the swatch with Aran-weight Whitefaced Woodland yarn from Garthenor (spun at Sue Blacker's mill). The pattern is #107 from Knitting Patterns Book 250 by Hitomi Shida.

_____

P.S.

Sheepwatching notes: Even though its breed is not labeled, and I am (as noted above) a fiber rather than a livestock person, and I'm open to information that might correct my notes, if I had to say what breed is in the photo at the top of the RBST's list I'd sure pick Oxford.

The sheep in the photo is undoubtedly one of the six core Down breeds, because of its colored face and white wool—well, and the general shape of the face. Three of the six core Down breeds are on the current Watchlist (Dorset Down, Oxford Down, Shropshire; a fourth, Southdown, is on the ALBC rare breeds list; Hampshire Down and Suffolk are not on either list). There are other breeds that have colored faces and white wool, but the Down breeds have a kind of characteristic "puffy" look (that's a highly scientific descriptor that I just made up).

It isn't a Dorset Down, because they have lighter colored (generally brownish) faces. (It's not a Dorset Horn, because they have white faces and they also have distinctive horns on both rams and ewes!)

Shropshire is another possibility, and Shropshires' faces are darker than those of Dorset Downs, but they have a somewhat differently shaped profile and growth pattern of wool on the face.

Although not all Oxfords have as much wool on their faces as the sheep in the picture, many do (and some have even more). Plus the face shape is Oxford-y, if I dare say such a thing. Oxfords are sturdy sheep, and they are exceptionally large. Size isn't something we can gauge from that head shot, but we can get hints of posture. And that sheep looks like it's standing in an Oxford pose: sort of upright and staunch. I vote for Oxford.

South Wales Mountain wool (and kemp)

Most of the time fiber folk look for and exclaim over fine, soft wools, with good reason. They're lovely to work with and they feel really good in our hands and when we wear clothing made from them. Merino is by far the most famous of these wools.

What I have been playing with recently are some wools that are the antithesis of Merino. They mix, in varying proportions, the three types of fiber that can be found in a sheep's fleece:

• wool, that familiar stuff (which comes in an array of textures all on its own)
• hair, which is stiff and smooth (think horsehair, or a dog's outer coat)
• kemp, which is bristly and coarse (pig bristles??? only more irregular? like itty bitty white twigs?)

Merinos, and many other highly developed breeds, have only wool in their fleeces.

Hair and kemp show up in the fleeces of sheep that can handle rough weather: storms, cold, damp. (Hair is also predominant in the body coverings of sheep breeds that can tolerate extremes of heat. Those sheep look a lot like goats.)

One of the breeds I've been spinning is South Wales Mountain. It's a big sheep, with a tough, weather-resistant coat.

Another spinner recently asked me whether this breed's wool is medium or long, and I had to answer that it wasn't really either, in the way we normally think about medium or long wools. The word medium could be applied to breeds like Corriedale and Suffolk and many, many others. Medium is a huge category. When we say longwool we tend to mean the English luster (shiny) longwool breeds, like Cotswold, Lincoln, and Leicester Longwool, as well as the more familiar Romney and the relatively unfamiliar Devon & Cornwall Longwool. In all of these cases—both medium and longwools—the fleece consists of wool, with little or no hair or kemp present.

South Wales Mountain is, then, neither medium nor long as those terms are normally understood. It's one of the mountain breeds, which tells us a bit more about it, but still not enough because there's a good deal of variety in that category as well.

South Wales Mountain fleeces are full of kemp. SERIOUSLY full of kemp. In addition, while most kemp is white (and all kemp resists being dyed), South Wales Mountain can have smatterings of red kemp as well.

Here's some of the South Wales Mountain that I've been spinning:

At the bases of the locks, there's a bit of dry scurf or clumping; you can see that in the lock on the left. The easiest way to deal with this is to trim it off, as I've done to the lock on the right.

