The Orcadian Features - New life on North Ronaldsay

Famous flock led to lecturer's new life on North Ronaldsay
By Margaret Carr
(Story dated: Thursday, November 18)

A vegetarian Manchester academic is not a typical member of the North Ronaldsay sheep court, but Dr June Morris was made a member in 2000, four years before she moved to the island.

A biochemist, Dr Morris is officially the scientific advisor to the sheep court, the group which oversees the management of the North Ronaldsay sheep flock.

“It’s the greatest honour I could expect,” she said.

On retiring from her job as senior lecturer in biological science at Manchester Metropolitan University, she moved from Derbyshire to settle at Howar in July, bringing with her a flock of North Ronaldsay sheep to repatriate, and her flock of Ouessant sheep, the smallest breed in the world.

Unlike the rest of the North Ronaldsay sheep, June’s don’t roam the shoreline foraging for seaweed.

They don’t need to. June fetches seaweed for them.

They also get bowls of grated sugar beet soaked with warm water and other special feed.

These sheep are spoiled for a reason, though. Some are 18 years old, missing teeth and occasionally suffering from arthritis.

The average lifespan of a sheep is variously given as 12 to 15 years, but most farmed sheep don’t get to seven before being culled.

Looking after elderly sheep has its own problems. Most vets have never dealt with sheep of an advanced age, so June has to find her own solutions to some of their problems.

Those who need it have their food supplemented and rehydration liquid is always on hand.

June first heard about North Ronaldsay sheep in 1988. She had bought land adjacent to her house in Derbyshire, planning to extend the garden.

It was suggested she get sheep to help keep down the grass.

“I didn’t know anything about sheep in those days, so I asked a vet where I could get some.

“One of their clients had these little North Ronaldsay sheep which were said to be ideal for handling.

“I eventually managed to buy two from someone in Cheshire and came up to see where the breed came from.

“Then I just kept coming back and back.

“I very quickly got this immense interest in them.

“I always wanted to move here, from first coming here, not just because of the sheep interest, but because I felt it was just somewhere I wanted to be.”

June discovered that when the sheep had twins, one was usually disposed of, partly in an effort to avoid overpopulation and partly because the seaweed diet made it difficult for a ewe to feed more than one lamb.

So she began to take unwanted lambs back to Derbyshire, taking two days to complete the journey and stopping to feed the lambs every four hours.

These were the smallest of the twins, often weighing under two kilograms.

For a biochemist specialising in plant toxins, the North Ronaldsay sheep held extra interest because of their extreme sensitivity to copper.

Moving a North Ronaldsay sheep on to ordinary pasture can kill it.

June explained that this was because of the breed’s adaptation to a diet of seaweed.

Sheep need small amounts of copper to survive, but other substances present in seaweed make it difficult for the sheep to metabolise very much copper from this source.

So North Ronaldsay’s sheep have adapted by storing up copper in their livers.

If they then move to eating food where the copper is more available, the copper poisons them, resulting in their red blood cells bursting.

If urgent action is not taken to treat the sheep, death results.

This can even happen on pasture which has what would normally be considered low levels of copper.

So June developed an academic interest in how to keep the sheep on pasture.

Teaching students about plant poisons and drugs, she often used the North Ronaldsay sheep as examples in her work.

“There was not a student who went through who did not know about North Ronaldsay sheep.”

June believes sheep like to be treated as individuals and she likes to make each one feel special.

“That’s the way to win with students, too.

“I think every one of my sheep thinks that I’m their own personal human.

Each of her sheep has a name and she knows its character.

For example, Gretchen opens and undoes things. She is a shoelace specialist and very good at undoing the twine which farmers often use to fasten gates.

At June’s previous home, Gretchen taught herself how to open doors. June would come home to find two sheep on the sofa — Gretchen always took a friend.

Keero weighed less than a kilogram when she was picked up from the shoreline about 16 years ago. Her white twin brother was twice her size. Keero now believes she’s the leader of the flock and shoves the others out of the way.

Tangle was bought as a tiny lamb and both she and her mother went back to Derbyshire with June. She is one of the oldest in the flock.

As well as these individuals, June’s 76 acres at Howar includes what she calls a reserve flock.

Sixty of the island’s ewes are being kept off the shore this year, meaning they won’t breed and the numbers will be kept under control.

Some will be interchanged with sheep from the shore each year, making sure there is new blood going into the breeding stock.

“They will be a source of wool for the lighthouse woollen mill project, and they’re keeping my land nice too. It’s very sandy and sheep always improve land.”

She makes no apologies for giving them extra treats.

“I like my animals to be happy animals.

“They should have something to look forward to.”

