Portland sheep
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The Portland sheep is a short, originally British breed of sheep that is rarely kept. It is named after the Isle of Portland , a 6.4 kilometer long and 2.4 kilometer wide limestone rock in the English Channel on which this breed evolved.
The Portland sheep was temporarily threatened with extinction, but the breeding population has increased somewhat thanks to the efforts of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust . However, the breed is still classified as threatened by this organization.
features
Both the goats and the sheep are horned. In the females, the horns describe a maximum of a semicircle.
Bucks of this breed reach a height of 65 centimeters at the withers and weigh between 50 and 60 kilograms. The females are slightly smaller with a height at the withers of 60 centimeters and can weigh up to 40 kilograms. In comparison, bucks of the large-framed British sheep breed Wensleydale reach a height at the withers of up to 90 centimeters and a weight of up to 136 kilograms.
The wool of these sheep is white, light gray or reddish. Hairless parts of the body are fawn . Sheep of this breed have a so-called Schaupe, i. H. a hairy forehead. The small ears are carried horizontally.
Breeding history
The Portland sheep goes back to old heather sheep breeds in south-west England, whose modern descendants also include the Dorset sheep and Wiltshire horn breeds . Features of these original races were the fawn body color and the horns. According to Philip Walling, the Portland sheep is the least developed breed of sheep in terms of breeding and still has most of the characteristics of this original breed. It is traditionally assumed that these fawn-colored sheep breeds are related to the sheep breeds of the Orkneys and Hebrides. Walling doubts this in his History of British Sheep Breeds. The characteristic of the three breeds of sheep, Portland, Wiltshire Horn and Dorset, is that their reproduction is not tied to any season and usually only gives birth to one lamb. Sheep of the northern type can only be covered by a ram in autumn and lamb accordingly in spring. With them, multiple births are common even under poor grazing conditions. Walling therefore argues that the original breed from which the Portland sheep emerged is more likely to have descended from Mediterranean sheep breeds. It is popularly said that the Portland sheep was washed up on the island after a shipwreck and is fond of calling it the Armada Española , which was badly damaged by storms in 1588 during an attempt to invade the British Isles. The vernacular also claims the same thing about Herdwick and Jacob sheep .
The Portland Peninsula, on which this breed survived, was in royal possession for centuries. It is connected to the mainland via a gravel bank, but it was sufficiently cut off from the mainland to leave the breed comparatively isolated. Under the conditions on this peninsula, the breed remained short. However, the meat of the breed is described as being of particularly outstanding taste. At the beginning of the 19th century, authors reported that around 3,000 sheep lived on the island and found only poor pasture there. It was also reported that the sheep were not afraid of smaller herding dogs and that the shepherds used a larger breed of dogs to round up the sheep in the evening.
As early as the 17th century, Portland began to quarry the limestone of this island to an increasing extent. Christopher Wren used this stone, among other things, to build London's St Paul's Cathedral . This use of the peninsula caused the number of Portland sheep to decline. In 1913 the last herd kept on the peninsula was sold at the Dorchester cattle market and according to contemporary newspaper reports the auctioneer had difficulty finding a buy for this last herd. The breed did not become extinct at this point because there were a few keepers on the mainland. In 1953, however, this population had only decreased to a few herds. Few commercial farmers were willing to keep this small breed with its low meat yield, even if the meat was praised for its taste and could achieve higher sales prices. That the breed persists unchanged is only thanks to the efforts of the RBST .
literature
- Hans Hinrich Sambraus: Color atlas of farm animal breeds: 250 breeds in words and pictures , Eugen Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8001-3219-2
- Hans Hinrich Sambraus: Rare farm animals: 240 endangered breeds from all over the world. Eugen Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-8001-9527-5
- Philip Walling: Counting Sheep - A Celebration of the Pastoral Heritage of Britain . Profile Books, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-84765-803-6 .
Web links
Single receipts
- ↑ Watchlist of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust ( Memento of the original from May 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 12, 2015
- ↑ Hans Hinrich Sambraus: Seltene Nutztiere , p. 121.
- ↑ Hans Hinrich Sambraus: Color Atlas of Farm Animal Races , p. 145
- ^ Philip Walling: Counting Sheep , p. 11
- ↑ a b c Philip Walling: Counting Sheep , p. 12.
- ^ A b Philip Walling: Counting Sheep , p. 13.
- ^ Philip Walling: Counting Sheep , p. 14.
- ^ A b Philip Walling: Counting Sheep , p. 15.
