Sheep

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Sheep

Sheep in Canada are raised primarily for their meat, but also produce wool and milk. As you travel through our Small Animal Barn and Rare Breeds Barn, you will meet many delightfully different breeds of sheep.

Commercial Canadian Breeds at the Canada Agriculture Museum

Rideau Arcott: This breed that was developed here in Ottawa at the Animal Research Centre, Ottawa (hence the name). They have white bodies and a bit of brown colouring on their faces and legs. This breed was developed as a prolific sheep and ewes often produce triplets.

Arcott

Suffolk Suffolk: These sheep are popular in Canada and around the world as meat producers. They have clean black faces and legs while their bodies are covered with short white wool. The ewes are known to be good milkers.

Dorset: Raised mainly for its meat, the Dorset has a white woolly face and white wool body. It is known for producing many, fast-growing lambs.
Dorset

Oxford Oxford: This large breed was developed in England in the 1830's and is mainly used as a crossbreeding sire. The offspring have a fast growth rate, mature early and produce good quality wool.

Rare Breeds at the Canada Agriculture Museum

Cotswold: This breed originated in Gloucester, England in a 280,000 acre region called Cotswold Hills. The name comes from 'cots' - the shelter in which they were originally kept and 'wold' - a wild, treeless hill. The fleece is incredibly long and curly: 8-10 inches in length, producing about 6 kgs (12 lbs.) annually. Unfortunately, their fleece tends to part along the back of the animal and therefore provides little protection from the cold or wet. Cotswold

Border Leicester Border Leicester: This breed was established in 1767 by George and Matthew Culley of Fenton, Northumberland, England. It became popular when the wool carpet industry was good, but with the manufacture of nylon carpets in the 1940s, long wool breeds fell out of popularity. In the 1970s increased interest in hand-spinning meant that the breed grew in numbers. Today, some producers raise them for their rapidly-growing high-quality market lambs as well as a much sought after specialty wool crop.

The Canadian Perspective:

in Canada we raise sheep mainly for meat; the wool is simply a by-product

some breeds are also raised for their milk which is made into cheese

in some countries, sheep are raised primarily for their wool (Merino sheep in New Zealand and Australia for example)

the main sheep producing areas in Canada are Ontario and Alberta

there are approximately 1 million sheep in Canada on about 11,000 farms

we produce about 40% of the lamb we consume; the balance is imported from Australia and New Zealand

we export most of our raw wool; in 1991 we exported 1.4 million kg of wool mainly to the US and UK; we imported 7.3 million kg of processed wool, mostly from the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand

sheep eat forages and small amounts of grains; in the summer, ours spend the days outside and graze on grass.

Trivia Time: Sheep Facts

ewe's gestation period is 147 days, or 5 months
sheep are ruminants: their compound stomachs enable them to digest fibre or forages. They have front teeth on the bottom jaw only. They have 4 compartments to their stomach and chew a cud
wool can absorb up to 30 times its weight in oil but will still repel water. This figure is double the absorbency of high performance polypropylene
wool can be used to clean up crude oil spills: it can be squeezed out and reused up to 8 times. Poor quality wool from the sheep's belly is used
if you were to spin the fleece of one sheep, it would produce a strand that would stretch all the way from Ottawa to Montreal (more than 200 km)!

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