146 Fun Facts About Sheep

How many distinct compartments are there in the stomach of a domestic sheep?

The first chamber alone holds 19 to 38 litres of fermenting feed; the last, the abomasum, works most like a human stomach and is nicknamed the 'true stomach'.

In the proverbial warning about hidden enemies, which animal comes disguised in sheep's clothing?

Wolf: the image comes from the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus warns his listeners to watch out for false prophets who arrive in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ferocious wolves.

What shape are the pupils of a sheep's eyes?

A horizontal slit gives a grazing sheep such wide peripheral vision that it can see behind itself without turning its head, a useful trick for an animal that predators hunt.

In which region were sheep first domesticated?

The Fertile Crescent: herders there tamed wild sheep at least 10,000 years ago, at first for meat rather than fleece, and woolly sheep were only bred thousands of years later.

A rare hybrid of a sheep and a goat is popularly known by what name?

A geep is rare because sheep have 54 chromosomes and goats 60, so most such pregnancies end in stillbirth and a fertile survivor is rarer still.

Which dog breed, the star of sheepdog trials, controls a flock with a fixed stare known as 'the eye'?

Border Collie: the dog glares at sheep to intimidate them into moving where it wants, a habit thought to come from the stare its wolf ancestors fixed on their prey.

Which hard, salty Italian cheese, often grated over pasta, is made from sheep's milk?

Pecorino Romano was a marching ration of the Roman legions and its name means 'sheep's cheese of Rome', yet nearly all of it is now made on the island of Sardinia.

What do a sheep's lower front teeth bite against?

A dental pad, a hard toothless cushion in the upper jaw, does the job of upper incisors: the lower front teeth press each mouthful against it to pick it off, and the back teeth grind it.

What is the most common vocalization made by sheep?

A bleat, or 'baa', is mostly a contact call: sheep also bleat when they expect to be fed, and a lamb that bleats without stopping is usually a hungry one.

Shepherds traditionally judge a sheep's age by examining what?

Its teeth: a lamb's eight milk teeth at the front are replaced by bigger adult ones over its first few years, and the full set is not complete until the sheep is about four.

In the first hours after birth, a ewe learns to recognize her own lamb mainly through which sense?

Smell: as she licks the newborn clean the ewe learns its scent, and it is by scent that she then tells her own lamb from every other in the field.

Which substance, washed out of raw sheep's wool, is widely used in lip balms and skin creams?

Lanolin is the grease that waterproofs a fleece so rain runs off the sheep, and it is recovered when the raw wool is scoured.

A blood-sucking stomach worm of sheep, striped red and white, is named after which object?

A barber's pole: the female worm's white ovaries coil around its blood-filled gut to give the red-and-white twist, and a heavy infection drains enough blood to kill a sheep through anaemia.

In the nursery rhyme, which girl has lost her sheep and can't tell where to find them?

Little Bo-Peep is told to leave them alone and they'll come home, but in the later verses she has to go and find them, and their tails are left behind, hung on a tree to dry.

Sheep are classified as what type of eater?

Sheep are herbivores: they eat nothing but plants, and a fore-stomach full of bacteria, fungi and protozoa lets them break down cellulose that a human gut cannot digest.

Domestic sheep are thought to descend from which wild animal, whose males carry heavy curling horns?

Mouflon: the Asiatic mouflon is the likeliest ancestor, while the 'wild' mouflon of Europe run the other way, being descendants of early farm sheep that went feral.

Which term, also known as 'chewing the cud', names the process where sheep regurgitate and re-chew partly digested food?

Rumination fills several hours of a sheep's day: it feeds from dawn to dusk and stops at intervals to rest and work through what it has already swallowed.

What is a castrated male sheep commonly called?

A wether with a bell round its neck traditionally led the flock, which is how 'bellwether' came to mean anything that shows where the rest will follow.

What signal tells a ewe's body that the autumn breeding season has come?

