New Leicester
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The New Leicester , also English Leicester , Leicester , Bakewell Leicester , Dishley Leicester , Improved Leicester or Leicester Longwool , is a breed of sheep . The broad and strong sheep forms a long, curly hair and has a good flesh attachment. Very rare today, the breed was historically influential. The breed of sheep, which was bred from around 1760, emerged at the turning point in the development from medieval sheep farming, which was mainly based on the quantity and quality of wool, to modern sheep breeding, which mainly breeds on meat. Almost all modern meat breeds have the New Leicester among their ancestors. That's why it became known under the nickname The Great Improver.
Crucial for the development of the New Leicester were new breeding methods in which, for example, rams and female sheep were consistently separated and only brought together for breeding, on the other hand, that their breeder broke the centuries-old inbreeding taboo in animal breeding and also grandparents, parents and children had common offspring produced if it served the breeding goal. On the other hand, the New Leicester emerged at the time of the looming industrial revolution , when, within a short period of time, there was great commercial demand from the new workers for quantities of cheaply produced meat. As of 2016, only a few hundred examples of the sheep breed are still living in the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand.
properties
The New Leicester is a sturdy sheep with short legs and an almost straight back. The ribs are clearly pronounced. The head is small and strong, the neck short and strong. The sheep have wool on their heads and individual hairs on their faces. The long, heavy, coarse wool grows in a spiral and is around 200 to 250 millimeters long. Shearing a sheep normally produces around five to seven kilograms of wool, and the yield can reach up to nine kilograms for a sheep. Their abundant meat is comparatively coarse-grained, well-grown and rich in fat. Bucks can weigh up to 150 kg, female sheep up to 100 kg. While sheep were raised mainly for a white color in the past centuries, black wool has also been permitted in the United Kingdom since 1986. The feet are definitely dark, the legs are hairy, the back parts of the legs are usually even provided with wool.
history
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Starting position
The New Leicester was introduced and made famous by Robert Bakewell from Dishley Grange in Leicestershire . It is not possible to trace who exactly first had the idea of breeding. Presumably Joseph Allom also played an important role. Allom had started out in agriculture as a farm hand and worked his way up to a sheep farmer. He probably started his breeding with the Leicester Longwool herd from Stock of Godeby near Melton Mowbray ( Old Leicester and New Leicester are sometimes referred to collectively in the literature as Leicester Longwool, mostly this term is only used for the older type).
When Bakewell began breeding in the late 18th century, sheep farming differed little from the form that was common in the Middle Ages. Certain breeds were not known, rather locally or regionally specific, site-adapted variants of sheep had developed, which are now known as land races . Sheep were primarily bred for their wool, meat was only a secondary product. Sheep were only slaughtered when they neared the natural end of life, as it was considered a waste to slaughter a young sheep and thus stop producing wool. Bakewell - impressed by the technical achievements of the time and confronted with a market that placed increasingly less emphasis on wool and more on meat - began a scientific breeding program that was revolutionary for its time.
Bakewell kept his breeding methods a secret and was careful not to give even close friends as much information as possible about how he bred which sheep. So there was always the assumption that Bakewell also used Lincoln sheep for breeding, but today it is considered certain that he used the faster growing Old Leicester. Presumably he crossed this with other types of sheep - Bakewell never made these types public and speculations over the centuries have suspected almost all traditional, stronger English sheep without being able to prove this. Bakewell and his unknown predecessors crossed the New Leicester from Old Leicester, a traditional type of sheep of the English south with long lush wool. The Old Leicester had a slim, irregular build, took a comparatively long time to grow, and consumed comparatively little food. Once popular, the Old Leicester had been displaced in large parts of England by the Lincoln sheep, which was very similar to the Old Leicester, but a little heavier and produced a little more wool. In Bakewell's time, the Old Leicester was only commercially produced in a few areas with particular inertia.
breed
Bakewell tried to breed a sheep from it that was on the one hand quickly grown and on the other hand had as few body parts as possible that were not suitable for food, i.e. H. above all, it should have as little bone mass as possible. Bakewell has a tradition of saying that anything that is not meat is useless. Bakewell also noticed that it is not the largest sheep that provide the most meat, but that smaller animals grow faster and more smaller sheep can be raised in the same area.
