Wiltshire Horn Sheep

The Wiltshire Horn is a British domestic sheep breed originating in Wiltshire in southern England, raised for meat and unusual among native British sheep for shedding its coat naturally each spring rather than requiring shearing. Both rams and ewes carry horns, growing a full spiral each year to maturity, and the animal is white with occasional black spots on the undercoat; rams weigh about 110 kilograms and ewes about 68 kilograms, and the breed is known for high fertility and good mothering. Once predominant across southern England through the 18th century, it nearly went extinct by the early 20th century; the Wiltshire Horn Breed Society, founded in 1923 to preserve it, recorded about 300 registered flocks by 2009, up from just 45 in the early 1980s.