Mr Jefferson’s Bad Sheep

Ever since an importation of Shetland sheep to the US in the 1980s, the breed has grown in popularity and in numbers because of their fine wool and mild-tasting meat. But this importation was not the first arrival of Shetlands in the US.

Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, was very keen on agricultural improvements, and had a particular interest in sheep. He raised Tunis sheep, but was also interested in other breeds. He had heard that the Shetland breed, a small sheep breed from the Shetland Isles north of Scotland, provided a very fine wool which was used for making stockings. When he was offered the chance to import a Shetland ram, he took it.

The Shetland ram had four horns— a trait which no longer exists in Shetlands today. He was put to graze on the White House lawn. And that’s where the problem started.

At the time there was not seen to be any need for security around the White House and so people used to cut across the White House lawn to get to where they were going. The Shetland ram chased people off the White House lawn.

There is a letter still existing from an irate man to President Jefferson, detailing how the ram had attacked him so fiercely that he was confined to bed for two weeks. There are even reports that the ram killed a small boy, but if so it could not have been a particularly important small boy since no report of an outcry over this existed.

In spite of his bad behavior, the Shetland ram went home to Monticello with Jefferson after his presidency ended. Jefferson was beginning to regret buying the sheep, not because of the attacks, but because the sheep sired by the ram did not have the kind of fine wool he expected. He concluded the ram would not be able to improve the fleeces of America’s sheep.

The last straw came when the Shetland ram broke out of his pen and into that of some Tunis rams, and started a fight that left the Tunis rams dead. Jefferson had had enough, the ram was destroyed. But not before making his mark on American sheep history, as well as leaving some marks on Americans.

Today the Shetland is known as a small, friendly breed of sheep. But ask any Shetland breeder and you will hear tales of Shetland rams behaving badly— destroying pens, attacking other rams, and butting their owners. One Shetland breeder has suggested the only housing tough enough to hold a Shetland ram is a decommissioned bomb shelter.  And these are quite small sheep— the smallest of the British sheep breeds.

My own experience of Shetland rams have included holes punched into their shelter, fences torn down so the rams could get to female goats, murderous assaults on much taller rams and buck goats and numerous instances of being butted. The Shetland ram today may possess only two horns instead of four, but in the area of sheep behaving badly, they do the Jeffersonian Shetland ram proud.