Lincoln Sheep

Lincoln Sheep is a large long-wool sheep breed developed in the county of Lincolnshire in eastern England, among the largest sheep breeds in the world by body size, prized historically for a heavy fleece of long, lustrous wool. Breeders refined the Lincoln from older local long-wool sheep stock in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the breed's wool became an important raw material for worsted textile manufacturing in England. Lincoln sheep were exported widely from the nineteenth century onward to Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and elsewhere, where they were used both directly for wool and meat production and to improve the size and fleece quality of other long-wool breeds through crossbreeding. The breed remains best known today for its distinctive long, curling wool locks, which are also valued by hand spinners and fiber artists.