Dorset Horn

Here is how that happened. Dorset Horns reached the US around 1860 and were common by the 1880s, with the Continental Dorset Club organized in 1890. Then in the early 1950s a mutation for polledness turned up in four lambs at North Carolina State, and the Polled Dorset was developed from them. Australia had arrived at the same place earlier by putting Corriedale and Ryeland blood into the Dorset Horn.

The Continental Dorset Club registered the first Polled Dorsets in 1956 and put them in the same flock book as the horned sheep. The polled variety took off, and the Dorset became the second most popular sheep breed in the United States.

In Britain the breeders' association organized in 1891, and the Dorset is the only British breed capable of breeding right through the winter, which is the trait everything else about it serves.

White-faced and white-wooled, with the breed's characteristic pink nostrils. The Conservancy puts rams at 225 to 275 pounds and ewes at 150 to 200.

Both sexes are horned: ewes carry light, forward-curving horns, rams heavy spirals. The fleece runs five to nine pounds of medium-grade wool.

Docile, by the Conservancy's description, and rated for novice to intermediate keepers. Heat does not bother them much and they forage well.

The horns are the handling cost. Gates, feeders and handling gear all need to allow for a ram's full spiral.

The trait worth buying either form for is the same: Dorsets breed out of season, convert feed well, and can raise two lamb crops a year.

That calendar is the product: autumn lambs for a spring market, or two crops a year from the same ewes. The breed has also worked as a dairy sheep.

Nothing exotic: they convert feed efficiently and tolerate heat well. The management cost is the calendar you choose; two lamb crops a year only happen if feed and labor keep up with the ewes.

They are sheep for keepers who will use the aseasonal trait. If you lamb once a year in spring like everyone else, you are paying for a switch you never turn on.

It took off at the horned sheep's expense. Polled Dorsets have very nearly eclipsed Dorset Horns, and Dorset Horn registrations are falling sharply. The two have also diverged over time, so they are no longer the same sheep in different headgear.

The Livestock Conservancy lists the Dorset Horn as Threatened, and Britain's Rare Breeds Survival Trust counts only 900 to 1,500 there. The polled variety is safe; the original is not.

The Continental Dorset Club, the breed's US registry since 1890, registers Horned Dorsets, Polled Dorsets and Dorset Advantage in one organization. Papers alone do not settle which you are buying: confirm the animal is registered as a Horned Dorset, not merely bred from Dorsets.

If conservation is part of why you are buying, the horned sheep is the one that needs you; every Dorset Horn registration is now a vote against the trend line.

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