Texel sheep

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Texel sheep with triplets
Texel sheep on the island of Texel
Texel sheep with lamb on the island of Texel
Texel sheep, grazing
Award-winning Texel sheep

The Texel sheep or Texelaar is a breed of meat sheep that originally came from the Dutch North Sea island of Texel .

The largest number of Texel sheep are now in New Zealand and Australia, where animals were imported from Europe for further breeding in the early 1990s. Around 14,000 animals are permanently kept on Texel itself (about the same number as there are inhabitants on the island). Around 11,000 lambs are born in the spring. Texelaar is the most common breed of sheep in the Netherlands. In the whole of the Netherlands around 20,000 farms keep almost 1.5 million sheep, 70% of which are Texel sheep and 25% Texel sheep crossbreeds. Texel sheep have been kept in Germany since the 1960s. It was initially only widespread in northern Germany, but then became increasingly popular in southern Germany as well.

features

The Texel sheep is a medium to large sized sheep. Ewes can weigh 70 to 80 kg with a shoulder height of around 68 cm. Bucks reach a weight of 90 kg and a shoulder height of 70 cm. The wool volume is approx. 4 to 5 kg with one shear per year. Woolly and unwolled parts of the body of this breed are white, while the nose is black. Other characteristics include strong and medium-length ears and a short and strongly muscled neck. It is comparatively short-legged, but the legs are strongly developed. Further characteristics are its unconscious and unhorned head with a flat but not too broad forehead.

Mother animals give birth to an average of two lambs. The breeding season is strictly seasonal: the ewes are mated in autumn, the lambs are born in spring. The lambs weigh between 4 and 5 kg at birth. In rare cases there are litters of four or five lambs that have to be fed. The gestation period is a good 20 weeks ("5 months minus 5 days"). The lambs are very healthy and regularly gain 400 grams a day.

Genetic analysis has shown that the excellent meat properties of Texel sheep are due to a mutation in the gene responsible for myostatin , an inhibitor of muscle growth.

According to various reports, once rolled on its side or back, the breed can no longer stand up on its own, especially if the wool is wet and heavy.

Breeding history

The origin of the breed is not certain. It is said to have descended from long-legged sheep brought by sailors from the east coast of Africa.

In the middle of the 19th century, the English breeds Lincoln , Leicester and Wensleydale sheep were crossed in order to obtain a better yield of wool and meat. Both the Lincoln sheep and the Leicester sheep are old British long-wool breeds. The Wensleydale was developed from Teeswater sheep , in which a particularly outstanding ram from the Dishley Leicester breeding line was crossed.

The Texel sheep were in turn crossed into a number of modern breeds to improve their performance. Among other things, the modern meat performance breed Beltex was bred from Texel sheep. The importance of the Texel sheep for modern sheep breeding is one reason why Philip Walling assumes in his history of British sheep breeding that there is no breed of sheep in the entire western world that does not also have the genetic makeup of the Bakewell improved Leicester sheep.

literature

  • Piet A. Bakker: De Texelaar. De geschiedenis van een schaap met toekomst. Uitgeverij DrukWare, Norg (NL) 2009, ISBN 978-90-78707-08-0 .
  • 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 .
  • Philip Walling: Counting Sheep - A Celebration of the Pastoral Heritage of Britain . Profile Books, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-84765-803-6 .

Web links

Commons : Texelaar  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Single receipts

  1. ↑ a b c d Hans Hinrich Sambraus: Color atlas of farm animal breeds. Ulmer, Stuttgart 2001, p. 112.
  2. ↑ A. Clop, F. Marcq, H. Takeda, D. Pirottin, X. Tordoir, B. Bibe, J. Bouix, F. Caiment, JM Elsen, F. Eychenne et al .: A mutation creating a potential illegitimate microRNA target site in the myostatin gene affects muscularity in sheep. In: Nature Genetics. Vol. 38, 2006, pp. 813-818, doi : 10.1038 / ng1810 .
  3. ^ Cosima Schmitt: Holidays among sheep. In: time online . November 29, 2012.
  4. ↑ Philip Walling: Counting Sheep. Profile Books, London 2014, p. 46.