Shorter days: fading daylight switches on the ewe's breeding cycle, and because she carries her young for about five months, an autumn mating delivers them in the mild weather of spring.

Which wool cloth may by law be made only by islanders weaving at home in the Outer Hebrides?

Harris Tweed has its own Act of Parliament: since 1993 the name has been reserved for cloth handwoven by islanders at their homes from pure virgin wool dyed and spun in the Outer Hebrides.

Cooks who insist a shepherd's pie must contain lamb give what name to the same dish made with beef?

Cottage pie and shepherd's pie have long been used as two names for one dish of minced meat under mashed potato, and some cooks, food writers and dictionaries still treat them as interchangeable.

In the nursery rhyme 'Mary Had a Little Lamb', where does the lamb follow Mary against the rules?

To school, where it made the children laugh until the teacher turned it out; in 1877 the rhyme's opening line became the first thing Thomas Edison recorded on his new phonograph.

Sheep have specialized scent glands located in front of their eyes and where else?

On their hooves: each foot carries a scent gland in the cleft between its two toes, and nobody is yet sure what the glands are for, though the ones on the face seem to play a part in breeding.

When sheep are being moved, which features of the ground commonly make them baulk?

Shadows and dips make sheep stop: they are reluctant to go where they cannot see clearly, and they tend to move out of the dark towards well-lit ground.

What is meat from a grown sheep called?

Mutton comes from a fully grown sheep and tastes stronger than lamb, which is exactly why some cuisines prefer it to the milder meat of younger animals.

Which common meat sheep breed is recognized by its black face and legs?

Suffolk rams are widely used as sires on ewes of other breeds, because the crossbred lambs grow fast and reach market weight early.

How often is each adult domestic sheep typically shorn of its fleece for wool?

Once a year is the norm, usually in spring, and the shearing matters for the sheep's health and comfort in warm weather as much as for the wool.

Besides dogs and donkeys, which animal do sheep farmers most often keep with a flock to drive off coyotes?

Llama: it is naturally aggressive towards dogs and coyotes, so a single one pastured with sheep will sound an alarm call, then chase and kick at the intruder.

Which of these famous cloned animals was a sheep?

Dolly, born in 1996, was the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, proof that a specialised body cell still carries the instructions to build a whole animal.

What is the primary food source for domestic sheep?

Grass and other short plants are what sheep are built to crop: they graze close to the ground and leave the taller, woodier growth that browsing animals strip.

In the 1995 film Babe, what kind of farm animal learns to herd sheep like a sheepdog?

A pig: Babe wins the sheepdog trial with a perfect score by asking the sheep politely instead of barking at them, a story taken from Dick King-Smith's novel The Sheep-Pig.

Which constellation in the zodiac is represented by a ram?

Aries is simply the Latin word for ram, and Greek myth linked the constellation to the golden-fleeced ram that carried the boy Phrixus to safety on its back.

What is the name of the hooked staff a shepherd uses to catch a sheep by the neck or leg?

Crook: the hook lets a shepherd snare an animal without chasing it, and a bishop's crozier copies the shape to mark him as the shepherd of his congregation.

Lambs' tails are usually docked short to lower the risk of which dangerous summer condition?

Flystrike: blowflies lay eggs in fleece soiled by droppings and the maggots eat into living flesh, which can be fatal if untreated, so a short tail that stays clean is a defence.

What characteristic of sheep's wool makes it so warm to wear?

Its crimped fibers trap air, giving wool fabric more bulk than other textiles and letting it hold heat.

Which compartment of a sheep's stomach is nicknamed the 'honeycomb' for the pattern of its lining?

The reticulum's lining is folded into a honeycomb of small pockets, and heavy swallowed objects such as nails tend to lodge there, the cause of what vets call 'hardware disease' in cattle.

How do bighorn rams settle which of them gets to mate with the ewes?

Head-on charges: two rams rear up and launch themselves at each other for a crack of horns, and a double layer of bone in the skull soaks up the shock.

