Polled Dorset

The polled sheep were propagated deliberately, and the Continental Dorset Club registered the first of them in 1956 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.

Australia had arrived at a polled Dorset earlier by a different route, putting Corriedale and Ryeland blood into the Dorset Horn; the American version came from a mutation inside the breed.

They are all white, medium sized, and the ewes are heavy milkers that raise twins well.

What was removed is just the horns. The aseasonal breeding, the milk and the feed conversion carried over intact.

Docile, in the Conservancy's description of the Dorset, and with no horns there is nothing special to build for; they are among the simpler sheep to house and handle.

Heat tolerance is good, another Dorset trait that carried over.

As a ewe breed, mostly: the Polled Dorset ewe milks heavily, raises twins, and takes a terminal sire well. She is the fixed asset, and the lambing date is the variable.

The breed has also served dairy sheep operations, a use the extended season supports.

Feed to the calendar you choose. Two crops a year is a feed and labor commitment, not a breed feature that runs by itself.

Lambing outside spring also means lambing in colder months; housing and labor then are part of the price of the calendar.

The trade is the carcass and the fleece. A Dorset lamb finishes smaller than a Suffolk cross, so the breed earns its place through the ewe and the lambing calendar rather than through terminal growth, and the fleece is medium and unremarkable.

The Continental Dorset Club registers Horned Dorsets, Polled Dorsets and Dorset Advantage in one book; the papers say which an animal is, so read them.

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