Walliser black-nosed sheep

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An adult female Valais black-nosed sheep
A lamb for about ten days
Fur / wool
Undercoat of an adult animal after shearing

The Walliser Black Nose Sheep (often also abbreviated to SN ) is a breed of domestic sheep mainly kept in Upper Valais today .

description

Characteristic are the black areas on the nose, eyes, ears, front knees, ankles and feet in the otherwise white fur . Alluvial areas also have black tail spots. Both sexes develop twisted horns . Aries weigh on average 80 to 100 kilograms, floodplains 70 to 80 kilograms.

The bodies of the Valais black noses are completely woolly, including on the legs and face. Aries produce an annual wool yield of 3.5 to 4.5 kg, floodplains 3.0 to 4.0 kg. The wool is coarse, has long fibers and reaches lengths of well over 10 centimeters. In addition to the fine undercoat is the coat of long, crimped at the tips, Stichelhaaren interspersed. With longer inbreeding , the offspring lose their characteristic black color. The black-nosed sheep has an out-of-season pregnancy , so it is not fixed on a specific time of birth. It gives birth to an average of 1.6 lambs per year and tends to ripen late.

The Valais black-nosed sheep are perfectly adapted to the living conditions in the barren high mountains . They are true to their location and frugal. They are good climbers and graze even steep, rocky slopes. Due to its physique, the long limbs, the administration as well as its robust nature and the rough wool, it is considered a primitive breed of sheep, which is closely related to the wild form of the original sheep .

Racial standard

According to the breed standard, the Walliser Black Nose Sheep is a "large-framed, harmonious mountain sheep , with good maternal characteristics, milk and meat production, resilient, with a strong foundation. The horns and color characteristics characterize the unique Walliser Black Nose Sheep. Short, drawn head with a wide mouth, broad forehead and Rams nose; ears of medium length; horned. Pronounced head shape in the male animal. Whole body, including head and legs, evenly woolen; fleece (wool) uniformly white; nose up to the middle of the head black. "

history

Hans Hinrich Sambraus gives the first written mention of this breed of sheep in the 15th century , but without citing the source. According to Luzius Theler, the copper sheep ( Ovis aries studeri, Duerst ) has been passed down orally as a common breed of sheep in Upper Valais from the middle of the 16th century . This breed of sheep, which was introduced into the western Swiss Alps in pre-Roman times, has changed little in the remote and secluded Alpine valleys. From these sheep the brown woolly and horned Älwen were bred, which are considered direct ancestors of the Valais black-nosed sheep with crossings of another, previously unknown "black horned sheep breed". Crossbreeds with similar looking Vispertal sheep and northern Italian Bergamasque sheep from northern Italy, which are also horned, are also likely.

On November 24, 1884, the canton of Valais issued an ordinance to improve large and small cattle and the horse species , with the aim of establishing a uniform and standardized breed of sheep throughout Switzerland with a high wool yield and high meat production. As a result, Australian Southdown sheep were crossed , but their descendants proved to be less adaptable , robust and frugal in the high mountain landscape . The shorter wool crossed by the Southdown sheep reduced their acceptance by many sheep farmers who processed the wool themselves, as it could only be spun by hand with much greater effort . In addition, the meat of the new breed of sheep was not very well received by butchers due to its higher fat content.

In the 1930s to 1960s , the population of the Valais black-nosed sheep was threatened again by the planned implementation of the uniformly standardized and optimized White Mountain Sheep ( White Mountain Sheep ) for the needs of a modern market . State agencies, research institutes and agricultural associations tried to establish it through shepherds' cooperatives and generous state subsidies. For this purpose, existing herd books of the long-established sheep breeds, including those of the Valais black-nosed sheep, should no longer be recognized and the animals should no longer be awarded prizes at licensing in order to gradually exterminate them. In addition, in the 1930s and rampant 1940s several large tuberculosis - and brucellosis - epidemics among humans and animals in the Valais, the old sheep numbers for its reduction multiply large parts culled were. Since the 1960s, Valais black noses have come under renewed pressure on the meat market due to the liberalization of slaughter animal imports. Modern high-bred sheep breeds deliver up to 5% higher meat yield per animal if they are earlier slaughtered or shorter fattening times, so that their rearing, slaughtering and yield is more profitable. In addition, the meat of black noses that are not kept in high mountains is still rated lower in quality today, with the result that the meat of the black noses achieved only a lower income compared to the white Alpine sheep, Texelaar or similar sheep breeds. On the part of the state, cross-breeding attempts were made again in order to increase the meat performance of the black-nosed breeders, but once again these were not well received by the traditional black-nosed breeders, so that the attempts were discontinued in the 1970s.