What type of vision lets sheep distinguish some colours, though less fully than humans?

Sheep are dichromatic: like most farm mammals they have two cone types rather than three, so they can tell blue, green and yellow apart but struggle with oranges and reds.

Early domesticated sheep were kept for meat, milk and which other product, before fleece became the goal?

Their skins: people wore sheepskins long before anyone spun yarn, and the soft woolly fleece only came later, as breeders selected away the coarse outer hair of the wild coat.

Which of these cheeses is traditionally made from sheep's milk?

Roquefort is made entirely from the milk of Lacaune ewes, and only cheese ripened in the natural caves of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon in southern France may carry the name.

Which term names the period, also called heat, when a ewe is ready to breed?

Estrus is the only time a ewe will stand for a ram; it lasts little more than a day and returns about every 17 days through the breeding season until she is mated.

Which structure does a ram use to sense the pheromones of ewes that are ready to breed?

The vomeronasal organ, also called Jacobson's organ, detects pheromones and triggers the ram's curled-lip flehmen response; ewes use the same organ for early recognition of a newborn lamb.

What is the term for rendered sheep or beef fat, traditionally used to make candles and soap?

Tallow is suet from sheep or cattle melted down and strained, and until more convenient waxes came along it was what most moulded household candles were made of.

Which Hungarian breed grows long spiral horns on ewes as well as rams?

The Racka's horns twist out from the head in tight corkscrews that can reach about 60 cm, like no other domestic sheep's, and the ewes' are only slightly shorter than the rams'.

The nursery rhyme 'Baa, Baa, Black Sheep' asks for how many bags of wool?

Three bags full: one for the master, one for the dame and one for the little boy who lives down the lane, a share-out first printed around 1744.

Which Jewish festival recalls households marking their doorposts with the blood of a sacrificed lamb?

Passover: in Exodus each household killed a lamb and daubed its blood on the doorframe so the last plague would pass the house by, and a roasted shank bone still sits on the Seder plate in memory of it.

What is the primary purpose of 'sheep dip' in traditional sheep husbandry?

To kill external parasites: each sheep is plunged into a bath of insecticide so that the liquid soaks to the skin and reaches the keds, ticks and mites living in the fleece.

Which is the largest species of wild sheep, whose name is borrowed from Mongolian?

Argali rams of the biggest races stand well over a metre at the shoulder and weigh more than 140 kg, yet poaching is a major reason the species is now listed as near threatened.

The Central Asian wild sheep with the longest horns of all is named after which explorer?

Marco Polo crossed the Pamir highlands in the 13th century and was the first Westerner to describe the sheep, whose spiralling horns can approach two metres along the curve.

A bighorn ram's horns can weigh up to 14 kg, roughly as much as what?

All the bones in its body: a ram's horns can weigh 30 pounds, more than his whole skeleton, and because they are never shed, the oldest rams carry the biggest sets.

The Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep is the official state animal of which US state?

Colorado adopted the Rocky Mountain bighorn as its state animal in 1961, as a native of the crags above its timberline; Nevada later chose the smaller desert bighorn for itself.

The primitive Soay sheep comes from a feral flock on an island in which archipelago?

St Kilda's island of Soay held a feral flock that so closely resembles Britain's prehistoric sheep that Butser Ancient Farm used the breed in experimental archaeology.

Walled onto Orkney's shore since 1832, North Ronaldsay sheep live almost entirely on what?

Seaweed is so poor in copper that these sheep evolved to absorb the metal far more efficiently than other breeds, and ordinary pasture can now give them copper poisoning.

Beatrix Potter bred and showed which Lake District sheep in her later years?

Herdwick: Beatrix Potter became a prize-winning breeder of the hardy fell sheep and, when she died in 1943, left almost all her property to the National Trust.

The piebald Jacob sheep is best known for which feature?

Four horns: extra horns are rare in sheep, so the Jacob, which may carry two, four or occasionally more, is the breed people picture when they hear of a multi-horned, or polycerate, sheep.