Bakewell broke new ground in breeding. So he disregarded the centuries-old taboo against inbreeding and crossed fathers and daughters and mothers and sons without hesitation if they had the desired characteristics. He had little inhibitions about immediately killing unsuitable offspring until the desired results of a cross were achieved. Bakewell was influential enough in his methods and spectacular results that his breeding methodology had become generally accepted by the late 18th century. In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin used Bakewell's sheep as an example of the variation that can arise in inheritance through targeted breeding.
In just a few decades, Bakewell was able to turn this type into a fast-growing, hornless sheep with short legs, a barrel-shaped body and a better meat-to-bone ratio. Other newly bred sheep became heavier overall and produced more meat, but took significantly longer to do so. While the old Leicester Longwool took four years to have enough meat for slaughter, the New Leicester only took two years. Bakewell also succeeded in breeding the sheep in such a way that the offspring of two New Leicester sheep were again sheep of the same type and did not have any different characteristics of the Old Leicester.
The traditional keepers of Old Leicester complained that Bakewell's attempts at breeding were ruining their sheep's most valuable traits - and especially its wool. The wool was of poor quality and the sheep also carried less of it. A criticism that Bakewell agreed with in terms of content, but justified it with his focus on meat production. Other critics complained that the meat was coarse-grained and not tender, that its broad structure made lambing difficult and that the sheep put more meat on the front - the places where the coarser and less popular meat was - than on the back. Bakewell replied that poor people in England had such a great demand for meat that every gram was a gain and would pay off for the breeder. In addition, the sheep had to be slaughtered after two years, because in the third year it already accumulated so much fat that the meat was difficult to process and sell.
distribution
While this poor quality of the meat ensured that the New Leicester never really caught on, it established itself in breeding. Bakewell was one of the first - if not the first - to not sell rams but to lend them to other farmers for breeding. Not only did this bring him money, but above all it made it possible for Bakewell to observe and evaluate his rams and their breeding results under different environmental conditions and with various other types of shank. While in the 1760s he only took a nominal contribution for borrowing the bucks - in 1760 he only asked 16 shillings for a buck for a whole season - he was able to increase prices and income to considerable sums up to the 1780s - For example, the Leicester Journal reported in 1789 the unbelievable fact that a single ram would have brought Bakewell 1,200 guineas (= 25,200 shillings) in income in one season .
In 1770 the first written account of the sheep appeared in a national English publication. Young described the New Leicester as "true barrels. Your back round and broad, your legs no longer than six inches (~ 20 cm) ”. With the breeding of the New Leicester, Bakewell developed its own economy in which commercial traders rented the rams and then rented them out to farmers themselves. As a matter of principle, Bakewell only sold rams for export abroad, as he wanted to keep control of his breed in England. He did not sell the sheep that were ready for slaughter either, but slaughtered them on his property and sold the meat.
The New Leicester was crossed into almost all stock types in England and France that existed at the time. In 1837, for example, the agronomist Yuatt wrote “In a little less than half a century, New Leicester had spread to every part of the United Kingdom, as well as Europe and the United States.” In 1839 Martin Doyle wrote in his A cyclopædia of practical husbandry and rural affairs in general that the New Leicester "is undoubtedly the most profitable of all sheep breeds, as they grow up early, reach great weights and are easy to maintain on a site." In particular, Doyle also emphasized that the New Leicester, the Improved properties of every breed of sheep into which it was crossed.
Even when crossed with smaller sheep, it did not produce oversized lambs; in many sheep types the meat content increased while the quality of the meat remained the same. By the end of the 18th century, New Leicester had spread across Europe, and its descendants played a formative role in the beginning of sheep breeding in the New World. Well-known supporters of New Leicester included George Washington , who kept 900 animals of the breed on his property.
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The New Leicester came to Australia in 1824 at the latest, an import by the Bryant Brothers to Tasmania for this year is documented. Numerous other imports are documented from the following years, including from all the major farmers on the continent. The New Leicester were particularly used to cross them with Merino sheep. Crossed Leicester sheep made the merinos more meat and made the wool longer and heavier. Until the 1920s, European buyers did not pay a higher price for pure merino wool than for merino / Leicester wool. Due to the numerous planned crossings into the 20th century - as well as the fact that New Leicester and Merinos often lived together on the same farms, numerous Australian Merino sheep still have New Leicester genes in them.
