Vendéen sheep are raised mainly as lean meat and known to produce large litters of lambs. The breed is often used among farmers as a terminal sire for producing lambs for meat.
Vendéen sheep characteristics
- The ewes and rams are usually docile including to the simplicity of management.
- Potential to have three crops of lambs within a couple of years.
- They’ve fine, medium-length wool.
- The breed is easily handled and is suitable for many management systems.
- The sheep will accommodate to broad systems on inferior land, there are several flocks stored at 1,000 feet or else they could be intensively managed on good lowland pasture.
- Their faces and legs have dark brown or grey hair.
- The basic length is 5 to 7 cm and the average UK fleece weighs 3.5 kg per sheep.
- The fleece is made of excellent quality, being of a fine down kind and quite uniform in fiber length, with no rough kemp yarn on the lower part of the hindquarters.
- Both Vendéen ewes and rams are often polled, but occasionally rams can have little horns.
- Ewes usually lamb easily on their own, lambing problems are rare, and the lambs are excited to live, they”get up and grow”. The standard birth weight of lambs is 4 to 6kg.
- Normal body weight for adult males is 95 kg to 140 kg and also for females 80 kg to 110 kg.
- Prolificacy for adult ewes is normally in excess of 200 percent and also for ewe lambs 180 percent.
- Ewes and lots of their crosses breed obviously from a year without sponging, tups are eager workers.
Vendéen Sheep for sale
Tups are utilized on a wide variety of breeds (like pedigree Vendéens) to produce a carcass of good conformation (E, U, or R) using a fat category of 3L or even better in most cases at weights of normally between 16 to 20 kg but even up to 25 kg that the carcass will not be fat.
Lambs are usually prepared for the market by ten to fifteen weeks old with small extra feeding.
History of Vendéen sheep
It was developed by crossing local ewes with Southdown rams in the early 19th century. The Vendéen breed has been known in the Vendee area of France and is said to spend some of its own blood to sheep stored from the wrecks of Spanish galleons in the time of the Armada.
Recently sheep are chosen to provide lean meat as required from the French industry. Further selection has been made lately for prolificacy and hardiness.
The very first importation into Britain was in 1981 (at about which time the British Vendéen Sheep Society was formed) if the initial ewe lambs to be imported all produced twins.
Brief characteristics of Vendéen sheep
| Breed Name | Vendéen sheep |
| Other Name | |
| Country/Place of Origin | France |
| Breed Purpose | Meat |
| Breed Size | Medium |
| Weight Ram(Male) | 120 kg (260 lbs) |
| Ewe(Female) | 100 kg (220 lbs) |
| Kidding | two lambs |
| Good for Stall Fed | open grazing and Stall-fed |
| Climate Tolerance | All Climates |
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