The Jacob sheep takes its name from a figure in which book of the Bible?

Genesis 30 tells how Jacob took the speckled and spotted animals of his father-in-law Laban's flock for his own, the story breeders later borrowed for their piebald sheep.

The fluffy Valais Blacknose sheep comes from the mountains of which country?

Switzerland: the breed belongs to the canton of Valais, where sheep of the type are recorded as far back as the fifteenth century, although its present name dates only from 1884.

South Africa's Dorper, bred in the 1930s, crosses the Blackhead Persian with which British breed?

Dorset Horn and Blackhead Persian each gave the Dorper part of its name; the cross was made for South Africa's arid country, and it sheds its coat instead of needing to be shorn.

Despite its name, the Blackhead Persian sheep originated in which country?

Somalia: the breed descends from the Somali sheep and reached South Africa around 1870, where its heat-hardy, wool-free coat later made it one parent of the Dorper.

Central Asia's Karakul sheep survive drought by storing fat reserves in which body part?

Tail: the fat stored there carries a Karakul through lean seasons, and that same tail fat is an important ingredient in Uzbek cooking.

The Rambouillet breed began in 1786 when which French king obtained a flock of Spanish Merinos?

Louis XVI asked the king of Spain for the sheep, and the few hundred that survived the journey were bred on his estate at Rambouillet, which became France's national sheepfold.

New Zealand's Corriedale was bred by crossing Merinos with which English longwool breed?

Lincoln was the longwool James Little crossed with the Merino at the Corriedale estate in North Otago, wanting a sheep for country too dry for British breeds and too lush for Merinos.

The heavily muscled Texel breed is named for an island belonging to which country?

The Netherlands' island of Texel, largest of the Wadden Islands, gave the breed its name; farmers there built up the local sheep's meat by crossing in British longwool breeds.

The Romney longwool, a mainstay of New Zealand farming, came from which English county?

Kent's Romney Marsh, cold, damp and exposed, bred a sheep hardy enough to thrive in New Zealand's rain, and local farmers knew the breed simply as the Kent.

Which 18th-century pioneer of selective breeding created the Dishley Leicester sheep on his Leicestershire farm?

Robert Bakewell took a coarse, large-boned, slow-growing longwool and by rigorous selection turned it into a sheep that fattened fast for market, methods other breeders soon copied.

The white-faced Cheviot is named for hills on England's border with which country?

Scotland: the Cheviot Hills straddle the border and are the breed's traditional home, and its productive sheep were later taken north in great numbers during the Highland Clearances.

The famous ewe cloned from an adult cell in 1996 grew from a cell of which tissue?

Mammary gland: the cell came from the udder of a Finn Dorset ewe, and the clone ended up with three mothers, one for the DNA, one for the egg and one to carry her.

Where is the taxidermied body of the Roslin Institute's famous cloned sheep on display?

The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh was given the body after the ewe was put down in 2003 with a progressive lung disease, and it has been exhibited there regularly since.

In 2006 Shrek, New Zealand's runaway Merino, was shorn in what unusual location?

On a floating iceberg off Dunedin, 30 months after the shearing that made him famous: he had dodged the muster for six years, and that 27 kg fleece held wool for 20 large men's suits.

Chris, a stray ram found near Canberra in 2015, set a world record that year for what?

The heaviest fleece: after years running wild Chris carried about 40 kg of wool, and he had to be sedated while a shearer spent some 42 minutes cutting it away.

Chris, the stray Australian ram who made headlines in 2015, was named after a sheep in which sitcom?

Father Ted's episode 'Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep' features Chris, favourite for the King of the Sheep contest, on whom Ted stakes the parish heating money; the stray was named after him.

In 1783 a sheep rode a Montgolfier balloon at Versailles with a duck and what other animal?

A rooster joined them in the wicker basket: the three were the balloon's first living passengers, and their flight of about eight minutes came weeks before any human went up.

