Lincoln

The longwools may descend from white-fleeced sheep the Romans landed in Britain. A longwool sheep is drawn in the Luttrell Psalter, made in Lincolnshire between 1320 and 1340, and a curly-fleeced sheep appears on a brass memorial in a Gloucestershire church around 1460.

The breeding history runs in a circle. In the 1700s Robert Bakewell used the old Lincoln to help create his new Leicester. Lincolnshire breeders then took rams from Bakewell's improved Leicesters and put them back over old coarse-wool Lincoln ewes, selecting the offspring for earlier maturity and better meat. That produced the improved Lincoln.

It came to public notice in the mid-1800s when the Royal Show added classes for it. Wool was worth a great deal then, and a pen of these very large, very dignified sheep made an impression. In the late 1800s Lincolns were exported in large numbers to Ireland, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada and Brazil; they had reached the US by around 1800, and the National Lincoln Sheep Breeders Association was founded in 1891.

The largest of the luster longwools: rams run 225 to 300 lb and ewes average 210, on a deep, rectangular body with a wide head, an open face and a forelock. Both sexes are polled, with black hooves and blue-skinned ears.

The fleece is what the breed is for. It grows about twelve inches a year, hangs in long, wavy locks, and shears at 12 to 16 lb a head. White is standard and colored sheep run gray, silver, charcoal and black; the American association keeps separate flock books for white and colored.

Docile and low maintenance, with resistance to many common sheep parasites. The ewes lamb easily, mother well, and often produce twins or triplets.

The pace is the thing to adjust to: rams mature at about two years and ewes at about a year and a half, which is slow next to any commercial breed.

Wool for the handspinning and specialty markets, where the long lustrous locks are the product, and meat from a very large frame. Historically the Lincoln's biggest job was improving other breeds; Lincoln rams are half the foundation of the Columbia, developed by the USDA from 1912.

Good nutrition, honestly supplied: the Conservancy is direct that they require it to perform. They do best in cool climates, and a heavy year-round fleece is a liability in a hot, wet one.

Expect a slow-maturing animal, and budget the extra months of feed that implies. An annual shearing is a given; with twelve inches of growth a year, some flocks shear twice.

Threatened on The Livestock Conservancy's Conservation Priority List, and rare everywhere the breed exists. Britain was down to fewer than 1,000 purebred ewes by 1980; the Conservancy's current estimate is around 1,500 there, while Wikipedia's 2024 UK count records 675 ewes with 251 in the herdbook. Substantial commercial populations survive mainly in Argentina and New Zealand.

Registration runs through the National Lincoln Sheep Breeders Association, and the white and colored books are separate, so know which book the animal is in before you plan a breeding program around it.

Buy the fleece market before you buy the sheep: a Lincoln pays through 12 to 16 lb of specialty wool a year, and that only works if someone is buying it. Then check your climate and your feed, because this is a big, slow-finishing animal built for cool country and good grass.

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