Cheviot

The Cheviot takes its name from the hills on the border between England and Scotland, and Oklahoma State University's breed profile records it as recognized for hardiness as early as 1372. Raised for generations on those hills, rarely seeing the inside of a barn, it became in the American Cheviot Sheep Society's words the hardiest of the medium-wool breeds.

The society says the modern breed was produced by selection rather than by crossing. Cheviots came to the United States from Scotland in 1838 and to Australia in 1938. The American Cheviot Sheep Society in its present form was incorporated in New York in 1924, succeeding a dissolved earlier society of the same name.

They have a clean white face and legs with no wool on either, erect ears, and a bare head. They are usually polled. Ewes run about 120 lb and rams about 200, small enough to live on a hill and big enough to raise a market lamb.

The fleece is a distinctive, resilient wool with a helical crimp that spinners and carpet makers both want.

Flighty is the honest word. They are harder to handle than a down breed, quick on their feet, and they will test fencing. That is hill survival equipment, not bad breeding.

They lamb unassisted with unusual reliability, and Cheviot lambs are up and moving fast, which is what survival on an open hill requires.

A maternal and hill breed rather than a terminal one: self-reliant ewes that lamb alone on rough ground and raise what they drop. The wool is the second product, with its crimp giving it a market in both handspinning and carpets.

Fencing you actually trust, first. Beyond that, less than most: the breed was built on open hill grazing and keeps itself. Their needs rise the softer the system gets, not the harder.

The trade is temperament and size. They are flighty, the carcass is moderate, and the value is in the ewe's self-sufficiency rather than the lamb's growth curve. Buy them for a low-intervention flock, not a feedlot.

Registration runs through the American Cheviot Sheep Society. Walk the seller's fences before you commit; if theirs are casual and the sheep are still in, that tells you something useful.

Recent sale prices on HoofnHorn, where there are any, are further down this page.