Shaun the Sheep first appeared in which Wallace & Gromit film?

Shaun debuted in A Close Shave (1995), where Wallace's Knit-o-Matic shearing machine earned him his name; his own series premiered on CBBC in 2007, followed by feature films and the toddler spin-off Timmy Time.

What is the name of the farm where Shaun the Sheep and his flock live?

The flock lives at Mossy Bottom Farm; nobody speaks in the series, and Shaun explains his schemes to the flock by drawing diagrams on a blackboard.

Who wrote the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Philip K. Dick's bounty hunter owns only an electric sheep, because real animals have become rare and costly status symbols, and he takes the job hoping to afford a living one.

Which 1982 film was based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott, changed parts of the story but kept many of its themes, and it grew so famous that some later printings of the novel carry the film's title.

The sheep sock puppet Lamb Chop was created by which American ventriloquist?

Shari Lewis created Lamb Chop, who first appeared on television on Captain Kangaroo in the 1950s; after Lewis's death in 1998 her daughter Mallory took over performing the puppet.

In 1938 the House of Lords' Woolsack was found to be stuffed with what?

Horsehair: the seat is thought to date from Edward III's reign, as a symbol of the wool trade behind England's wealth, so once the hair was found it was restuffed with wool from across Britain and the Commonwealth.

In Greek myth, the Golden Fleece was kept in a sacred grove in which kingdom?

Colchis, on the Black Sea coast of present-day western Georgia, kept the fleece in a grove sacred to Ares, guarded by a sleepless dragon until Jason and Medea took it.

What term describes a sheep stuck on its back and unable to rise?

Cast describes a sheep that has rolled onto its back, often in a hollow or under the weight of a heavy fleece, and cannot get its feet under it again until someone tips it upright.

Which North Atlantic archipelago's name is widely held to mean 'sheep islands'?

The Faroes' Old Norse name, Færeyjar, is usually read as 'sheep islands', a compound of fær (sheep) and eyjar (islands); a ram appears on the islands' coat of arms.

Which British territory's coat of arms shows a ram standing on tussock grass?

The Falkland Islands' arms, adopted in 1948, pair a ram on tussock grass with the ship Desire, in which John Davis is said to have sighted the islands in 1592.

In 'Waltzing Matilda', what does the swagman do with the jumbuck?

He stuffs it in his tucker bag, a jumbuck being a sheep, and when troopers ride up to arrest him for the theft he drowns himself in the billabong rather than be taken.

Scrapie, a fatal sheep disease known since at least 1732, is caused by what kind of agent?

Scrapie is a prion disease, caused by a misfolded protein rather than any microbe; affected animals compulsively scrape their fleece off against rocks and fences, which gave the disease its name.

Which English county was hit hardest by Britain's 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak?

Cumbria recorded more cases than any other county; across Britain more than six million animals were slaughtered to stop the disease, and that year's Cheltenham Festival was called off.

In British butchery, which name is given to sheep meat graded between lamb and the meat of mature animals?

Hogget sits between lamb and the meat of older sheep in strength of flavour, but the word is now rare in supermarkets, which tend to label any sheep under two years as lamb.

The Chinese zodiac's Year of the Sheep goes by which other animal's name, since one Chinese word covers both?

Goat: the Chinese word yáng covers both animals, so the eighth sign of the cycle is translated either way, and the year that follows the Horse is as often called the Year of the Goat.

Sheep's 'pluck', the traditional filling of haggis, consists of which three organs?

Heart, liver and lungs are minced with oatmeal, onion, suet and spices, then packed into the animal's stomach and boiled; Burns hailed the result as 'great chieftain o' the puddin-race'.

Central Park's Sheep Meadow lost its flock in 1934; its sheepfold became which restaurant?

Tavern on the Green opened in the old sheepfold after parks commissioner Robert Moses evicted the flock in 1934, ending seventy years in which sheep had kept the meadow's lawn cropped.

