Rambouillet

American imports ran from 1840 to 1860 out of France, with more stock arriving from Germany between 1882 and 1900. The Rambouillet Association was founded in 1889 at Ionia, Michigan, by the Townsends, and the breed then did its great American work: by one 1989 estimate, half the sheep on the US western ranges carry some Rambouillet blood.

What came out is a larger, harder sheep than the Spanish original, the largest of all the fine-wool breeds: ewes run about 145 to 175 lb and rams 200 to 300. Ewes are polled; rams may be horned or polled.

The fleece is fine wool at 19 to 24 microns, 10 to 15 lb greasy from a ewe with a 60 to 100 mm staple. They are white, large framed, and will breed out of season, which is unusual in a fine-wool breed.

The American Rambouillet Sheep Breeders Association lists an instinct to band together in open areas among the breed's traits, and calls them easy to handle in yards, chutes and sorting facilities. Ewes are good milkers with a strong maternal instinct.

The standard asks for an alert, active sheep. Rams can be horned or polled; the association says the choice is a preference and that the two perform the same, and where horns are kept, the standard wants wide spirals that do not crowd the neck and jaw.

Fine wool with a usable lamb behind it, and foundation genetics: Rambouillet blood underlies most western American range flocks and several of the station-bred breeds, the Columbia, Polypay and Debouillet among them.

The trade is the wool itself. Fine wool means dense fleece and skin folds in some lines, which means more shearing skill, more attention to fly strike, and a fleece whose value depends heavily on how carefully it was handled at shearing.

Ask about the line's skin: smooth-bodied sheep shear faster and strike less than wrinkled ones, and the difference is bred, not managed. Ask too whether rams in the line are horned or polled, because both occur and it changes your handling gear.

Registration runs through the American Rambouillet Sheep Breeders Association, whose book goes back to 1889. Fine wool only pays when the clip is skirted and handled properly, so ask what the seller's wool has actually been selling for.

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