Herdwick Sheep

The Herdwick is a hardy domestic sheep breed native to Englands Lake District, its name derived from the Old Norse for sheep pasture; its ancestors likely arrived with Norse settlers in the tenth or eleventh centuries, and the breed was established in the region by the twelfth century. Herdwick lambs are born black and lighten with age, first to dark brown and then, after their first shearing, to grey; rams are horned and ewes are polled, and the breeds coarse grey fleece suits carpeting and insulation rather than fine textiles. It is farmed almost entirely within the central and western Lake District for strongly flavoured lamb and mutton as well as wool, was severely reduced by the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak, which killed about a quarter of the roughly 100,000 then living, and its meat gained European Union Protected Designation of Origin status as Lakeland Herdwick in 2013.