It's a little hard to see, but the lock is about 50/50 kemp and wool, and the parts are about the same length. I could probably comb the locks and remove the kemp reasonably well, although not perfectly. The process would be tedious and the results questionable. If I tried to card this fiber, I'd end up with an exercise in frustration, with kemp flying all over the place (which it will kind of do no matter what, but this would make it far, far worse) and rolags that would be hard to roll and wouldn't hold their shape and would be misery to draft. Someone else might want to prep these fibers in those ways, and might succeed beautifully at it, but I go both for the path of least resistance and the path that, for me, preserves and ideally highlights the unique character of the breed's fleece.

What I've done isn't something I've seen or learned elsewhere, although I doubt that it's anything new. During spinning, the kemp and wool will tend to draft out at different rates, and my goal is to get them to feed into the twist together, as they are in the lock. So I open out each lock into a kind of rhomboid shape, with a leading edge from which I begin to spin, working my way down the lock and catching a series of tips in progression. As I reach the end of one lock, I add another, similarly prepared.

Kemp resists not only dyeing but twist. The two primary concentration points in spinning this type of fleece are even feeding of the fiber and corralling of the kemp. Some kemp escapes no matter what.

So what's the yarn like?

It's a natural-born novelty yarn, with texture galore. If I dyed this yarn, the kemps would stay whatever color they are (mostly, but not all, white) and the wool context would take the dye's color, increasing the contrast between the types of fiber.

Most South Wales Mountain fleeces become carpet (for us, "rug") yarn. Some can be used in clothing, but not for next-to-the-skin wear! I can easily see a yarn like this used as an accent in a garment, though, used in small amounts at places that won't come in contact with a body. And it could inspire many types of basketry, sculpture, or tapestry constructions . . . all situations that Merino doesn't have the commanding presence to handle.

Saturwoolday

It's shaping up to be a fine day. One of the things I love about wool is its variety, and what's going into the tub today represents quite a range:

There's Castlemilk Moorit, a very rare breed closely related to Shetlands. The provider of this sample apologized for its second cuts (snippets caused by shearing with two passes) and scurf (I'll skip describing scurf at the moment . . . ), but it's a lovely color, with excellent staple length, and will be just fine when washed and processed:

There's Polwarth from the Falkland Islands . . . not all of the sheep from the Falklands are Polwarths, but a quantity worth noting are . . . fine, with really cool crimp (those wavy contours in, in this case, both individual fibers and locks):

And we finally, finally (thanks to the generosity of friends on a couple of continents) have some Herdwick, giving us an opportunity to consider things like kemp (coarse, dye-resistant fibers) and Mrs. Heelis:

And while the wools are soaking in the tub, with their 20-minute demands for attention and changes of cleansing and rinsing solutions, I have THIS to enjoy:

It's Clara Parkes' new The Knitter's Book of Wool. Just arrived. I've glanced. I love Clara's take on the world, and am so glad she wrote this book.

It's shown on some Suffolk fleece I have here . . . I pulled out a lock at the lower right corner of the book, because it's so nice and long for a Suffolk. In the background is a rug I wove many years ago from Pendleton mill ends. I have a lot of rugs made with those mill ends, picked up at a weaving place in Poulsbo, Washington, long, long ago. They are still trucking. Our older dog "digs" in this one every night, making herself a nest to sleep in.

Snowing out. A good day for enjoying a variety of wools in a variety of ways.

If I get the washing done in time, I might even get to spin or knit some.

Suffolk and gray not-Suffolk, revisited

A gray Suffolk fleece would be a curious and remarkable thing indeed. So when I saw "grey Suffolk roving" advertised, I had to order some.

("Gray" is the U.S. spelling; "grey" is the U.K. spelling, and the way the fiber is labeled. I'll try to be consistent in my usage, but I'm not copyediting right now, I'm writing. So.)

Why would natural gray Suffolk wool be so interesting? Suffolks are grown primarily for meat. The wool is a byproduct, sold primarily to a wool pool for industrial processing. Suffolk wool, while it can be truly lovely for handspinning, may not even be mentioned by growers, even those who are aware of wool for the handspinning market.