The Barbary sheep of North Africa's mountains is also known by what name?

Aoudad: rare in its North African homeland, it now thrives where hunters released it in the American Southwest, so well that it outcompetes the native desert bighorn.

The Big Merino, a 15-metre concrete ram statue, stands in which Australian town?

The Big Merino in Goulburn, New South Wales, was built in 1985 and modelled on a local stud ram named Rambo; it was moved in 2007 to sit beside the rerouted Hume Highway.

For centuries Spain banned exporting Merinos; anyone who tried risked what punishment?

Death was the penalty until the eighteenth century, when Spain's own kings began sending flocks as gifts to other European courts and the monopoly was broken.

Godfrey Bowen's 1953 world record saw him shear how many sheep in nine hours?

Godfrey Bowen sheared 456 sheep in nine hours in 1953; with his brother Ivan he devised the Bowen Technique of stretching the skin with the spare hand, and later taught it in the Soviet Union.

Which explorer is credited with introducing sheep to New Zealand between 1773 and 1777?

James Cook put sheep ashore on his voyages of 1773 and 1777, but none became established; the flock that peaked at 70 million in 1982 grew from animals brought decades later.

Wool consists mainly of which structural protein, also found in human hair and nails?

Wool is keratin, rich in sulfur-bearing cystine whose disulfide bonds give the fibre its stability and let heat or chemicals reshape it.

A 2001 study in Nature found sheep can recognise individual sheep and humans by what?

Their faces: Keith Kendrick's team showed that a sheep can remember 50 other sheep's faces for more than two years, using brain circuits much like those humans use for faces.

Which Native American nation's weavers rely on the fleece of the Churro sheep, descended from Spanish stock?

Navajo weavers can work complex patterns without any dye, because the Churro's fleece grows in a range of natural colours, from white through browns and greys to black.

Which longwool sheep breed shares its name with a crumbly English cheese that Wallace and Gromit made famous?

Wensleydale sheep have a blue-grey face and long curly locks, and the whole breed traces back to a single famous ram named Bluecap.

Which British island group gives its name to a small fine-fleeced sheep, a pony and a sheepdog?

Shetland sheep are small and slow-growing but prized for very fine fleece, and the island breed is believed to date from before 1000 AD.

Which island nation's sheep descend largely from animals brought by Norse settlers in the ninth and tenth centuries?

Iceland has kept its flocks isolated ever since: live sheep have not normally been imported since the mid-twentieth century.

The Blackbelly, a hair sheep that needs no shearing, comes from which Caribbean island?

Barbados got its hardy sheep from West Africa by about 1650, while European fleeced breeds brought to the island fared badly on its coarse pasture.

In British sheep farming, a crossbred ewe sired by a Bluefaced Leicester ram is known by which other animal's name?

Mule ewes, usually bred from hardy hill mothers such as the Swaledale, bring together toughness, good mothering and plenty of milk.

Which English hill region grew rich in the Middle Ages on the fleece of a longwool sheep nicknamed its 'Lion'?

The Cotswolds spent much of that fortune on building churches, and many of them remain standing among its limestone hills.

The Katahdin, an easy-care sheep that moults instead of needing shearing, was developed in which US state?

Maine farmer Michael Piel began the breed in 1957 by crossing hair sheep from the Virgin Islands with meat breeds, and named it after a mountain in the state.

The Loaghtan, a rare brown sheep whose meat holds protected EU status, is native to which island?

The Isle of Man's native breed takes its name from Manx words meaning mouse-brown, and by the 1950s only 43 of the animals survived.

Which pioneer of Australia's Merino sheep industry was pictured on the country's two-dollar note from 1966 to 1988?

John Macarthur bought his first Merinos in 1797 and is also remembered as a key organiser of the 1808 Rum Rebellion against the colony's governor.

The East Friesian, among the highest-yielding of all milk sheep, takes its name from a coastal region of which country?

Germany's East Frisia lies on the North Sea coast, where households once kept just a few of these ewes each for the family's milk.

