Wiltshire Horn

In the 1700s it was the dominant sheep across southern England, with an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 of them in the region. Then the Southdown, the Ryeland and above all the Merino arrived in the 1800s, and the Wiltshire went into decline. It survived because a stubborn few kept their flocks, and producers formed the Wiltshire or Western Sheep Breeders Association on January 13, 1923 to hold the breed together.

Britain exported them to Australia, New Zealand, Kenya, Venezuela, Argentina and France through the 1950s and 1960s. Only the Australian and New Zealand populations grew into large purebred flocks.

In North America the record starts early, a 1624 mention at Plimoth Plantation, but numbers never amounted to much. The sheep here now descend from 1970s imports from Australia, some of which went to Piel Farm in Maine and into the making of the Katahdin, and from a second wave of imports in the 1990s.

Rams weigh about 250 pounds and ewes about 150. The coat is a mix of wool and fine hair that thickens in winter and sheds in spring, so there is no shearing.

Both sexes carry horns; a ram adds one full spiral a year until maturity.

The Conservancy calls temperament variable and rates the breed for intermediate keepers, so meet the flock before you commit.

They are good mothers with high fertility. The horns on both sexes are the handling consideration.

Meat. The traditional English use was mutton; the modern use is a terminal sire over wooled commercial ewes, adding size and hybrid vigor to the lamb crop.

The self-shedding coat is the other argument: it removes shearing from the calendar entirely.

Room for horns in gates, feeders and handling gear, on ewes as well as rams.

Otherwise the list is short: the coat manages itself, and the wedge-shaped body makes for easy births.

The Livestock Conservancy lists the Wiltshire Horn on Watch. It is rare in the United States even as shedding sheep boom, because the boom mostly went to the Katahdin, a breed the Wiltshire helped create.

Its genetics are secure abroad, with large flocks in Australia and New Zealand; the North American population is the thin one.

There is no separate US breed association: The Livestock Conservancy itself provides the only North American registration for the breed, so ask for Conservancy papers.

Ask what the animals actually shed in the seller's climate, and count the gates the horns will pass through before you bid.

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