Scottish Blackface

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A Scottish Blackface floodplain in the Outer Hebrides

The Scottish Blackface is a native country sheep breed from the north of Great Britain. It is the most common breed in the British Isles (11% of all pure-bred sheep in 2003).

Shape and appearance

Scottish blackface breeding ram

The Scottish Blackface is a medium-sized sheep with a ramsnose head. Both sexes have horns, the horns of the male goats develop in a snail shape with increasing age. The heads are woolly and black with white markings. The legs are more white with black markings. The wool is white and of medium-fine to coarse quality, whereby a distinction is made between three subspecies. The Perth type has a medium to long wool, the Lanark type a shorter wool and the Northumberland type a very soft wool. Adult bucks weigh between 80 and 100 kg, sheep between 65 and 75 kg.

properties

Scottish blackface lamb

The Scottish Blackface is considered robust and frugal. The claws are hard, it lives in the hills of Scotland also on barren, sometimes damp areas. Usually the mothers lamb there without human help. The result of this “natural selection” are problem-free births and exceptionally good maternal characteristics.

Trivia

  • Scottish Blackface lambs deliver meat for the “Taste the Difference” campaign of the British grocery chain Sainsbury's .
  • A Scottish blackface floodplain was chosen as the “surrogate mother” for the cloned sheep Dolly (a Welsh mountain sheep ) because of its good mother characteristics.

Web links

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