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The Shetland is a small, wool-producing breed of sheep originating in the Shetland Isles, Scotland, but is now also kept in many other parts of the world. It is part of the Northern European short-tailed sheep group, and it is closely related to the extinct Scottish Dunface. Shetlands are classified as a landrace or "unimproved" breed. [1]
A group of three Hebridean sheep rams from the Weatherwax Flock. The sheep kept throughout Britain up to the Iron Age were small, short-tailed, and varied in colour. These survived into the 19th century in the Highlands and Islands as the Scottish Dunface, which had various local varieties, most of which are now extinct (some do survive, such as the Shetland and North Ronaldsay).
[31]: 69 [32] Lowland shepherds imported to work the new sheep farms were subject to intimidating letters and maiming or theft of the sheep. More than 1,500 sheep were stolen on the Sutherland estate in a single year in the early 19th century. [31]: 68 Many forms of resistance were practised under the table, such as poaching. [33]
The recorded history of Scotland begins with the arrival of the Roman Empire in the 1st century, when the province of Britannia reached as far north as the Antonine Wall. North of this was Caledonia, inhabited by the Picti, whose uprisings forced Rome's legions back to Hadrian's Wall.
The Dunface sheep kept as domestic livestock in the St Kilda archipelago were mixed to some extent with Scottish Blackface sheep in the late 19th century, and survive as the Boreray (the other sheep of St Kilda is the feral Soay, which is a survivor of an even earlier short-tailed type of sheep and is not derived from the Dunface).
The origins of the breed are uncertain. It originated south of the Anglo-Scottish border, and did not arrive in the Highlands of Scotland until the second half of the eighteenth century. [4]: 157 It replaced the earlier Scottish Dun-face or Old Scottish Shortwool, a Northern European short-tailed sheep type probably similar to the modern Shetland.
The history of agriculture in Scotland includes all forms of farm production in the modern boundaries of Scotland, from the prehistoric era to the present day. Scotland's good arable and pastoral land is found mostly in the south and east of the country.
Sheep shearers, Flanders, from the Grimani Breviary c. 1510 "Valach" from Brumov in Moravian Wallachia, 1787.Shepherding was a traditional occupation of Romanians, and as they colonised the northern Carpathian range and eventually assimilated, their exonym "Valach" became synonymous with "shepherd".