ABOUT
ARAN Farms is located in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. We cultivate dappled and colored Boer Goats and enjoy the company of Gotland Sheep and Swedish Flower Hens.
THE RESIDENTS
GOTLAND SHEEP
SWEDISH FLOWER HENS
SOUTH AFRICAN BOER GOATS
The Gotland Sheep is a landrace breed of Northern Short-Tailed sheep. The Vikings took the medium-sized animals on their ships to supply meat, milk and wool. They are a polled (no horns) breed, have fine-grained meat and lusterous wool that falls in ringlets and is much sought after by handspinners. Hardy and curious, they fit in well with our Farm's ideals.
Swedish Flower Hens (or Skånsk blommehöna) are a Scandanavian landrace breed of chicken that was on the edge of extinction in the early 1970's. In 2010, three small villages in Sweden were home to the only individuals and a group of them were imported to the U.S. Since then, Americans have taken to the friendly, robust fowl who are quite efficient egg and meat producers. There is no color standard; instead, they are identifiable by the white tips on their feathers, the better to blend in with the wildflowers on Scandia's windswept plains. We choose to breed the noncresteds for practical and aesthetic reasons.
South African Boer goats are the benchmark for meat goats: medium-sized, sturdy and friendly, they thrive on poor forage and are very low maintenance.
The traditional color pattern is a deep russet head and shoulder cape with an ice-white body, but spotted and dappled combinations are becoming very popular. We have chosen to breed first for correct conformation and disease resistence and then for spectacular dapples and spots with the emphasis on black and white.