With the gradually shifting importance of sheep farming in Valais since the first half of the 20th century , purely for the self- sufficiency of peasant households with wool, meat, leather and occasionally also milk, towards a purely sideline and hobby sheep farming , the appearance of the changed Valais black-nosed sheep. In order to keep the effort of shearing as low as possible, sheep are bred, among other things, to keep faces and legs as free of longer wool as possible. Part-time shepherds and hobby shepherds, on the other hand, increasingly focused on aesthetic aspects in their breeding efforts, towards hairy faces and legs in modern Valais black noses.

The Upper Valais Black Nose Sheep Breeding Association was founded in 1948. The Valais black-nosed sheep was not recognized as a breed until 1962 and was accepted into the Swiss Sheep Breeding Association in 1964.

Literature and film

  • Luzius Theler: The black nose: sheep breed of the Upper Valais . Ed .: Upper Valais Black Nose Sheep Breeding Association. Rottern, Visp 1986, DNB  900655496 .
  • Sylviane Neuenschwander: Snow-white black noses . Documentary, Ghornuti Productions, Ayent VS 2006
items
  • Martin Suter , photos: Annemarie Grobet: The black noses from the glacier. In: Geo-Magazin. Hamburg 1980,9, pp. 60-80. Experience report on the Valais black-nosed sheep, which would have become extinct if you didn't look after them. ISSN  0342-8311

Web links

Commons : Walliser Schwarznasenschaf  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Breed description of the Upper Valais Black Nose Sheep Breeding Association (accessed on January 26, 2011)
  2. ↑ a b c Luzius Theler: The black nose: Sheep breed of the Upper Valais . Ed .: Upper Valais Black Nose Sheep Breeding Association. Rottern, Visp 1986, DNB  900655496 , p. 170-178 .
  3. ↑ Wool and pregnancy  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / xn--schferblog-s5a.de  
  4. ↑ Breed description ( Memento of the original from January 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) 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. (PDF; 177 kB) of the Swiss Sheep Breeding Association @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / szv.caprovis.ch
  5. ↑ Hans Hinrich Sambraus: Atlas of the farm animal races. 250 races in words and pictures . Ulmer, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-8001-3219-2 , p. 134 (without citing the source).
  6. ↑ a b Schwarznasenschaf at www.walser-museum.ch (accessed on January 18, 2011).
  7. ↑ a b Luzius Theler: The black nose: Sheep breed of the Upper Valais . Ed .: Upper Valais Black Nose Sheep Breeding Association. Rottern, Visp 1986, DNB  900655496 , p. 14-18 .
  8. ↑ http://www.walser-alps.eu/sehenswuerdigungen-landschaft-erleben/sehenswuerdheiten/walliser-schwarznasenschaf
  9. ↑ Luzius Theler: The black nose: Sheep breed of the Upper Valais . Ed .: Upper Valais Black Nose Sheep Breeding Association. Rottern, Visp 1986, DNB  900655496 , p. 76-82 .
  10. ↑ Rita Lüchinger Wüest: Fattening and slaughtering performance of different types of lambs with different husbandry systems . Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, 1995 ( ethz.ch [PDF; accessed on January 26, 2011] dissertation, abstract).
  11. ↑ J. Probst, F. Leiber, F. Heckendorn: Lamb meat quality of extensively kept and rare Swiss sheep breeds (Engadine sheep, black-nosed sheep, mirror sheep) compared to the white Alpine sheep . ( orgprints.org [PDF; accessed January 26, 2011]).
  12. ↑ R. Lüchinger Wüest: Quality lambs of different breeds and different husbandry systems using the example of Swiss sheep farming . ( oif.ch [PDF; accessed on January 26, 2011]).
  13. ↑ Luzius Theler: The black nose: Sheep breed of the Upper Valais . Ed .: Upper Valais Black Nose Sheep Breeding Association. Rottern, Visp 1986, DNB  900655496 , p. 108-110, 120-126 .
  14. ↑ Luzius Theler: The black nose: Sheep breed of the Upper Valais . Ed .: Upper Valais Black Nose Sheep Breeding Association. Rottern, Visp 1986, DNB  900655496 , p. 46-50 .
  15. ↑ Luzius Theler: The black nose: Sheep breed of the Upper Valais . Ed .: Upper Valais Black Nose Sheep Breeding Association. Rottern, Visp 1986, DNB  900655496 , p. 26-18 .
  16. ↑ http://www.dorisdiedrich.de/spindel/Faserbuch_Schafe.pdf