Which tiny sheep, reputed to be the world's smallest natural breed, comes from an island off the coast of Brittany?

Ouessant sheep lived only on their home island until the early 1900s, and Paris has since put a small herd of them to work grazing public land.

John Ellman, who bred the Southdown sheep in about 1800, farmed at Glynde in which English county?

Sussex's little Southdown became the basis of the whole Down group of breeds, and in vineyards it weeds the ground without reaching the grapes.

The hardy Swaledale sheep, found across the Pennine fells, is named after a valley in which English county?

Yorkshire's Dales count the Swaledale as an official symbol, and its breeders' association began with farmers living within seven miles of the Tan Hill Inn.

Which English county names the sheep breed found to graze among Christmas trees and orchards without nibbling them?

Shropshire sheep keep the grass short between the trees, and the breed's flock book society, begun in 1882, is the oldest in the United Kingdom.

The Gotland sheep, prized for its curly grey fleece, is named after a Baltic island belonging to which country?

Sweden's breeders are thought to have created it in the 1920s and 1930s by crossing the island's native Gute sheep with Karakuls and Romanovs.

The Targhee sheep was developed at a federal experiment station at Dubois, in which western US state?

Idaho's Targhee National Forest surrounds the station and gave the breed its name; the flock book has been closed to outside animals since 1966.

The Beltex, a heavily muscled sheep, gets its name by blending the Texel breed with which country?

Belgium bred the extra-muscled strain of Texel, and after exports in the late 1980s it was refined into its modern form in the United Kingdom.

Which northern European country's native sheep is famed for litters of lambs, sometimes seven at once?

Finland's Finnsheep ewes commonly breed out of season as well, and some give birth twice in a single year.

The Karakul sheep takes its name from a city in the Bukhara region of which Central Asian country?

Uzbekistan prizes the breed at the table too: Karakul meat, and above all its fat, is an important ingredient in Uzbek cuisine.

On most sheep farms, lambs are born in which season, when the weather turns mild and pasture is plentiful?

Spring births follow from an autumn mating season, since a ewe is pregnant for about five months.

Which antibody-rich first milk should a newborn lamb drink from its mother soon after being born?

Colostrum passes a ewe's own immunity on to her lamb, which is why farmers vaccinate pregnant ewes shortly before lambing.

One of the world's longest fences was built across Australia to protect sheep flocks from which wild predator?

Dingo attacks on flocks led to a barrier stretching 5,614 kilometres, from Queensland's Darling Downs to the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight.

Which term describes moving sheep flocks up to mountain pastures for summer and back to the lowlands for winter?

Transhumance has left its mark on the map: in many languages the word for the high summer pasture, such as Alp in Austria, became a place name.

On a sheep farm, what is the 'lambing jug' that a shepherd sets up before the ewes give birth?

A small pen, the jug holds a ewe and her newborn lambs together so that they bond and the shepherd can watch over them.

Which traditional command tells a sheepdog to circle the flock of sheep clockwise?

Come by sends the dog clockwise, to the left of the flock, while the opposite command, 'away to me', sends it round the other way.

Which big white dog, known to French shepherds as the patou, lives among sheep flocks to guard them from predators?

Great Pyrenees is the breed's American name; the dogs are widely used in the French Alps and the Pyrenees to protect flocks from wolves and bears.

'Yan, tan, tethera' begins a traditional system that shepherds in northern England used for which task?

Counting their sheep in these words, which may descend from a vanished Celtic language, carried over into counting stitches in knitting.

On a sheep farm, which name is given to the coloured marker strapped to a ram's chest during the mating season?

Raddle rubs off on each ewe the ram mounts, so the farmer can tell which have been mated; giving rams different colours shows which sire was responsible.

Which inventor of the first commercially successful sheep-shearing machine also gave his name to a British car maker?

Frederick Wolseley's company made a young Herbert Austin its manager, and it was Austin who steered the shearing-machine firm into building early motor cars.

