I would like to give a little information regarding why I don’t mind the color popping up in my St Croix hair sheep flock and why I believe it shouldn’t be a cause for culling in the St Croix world.
If you want to know the expanded history of the St Croix breed, please read my St Croix Hair Sheep History & Characteristics page. One thing to remember, on the Island of St Croix, color does happen. In general color is rare in the breed, but it does pop up now and then. Back when the first sheep were brought to the USA, only white were chosen and only white were considered for their breed standard. Anything born with color was culled or sold for commercial breeding stock (without papers). These were perfectly healthy, and often conformationally correct, animals just being moved on because of color. The St Croix breed doesn’t have a lot of animals in it as compared to many other sheep breeds out there. With that smaller number, perfectly good animals were gotten rid of and, as a result, the gene pool just got smaller.
Now that you have some background, you can see why I might want to keep the colored genetics. I’m not speaking for other flocks, but something I noticed in my flock is that the colored animals have the bigger size and have the fastest growing lambs. From a production standpoint, it’s exactly what I want in my flock. I don’t care if these animals produce more color or only produce white. My goal with the flock is a faster rate of gain from birth to weaning and from weaning to breeding age. Of course I am also paying attention to milk production, mothering, conformation, parasite resistance, etc as well. Again from a production standpoint, lamb carcasses don’t show what color they were in life, but in how they grew.
There are plenty of naysayers out there saying the colored St Croix aren’t pure. Because of this, I participated in a St Croix Genetic Testing Study (click the link to see how we fared). It was the validation I needed in responding to these folks. Another thing you may have noticed is that there are two St Croix organizations. St Croix Hair Sheep International maintains only white sheep without scurs may be registered. St Croix Hair Sheep Breeders allows colors and scurs and is working hard to increase the gene pool of the St Croix Hair Sheep with genetic research. To each their own, but know, because my sheep have color in their background, they cannot be registered with the International association, only with the SCHSB.
I hope this helps clear things up as my stance with having colored St Croix genetics in my flock. I hope it helps my readers understand why there are two schools of thought regarding the St Croix breed standard and they can move forward with a better knowledge base and decide for themselves what they want out of the St Croix breed.
Hollow Hills Ranch 