Polled Dorset

The Dorset is the answer to a specific problem: most sheep will only breed in autumn. Dorsets will breed out of season, which means a flock can lamb twice a year or lamb in autumn for a spring market instead of competing with everyone else.

The Polled Dorset is the hornless version. It appeared in 1949 in a horned flock at North Carolina State College, was propagated deliberately, and now outnumbers the horned original in the United States.

They are all white, medium sized, and the ewes are heavy milkers that raise twins well.

The trade is the carcass and the fleece. A Dorset lamb finishes smaller than a Suffolk cross, so the breed earns its place through the ewe and the lambing calendar rather than through terminal growth, and the fleece is medium and unremarkable.