On a diagram of a sheep's body, which name labels the top of the head between the ears?

Poll fleece has its own name too: sheep farmers call the tuft that grows on the forehead the top knot.

Which part of a sheep is the ridge between its shoulder blades, often the tallest point of the body?

Withers are the standard place to measure the height of a horse or a dog, while cattle are often measured to the top of the hips instead.

Which joint partway up a sheep's hind leg is the counterpart of the human ankle?

Hock is the everyday word for the tarsus, a term mostly kept for long-legged domesticated mammals such as horses, cattle and sheep.

Which word describes a sheep's foot, which is split into two separate toes?

Cloven feet give wild sheep sure footing on cliffs, pairing a hard outer shell with soft inner pads and almost finger-like dexterity.

Which name is given to the groove dividing a sheep's upper lip, which lets it crop plants close to the ground?

Philtrum also names the dent under a human nose; a sheep's split lip lets it graze so closely that it can overgraze a pasture much faster than cattle.

Which part of a sheep's digestive system is called the 'true stomach' because it works most like a human one?

Abomasum walls release acid and digestive enzymes, and the chamber also secretes rennet, the curdling agent used in making cheese.

Which name is given to the brittle, weak fibres left in some sheep's fleeces as traces of a second coat?

Kemp is hollow, so it will not hold dye, which lowers both the quality and the value of any fleece it is mixed into.

On a Merino sheep, which name is given to the loose fold that hangs beneath the neck?

Dewlap is a word shared with many animals that carry a flap under the throat, and it was first recorded in the 1300s for the neck fold of oxen.

Which term names a natural lock of fibres in a sheep's fleece, whose length and strength help set its price?

Staple strength, the force needed to break a lock of a given thickness, is one of the biggest factors in the sale price of a raw fleece.

Which part of a sheep's back, between the lower ribs and the pelvis, gives its name to a classic chop?

Loin chops contain only a chine bone, whereas rib chops come with a rib; butchers often sort lamb into forequarter, loin and hindquarter.

New Zealand's national sheep flock reached its all-time peak in 1982 at roughly what size?

70 million was the high-water mark: by June 2023 the national flock had fallen to about 24.4 million.

Which industry overtook sheep farming in 1987 as New Zealand's most important agricultural sector?

Dairy farming ended a run of 130 years in which sheep had been the country's leading farm industry.

Which country's sheep, at a count taken in 2017, outnumbered its people by roughly 3 to 1?

Wales had more than 10 million sheep that year, nearly a third of Britain's flock, including home breeds such as the Balwen and the Badger Face.

Which US state, better known for cattle and oil, leads the nation in raising sheep?

Texas tops the national tables for cattle, horses, hay and mohair as well.

Which windswept region of southern Argentina and Chile became one of the world's great sheep-farming areas around 1900?

Patagonia's sheep boom drew thousands of immigrants from Chiloé and Europe, and its flocks peaked at more than 21 million head in 1952.

Rawlinna, the largest sheep station in Australia, takes in part of which vast, arid limestone region?

Nullarbor Plain is named from the Latin for 'no tree'; Rawlinna spreads over about 2.5 million acres, roughly 10,000 square kilometres.

In 2013, which Middle Eastern country kept one of the five largest sheep flocks in the world?

Iran's 50.2 million head earned a place in the top five, though that was under a third of the flock kept by the world leader.

Which South Asian country kept one of the largest sheep flocks in the world in 2019?

India had 74.3 million sheep that year, yet they were far outnumbered by the country's 192.5 million cattle.

The Romanov sheep, a breed that takes its name from a town rather than a royal dynasty, originated in which country?

Russia's Romanov lambs are born pure black and soon turn grey as they grow.

Which US president's wife set sheep to graze the White House lawn rather than spare workers to mow it?

Woodrow Wilson's wife Edith also had the flock's fleece auctioned off to raise money for the American Red Cross.