Christine Williams
Christine has been the main source of information, history and breeding advice about Soay and Boreray Sheep for many years. Her flocks have been bred carefully and have been used to help set up flocks all over the country. She has also rescued the oldest established flock of Soays and continues to breed and register the flock as a separate genetic resource.
Christine runs a large ram flock, where rams are loaned (free of charge) to be used to help other breeders maintain the diversity within the breed. She encourages practices such as keeping ewe lambs with their mothers for the first 18 months which helps to bond the animals and restrict the number of females any one ewe can breed. This encourages genetic variation, with no individual animal being too highly represented in the next generation.
Christine’s work into the origins of the Boreray culminated in a trip to Orkney in 2017, when she was 82 years old, to inspect a flock of previously unregistered animals that had been carefully bred in Scotland since the 1970s.