Shropshire

Black-faced sheep were being described in that part of England as far back as 1341. In 1792 the Royal Agricultural Society counted around 10,000 native Morse Common sheep there, small horned animals with black, brown or spotted faces and unusually good wool, which the report called the pride and boast of Shropshire.

The modern breed was built on those natives. Southdown blood is credited with taking the horns off, and Cotswold and Leicester with lengthening and thickening the fleece. The name Shropshire was adopted in 1848, and the Royal Agricultural Society recognized it as a distinct breed in 1859. The British breed association followed in 1882.

The first American import landed in Virginia in 1855, and the quality was good enough that imports came frequently, sometimes in large numbers, for the next thirty years. The American Record Association, now the American Shropshire Registry, was founded in 1884. Up to the 1930s this was one of the most popular and influential sheep breeds in the country, particularly across the northern states.

A medium-sized, polled sheep. The Livestock Conservancy puts rams at 225 to 250 lb and ewes at 150 to 180; Wikipedia's heritage standard runs a little lighter, rams 180 to 240 and ewes 140 to 200. The white wool sits over cherry-colored skin, with a dark brown to black face and legs and a straight or slightly dished face.

The fleece is dense medium wool, 24.5 to 33 microns with a staple of 2.5 to 4 inches, free of dark fiber.

Docile and calm, and the Conservancy says the quiet part plainly: they make good youth-project sheep and can even make good pets. Ewes are attentive mothers, lamb easily, and raise one to two lambs a year.

Meat is the modern job, on a frame that was built as a true dual-purpose animal. The wool is a solid medium clip. There is also a working niche the breed owns outright: Shropshires are the one breed documented to graze Christmas tree plantations without nibbling the conifers.

Ordinary pasture. They are feed-efficient, easy keepers that need little supplementation, and the practical warning runs the other way: take care not to overfeed them.

Watch status on the Conservation Priority List. The nuance is that the old-style, production-type Shropshire is what is rare; a taller modern show type is popular with 4-H exhibitors, and the two have drifted apart.

Ask which type you are looking at. A traditional Shropshire and a modern show-ring Shropshire are registered in the same book but bred toward different ends, and the conservation case belongs to the traditional type.

The American Shropshire Registry Association has kept the book since 1884, so pedigrees run deep; ask for them, and for lambing records.

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