14 DAY TRIAL // A rare goat-sheep hybrid has been bred by an Irish farmer called Paddy Murphy, who says the “geep” (or “shoat”) was born healthy and is thriving ever since.
The unusual cross between a goat and a sheep was born two weeks ago on Murphy's farm in Ballymore Eustace, County Kildare. The farmer thinks the rare lamb is the result of a male goat mating one of his Cheviot ewes.
Despite widespread shared pasturing of goats and sheep, hybrids are very rare because of the genetic distance between the two species, and usually result in stillborns.
But Murphy's geep seems to do just fine, and the farmer hopes to look after it for as long as possible.
“He's absolutely thriving. He's running around a lot quicker than the other lambs which were born. He has much longer legs,” Mr. Murphy said. “The ewe has taken to him like he's just another lamb. There's no difference in how he's been reared.”
According to The Guardian, Murphy delivered the animal late at night and didn't observe its unusual characteristics, but the following morning realized that it was a bit different.
“I only have white-faced Cheviot sheep, and when this one came out it was black. That sometimes happens. But the next morning I said to myself this isn't a lamb at all, it's more like a goat,” he said.
The geep has sparked a lot of interest among locals, and a video of the rare animal posted on YouTube by the Irish Farmers Journal has quickly gone viral, with nearly 63,000 hits. After seeing that his unusual lamb was receiving a lot of attention, Murphy decided to launch a charity competition to find a name for the animal. Through this competition, he is hoping to raise money for a sick child in the village.
The man, who also owns a village pub in Ballymore Eustace, said he noticed a goat mating with one of his sheep on the mountainside, but he didn't think the mating would actually result in a lamb.
Although he is not interested in the scientific part of the cross-breed, he says that all experts who want to come to his farm to analyze the rare creature are welcome.
Similar crossings have been reported before in Chile, Jamaica, New Zealand and Botswana. After performing chromosomal investigations, scientists found that a hybrid had 57 chromosomes, a number in between that of sheep and goats.
