Is it a shoat or a geep? That's the question being asked by publican and farmer Paddy Murphy after one of his sheep mated with a goat and gave birth to the result two weeks ago.
He said the furry little creature was much more nimble on his feet than a typical lamb and the buds of his horns could already be felt. “He’s fast like a deer. You’d have to put him in a pen to catch him.”
Mr Murphy, from Ballymore Eustace, Co Kildare had noticed the errant goat among his flock on the mountainside five months ago but didn't think it was possible for goats and sheep to successfully mate. Then the offspring was born and he immediately noticed the difference between it and a nomal lamb.
After the Farmers' Journal posted a video of the creature on YouTube yesterday, it quickly went viral among customers in Murphy's pub.
"I'm told this is most unusual," he said. Although they look similar, goats and sheep belong to a different genus and a cross is very rare. Sheep have 54 chromososm while goats have 60. Matings do occur, but the offspring is ususally stillborn. The most famous case happeneed in Botswana in when a female goat and a ram mated. Scientists found that the offspring had 57 chromosomes and it became known as the Toast of Botswana.
However, the lamb/kid hybrid had an overactive libido and the farmer had to castrate him at ten months because he had become such a a nuisance to goats and sheep.
