Boreray (sheep)
A Boreray ram.
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| Conservation status | Critical |
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| Country of origin | Scotland |
| Distribution | Scotland |
| Use | Conservation Grazing, Meat, Wool |
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| Horn status | Horned |
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The Boreray is a breed of sheep originating on the St Kilda archipelago off the west coast of Scotland and surviving as a feral animal on one of the islands, Boreray.
The breed, also known as the Boreray Blackface or Hebridean Blackface, was once reared for meat and wool, but is now used mainly for conservation grazing. The Boreray is one of the Northern European short-tailed sheep group of breeds.
It is the rarest breed of sheep in the United Kingdom. It is the only breed classed as "Category 2: Endangered" by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, because fewer than 300-500 are known to exist.
Several types of sheep have been associated with St Kilda. In addition to the Boreray, these include the Soay sheep, a feral type from Soay (one of the other islands in the St Kilda archipelago), and the Hebridean sheep, which was formerly called the "St Kilda sheep", although the sheep it was derived from were probably not in fact from St Kilda itself.
Until the late eighteenth century, the domesticated sheep throughout the Scottish Highlands and Islands belonged to a type called the Scottish Dunface or Old Scottish Shortwool, which was probably similar to the sheep kept in the whole of northern and western Europe up to the Iron Age. A local variety of Dunface was kept on the two main St Kilda islands of Boreray and Hirta by the crofters of the islands, who lived on Hirta, the largest island of the archipelago. Modern breeds descended from the Dunface include the Boreray and also the North Ronaldsay and the Shetland.
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