Polypay

The crosses began in 1968, pairing Finnsheep with Rambouillet and Dorset with Targhee, and the four-way composites were complete by 1970. The American Polypay Sheep Association followed in 1980; its registry has recorded around 14,000 animals, and the breed has been enrolled in the National Sheep Improvement Program since 1987, which makes it one of the better-documented breeds in the country.

They are white, polled, and moderate in size, with a medium fleece. Ewes run 150 to 200 lb and rams 240 to 300, with a clip of around 9 lb a year.

The performance traits are the breed: ewes that lamb at a year old, breed out of season, carry large litters and milk well.

The American Polypay Sheep Association writes a good disposition into its bylaws as a breed goal, alongside fertility, carcass quality, fleece quality, functional conformation and hardiness.

The mothering was built in. The Dorset went into the four-breed cross for its superior mothering ability, and the aim from the start was a more prolific, better milking and mothering sheep. Oklahoma State University notes that Polypays have proved adaptable to operations from range flocks to farm flocks.

What it produces is prolificacy. Polypay ewes lamb young, carry large litters, and will breed out of season, which makes accelerated lambing systems possible: three lamb crops in two years rather than one a year.

The trade is that prolificacy is only an asset if you can manage it. Triplets and quadruplets mean supplementing lambs, more labor at lambing, and a ewe under real nutritional pressure. Run a Polypay flock the way you would run a single-lambing flock and the extra lambs will not survive.

This is one of the few breeds where you can reasonably demand numbers. Polypay breeders have run National Sheep Improvement Program records since 1987, so ask for the data on lambing rate and maternal traits, not just the papers.

Registration runs through the American Polypay Sheep Association. Then be honest about your own labor at lambing time, because the breed's output is set up to exceed a casual system's capacity.

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