Non-white fibers are anathema in that marketplace because they reduce the value (low-end in the first place) of the whole batch. Normally a breeder would not want an off-color fiber anywhere near a clip that's intended for a wool pool.

So where might this "grey Suffolk" be coming from, and why?

And why do I care so much? The fiber itself is just fine. It would work great for many applications, including the making of rugs, bags, and other sturdy textiles, and it looks like it's a good candidate for felting.

But people will buy and work with this wool thinking they are getting to know what the Suffolk breed of sheep grows, and they're not. I don't think the misleading information is intentional. I just think the labeling is not accurate and it's being passed along without being questioned.

The not-Suffolk that's labeled Suffolk

I began working with this "grey Suffolk" wool in March, and it was immediately obvious that it wasn't Suffolk. I have some previous posts on the topic. Below is a revisited photo. The gray is the "grey Suffolk," and the white is a bit of real Suffolk that I had about four locks of, for comparison.

Here's a closer look at the fibers: different fiber length and diameter, crimp pattern, everything. Lots of kemp (very coarse fibers) in the gray—another disqualifier for a wool pool.

Sources for this particular fiber on the internet (found by searching "grey Suffolk roving") show photos of what are, indeed, Suffolk sheep. Somebody clearly thinks this wool was grown by Suffolks.

(Rowan has a grey yarn called Suffolk in its Purelife series. Nice-looking yarn. Here's the description: "Rowan British wool is shorn & blended from 4 classic British sheep breeds (Jacob, Black Welsh, Bluefaced Leicester & Suffolk). Then the beautiful undyed wool is spun into 5 natural shades capturing the beauty of each breed's fleece."

The five shades are called Bluefaced Leicester (white), Black Welsh (black), Mid Brown Jacob (brown), Dark Grey Welsh (dark gray), and Steel Grey Suffolk (light gray). For these yarns to work together without having radical texture differences—a consistency question that would be essential for marketing the wools as a line—they have to consist of the same blend, shifted slightly to produce the natural colors, which would be coming from breeds other than the Suffolk. The Suffolk would be used to, among other potential reasons, smooth out the differences between, say, the Jacob and the Black Welsh.

In this case, "Suffolk" is just an identifier given to the marketing color, because they used the name of one of the component breeds for each of the five colors and "Suffolk" was left over at the end of the naming, since Bluefaced Leicester had already been used for the white.)

My concern is that people will buy this roving and spin it thinking they have Suffolk in their hands. NO WAY. The wool may have been grown in Suffolk, but it did not come from sheep of the breed known as Suffolk.

Now, THIS is Suffolk wool

I recently acquired a beautiful sample of Suffolk. I don't think it's from a spinner's flock, but it shows the delightful qualities of Suffolk wool at its best.

The unwashed fibers measure about 5 inches (12.5cm), which is long for a Suffolk (often closer to 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7.5cm), but otherwise the characteristics of this wool—fineness, crimp pattern, and so on—are right on. The length just makes a good wool better. There are no specifications for staple length in the breed standards for U.S. Suffolks (because it's a meat breed).

After washing, the crimp contracted and slightly reduced the apparent (but not actual) fiber length. The tips washed clean. The fiber contained quite a few tiny bits of vegetable matter (VM), but with wool this long and a pair of wool combs VM of this type is not a big deal (two-row St. Blaise Viking combs from The Spinning Studio of Vermont).

Lashed on and ready to comb:

Is this gorgeous, or what? (The top, ready to spin, is up in the locks photo at the beginning of this section.)

On the left, true Suffolk. On the right, might-have-been-grown-there not-Suffolk.

The true Suffolk would make great socks or sweaters. It's on a nice balance point, for wools, between softness and durability. The not-Suffolk surpasses it by miles in durability, but would drive most people crazy if worn next to the skin.

To get a gray true Suffolk, you'd need to add a dyepot to the processing sequence.