Border Leicester

No one knows when the first Border Leicesters reached North America. An American Leicester Breeders Association was established in 1888, and the 1920 census counted 767 purebred Border Leicesters in the United States. The American Border Leicester Association, which keeps the registry today, was established in 1973.

In Australia and New Zealand the same crossing pattern took hold as in Britain, with Border Leicester rams over Merino ewes breeding the first-cross mothers prized for prime lamb production.

They are tall, upright, and unmistakable: a clean white head with no wool at all, a Roman nose, and large erect ears. The fleece is long, lustrous longwool that hangs in locks and is prized by handspinners.

Wikipedia's figures run big: rams 309 to 386 pounds and ewes 200 to 260. The wool is 32 to 38 microns, shorn twice a year at around four inches of growth, the breed is polled, and all strains are noted for docility.

Generally calm and easy to handle, says the American Border Leicester Association, even though they are very aware of their surroundings. It singles out the rams: even they are typically well behaved.

Stock dog handlers use them. The association's breed literature quotes handlers who want sheep that are neither flighty nor defensive and that herd well, and a Utah State University sheep specialist who ran Border Leicester rams with a range band recalls that they stayed sound under hard trailing and herded well with stock dogs.

Their main commercial use is as a crossing sire on hill ewes. The Border Leicester cross produces the mule ewe, the backbone of British lowland sheep production, adding size, milk and prolificacy.

In the United States the breed is kept more for fleece and for breeding crossbred ewes than for meat.

Less feed than many breeds. The association describes them as hardy, good foragers that get along on less feed than many other breeds.

Shearing once or twice a year, since the wool grows long enough for either. The head and legs carry no wool, which the association says makes them an easy breed to shear.

The trade is that they are a crossing breed rather than an end product. Purebred Border Leicester lambs do not finish as well as a terminal cross.

The American Border Leicester Association registers the breed. Decide which of its two products you are buying, fleece or crossbred daughters, and ask for wool records or lambing records accordingly.

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