It also makes it easier if the sheep have to be caught.

June believes that by getting to know her flock she is more likely to notice when one is unwell or injured.

Her North Ronaldsay sheep run with Ouessant sheep.

One of the smallest breeds in the world, these are also known as miniature Breton sheep.

June also used to have Wensleydale sheep, a tall breed with long ringlets, and Soay, a small ancient breed which survives on Hirta in the St Kilda group of islands.

She believes that old breeds survived for a reason.

The Ouessant sheep survived because the nobility liked them and they were kept as decorative lawnmowers around their chateaux. The sheep’s tiny hooves and their light weight meant they could graze lawns without damaging the turf.

The North Ronaldsay breed survived because they were forced on to the shore so the valuable grassland could be used for cattle and domesticated sheep breeds. The seaweed could support the native sheep and that gave extra income to the farmers above what the fields could support.

She believes the current plan to genotype all sheep and remove those that are susceptible to scrapie will ruin the breed.

“It’s survived for this long because there hasn’t been selective breeding.”

The North Ronaldsay sheep still have the mix of colours and horned, scurred and polled animals which was described hundreds of years ago.

Individual farmers might have favoured selecting colours which they liked, but generally the breed has not changed.

“Old breeds should be described, not selected,” is one of June’s favourite quotations.

She thinks they should be described as “heritage sheep” rather than old breeds and should not be changed.

Nobody knows quite how far back the breed goes, but excavations of the Broch of Burrian in North Ronaldsay revealed many spinning whorls, long-handled combs and rubbing bones, suggesting wool was important there in pre-Viking times.

Two studies have been done into the origins of the sheep, using DNA analysis. Unfortunately, neither has made it to publication.

June’s knowledge of sheep has now taken her around the world.

She presented papers at the fifth world congress on coloured sheep in Australia in 1999 and last year went with other North Ronaldsay and some Shetland folk to a conference in Norway.

The sixth world congress is being held in New Zealand this week. June has prepared a paper for it, but that will be presented in her absence.

“I always said that when the sheep arrived I would be here to stay.”

And now that the sheep are “home”, June has not been further than Kirkwall.

Breed was considered obstacle to agricultural improvement

In 1856 the “primaeval natives of the North”, the North Ronaldsay sheep, were listed as one of the obstacles to agricultural improvement.

Just three years earlier, the Laird of North Ronaldsay had reminded his tenants that only wild sheep were to be kept on the island.

Dr June Morris’s interest in the North Ronaldsay sheep led her to spend hours researching the breed, trying to find out more about its history and whether or not the sheep had changed over the years.

On each of her visits to Orkney she would spend at least a day in the library, hunting down old references.

As early as 1693, the lug marks to be used to identify the owners were detailed. Sheep without the proper lug marks were to have their ears cut off.

Dyke leapers would also have their ears cut off after April 1 each year, as would sheep kept in excess of the number allowed for each tenant.

The colours apparent in the sheep today were found listed in the records of the early 1700s. “Tanay”, or brown, was less common and these animals were considered to survive less well.

In the past, the sheep were rooed, or plucked, and June suggests selection would have been in favour of those colours in which the fleece rose and could be removed more easily.

Black sheep did not roo or shear easily and were said to lay down less fat, so selection was probably against these.

The Orkney native sheep’s “wild” reputation goes back a long way.

In 1701, John Brand wrote that he had been told a man would rather labour land over again than take the sheep for washing and shearing.

In 1886 the sheep’s wild nature was used as the defence in a court case.

A man was charged with cruelty for carrying sheep from Stronsay to Kirkwall with their legs tied. His defence was that they were wild sheep from Auskerry and they would have been overboard in half a minute or over the hill like hares if not tied.

The sheep had a reputation of finding ways to get over six-foot walls, including jumping on to the backs of other sheep to clear the dyke. These loupers were killed.

In the past, lambing was done on the shore and then the sheep were brought inside the dyke. Today, the ewes are brought in before lambing.

In 1693 it was recorded that most ewes had twins, or sometimes more.

The sheep show a preference for dulse, the red seaweed Palmaria palmata, followed by the kelps and the wracks.

Because there is more seaweed on the shore after winter storms, North Ronaldsay sheep have traditionally been in better condition in midwinter, which probably led to the tradition of slaughtering a Yule ewe.

The sheep don’t stick to seaweed, but also bite the legs off dead birds. In 1938, R. M. Lockley said birds attracted to the lighthouse light would crash to the ground and have their legs and feet eaten.

Korean scientists have studied the effect of alginic acid’s anti-ageing properties. This acid is found in seaweed and might help account for the breed’s longevity.