Reproduction and Genetics

With more than 50 sheep breeds to choose from, deciding which breed to raise can be a challenge. Use Penn State Extension’s vast range of resources to help with your decision. Utilize the information on sheep breeding, including determining the most efficient ewe size, preparing for the breeding season, improving newborn lamb survival, and accelerated lamb production. Find tips on reviewing sheep records and maximizing your lambing rate.

Sheep Breeds

The primary consideration when deciding upon a breed or type is the reason why you’ve decided you want to raise sheep. There are breeds that excel in one aspect. Some have the ability to provide an excellent amount of milk, while others produce high-quality wool or meat.

One of the challenges of raising livestock is finding a perfect brood ewe. But what does the perfect ewe look like? Size is important, but it’s not everything. Body condition, structural correctness, muscling, performance, and mothering ability are all factors to consider.

Common Meat Sheep Breeds

• Cheviot: Ewes have good mothering abilities and produce fast-maturing lambs.
• Dorset: This breed produces good tasting milk and delicious meat.
• Hampshire: This is a cross-breed sheep. It is medium in size and hornless, with varying skin tones.
• Southdown: Both rams and ewes have excellent stamina. Southdown mutton carcasses are of the highest quality.
• Suffolk: This breed produces quality lambs with good conformation and growth rates, both crossbred and pure, for the food chain.
• Tunis: This is one of the oldest indigenous breeds to the United States, raised primarily for meat.

Common Dairy Sheep Breeds

• East Friesian sheep: This breed of sheep has a high milk yield.
• Lacaune: It is one of the hardiest breeds of dairy sheep. They produce less milk than other breeds, but their milk has a higher fat and protein content which produces a higher yield when making cheese.
• Awassi: This is a multi-purpose sheep breed, used for milk, meat, and wool production, but it is raised primarily for milk production.

Common Wool Sheep Breeds

• Border Leicester: The wool from this breed of sheep is popular with hand spinners because it falls in long, shining locks.
• Columbia: A popular breed because of their heavy, white fleece, and good growth characteristics.
• Corriedale: Corriedale sheep produce high-quality wool with a fiber diameter of 25 to 30 microns.
• Cotswold: This breed produces high-quality fleece, but the breed can also offer hardy, large lambs born easily out of mothers with plenty of milk.
• Lincoln: Well-known for the fine wool fiber. Lincoln wool is popular with designers and weavers.
• Merino: Produces wool of the finest quality. Merino wool is popular in the clothing industry, for making clothes and other accessories for babies in particular.
• Rambouillet: A breed that produces dense, fine wool of white or natural colors.

Sheep Gestation and Reproduction

Sheep gestation and reproduction rates play a crucial role in sheep production. Optimal reproductive rates vary by farm, production system, and geographic area, but they are essential to profitable sheep production. A wide variety of information is available to help sheep producers, for example, Penn State Extension’s Sheep and Goat Workshops: Lambing and Kidding.

When lambing season approaches, sheep producers have many considerations such as preparing the facilities, diet considerations, assisting at lambing, and weaning. There are many things that can affect the health of the ewe and the health and vigor of the newborn lamb. A good health indicator is body condition scoring. Producers can also calculate reproduction and production measures such as pregnancy rate, lambs born per ewe, and percent lamb survival. Estimated Breeding Values (EBVs) can help a producer utilize birth weights as a selection tool.