In New Zealand, the New Leicester can be traced from 1843. At the beginning of the 20th century it was the third most common breed of sheep there, which was mainly kept in wetter areas where merino sheep could not be kept.
Border Leicester
The Border Leicester was bred from the New Leicester in the north of England , which replaced the New Leicester in many places and is still a widespread breed of sheep that is used to improve the breeding results of other breeds of sheep. Another well-known breed that is directly descended from the New Leicester is the Corriedale . This cross is bred from a merino and a longwool sheep - often a New Leicester. In New Zealand alone, there were over 4.5 million Border Leicesters, Corriedales and mixed breeds of them in 2016.
Situation today
The New Leicester is now only kept as a hobby. Herd exist in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the USA. Even in areas where it was once very widespread - such as in England or Australia - only a few hundred animals still exist. In 2001 there were around 600 to 700 ewes worldwide. A herd that goes back directly to Bakewell is the Speeton herd in Speeton in East Yorkshire, which goes back to a breeding started in 1795 by Mr. Robinson in Bridlington .
In the United States, the New Leicester had completely disappeared since around World War II, until Colonial Williamsburg - a large living history museum - tried to find “authentic sheep” from the 18th century for its exhibition in the 1980s. After several years of unsuccessful searching, the museum found the buck Willoughby from a small flock in Canada, but was unable to acquire any ewes. Breeding with the buck came to an end when Willoughby died unexpectedly in 1988. The museum published an article about Willoughby in its magazine that attracted unexpected public attention. Many people donated to build a herd, and the public also made contact with breeders from New Leicester. In 1990 the museum found a New Leicester herd in Tasmania, from which they imported eight female sheep, six lambs and one buck. In the years that followed, Colonial Williamsburg established small herds outside the museum to ensure the breed's survival in the United States. There are fewer than 200 of the animals in the US today.
In the case of the animals that are still bred today, the breeders are again placing more emphasis on the wool, which is further processed by hand and for enthusiasts.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Philipp Walling: Counting Sheep. A Celebration of the Pastoral Heritage of Britain . Profile Books, 2014, ISBN 978-1-84668-505-7 , pp. 43-56 .
- ^ A b c The New Dishley Society. In: The New Dishley Society. Retrieved February 28, 2016 .
- ↑ a b Current Breed Description. (No longer available online.) In: Leicester Longwool Sheep Breeders Association. Archived from the original on February 15, 2016 ; accessed on February 28, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c d e Leicester Longwool Sheep. In: Oklahoma State University - Breeds of Livestock, Department of Animal Science. Retrieved February 29, 2016 .
- ^ A b c d e f Robert Trow-Smith: A History of British Livestock Husbandry, 1700–1900 . Routledge, Abingdon 2006, ISBN 0-415-38112-6 , pp. 59 ff . ( books.google.de - reprint from 1959).
- ↑ a b c d Janet Vorwald Dohner: The Encyclopedia of Historic and Endangered Livestock and Poultry Breeds . Yale University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-300-13813-X , pp. 117-119 .
- ^ Robert Jennings: Sheep, Swine and Poultry Embracing the History and Varieties of Each; The Best Modes of Breeding; Their Feeding and Management Together with The Diseases To Which They are Respectively Subject and Appropriate Remedies for Each . John E. Potter and Company, Philadelphia 1863.
- ^ A b Martin Doyle: A cyclopædia of practical husbandry and rural affairs in general, by Martin Doyle . William Curry Jun. And Company, Dublin 1839, p. 423 ff .
- ↑ a b c d e Heritage Sheep | English Leicester. heritagesheep.org.au, accessed February 28, 2016 .
- ↑ a b c d e The English Leicester. In: www.rarebreeds.co.nz. Retrieved February 29, 2016 .
- ^ The History of the Speeton Flock of Leicester Longwools. In: The New Dishley Society. Retrieved February 28, 2016 .
