Dictionary:

sheep

  (shēp)

1. Any of various usually horned ruminant mammals of the genus Ovis in the family Bovidae, especially the domesticated species O. aries, raised in many breeds for wool, edible flesh, or skin.
2. Leather made from the skin of one of these animals.
3. 1. A person regarded as timid, weak, or submissive.
   2. One who is easily swayed or led.

[Middle English, from Old English scēap.]

Sheep are members of the family Bovidae in the order Artiodactyla, the even-toed, hoofed mammals. Sheep were possibly the first animals to be domesticated about 11,000 years ago in southwestern Asia. See also Artiodactyla.

Wild sheep range over the mountainous areas of the Northern Hemisphere. They have long, curved, massive horns and mixed coats with a hairy outercoat and a woolly undercoat. Although wild sheep vary in size, they are usually larger than domestic sheep and have shorter tails.

Sheep are called lambs until about 12 months of age, from which time to 24 months they are referred to as yearlings, and thereafter as two-year-olds, and so on. The female sheep is called a ewe and the male, a ram or buck; the castrated male is called a wether. Sheep meat is called lamb or mutton depending on the age at slaughter.

A precise definition is difficult since sheep are so variable. Horns, if present, tend to curl in a spiral. If horns occur in both sexes, they are usually larger for the ram. In some breeds only the rams have horns but many breeds are hornless. The hairy outercoat common to wild sheep was eliminated by breeding in most domestic sheep. Wool may cover the entire sheep, or the face, head, legs, and part of the underside may be bare; or wool may be absent as in some breeds (bred for meat) with a short hairy coat or a coat which constantly sheds. Although domestic sheep are mostly white, shades of brown, gray, and black occur, sometimes with spotting or patterns of color. See also Wool.

Hundreds of breeds of sheep of all types, sizes, and colors are found over the world. Wool-type breeds, mostly of Merino origin, are important in the Southern Hemisphere, but both fine- and longwool types are distributed all over the world. Sheep with fat tails or fat rumps are common in the desert areas of Africa and Asia. These usually produce carpet wool. Milk breeds are found mostly in central and southern Europe. Meat breeds from the British Isles are common over the world.

An investor who lacks a focused trading strategy and trades on emotion and the suggestions of others, including friends, family and financial gurus. This type of investor often makes rash investments without reviewing their financial viability. The behavior of sheep contrasts with that of bulls and bears, who have focused views about the market.

Investopedia Says:
Like a sheep, this type of investor is a follower, relying on a shepherd for guidance. These shepherds can come in the form of financial pundits or the latest trend or market story.

Sheep-like investors are often the last to get in on a major market move, such as the tech boom of the late '90s, because they base their investments on what is being talked about the most. Many experts believe that sheep-like investors are the most likely to sustain investment losses because they have no clear investment strategy.

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Discover why it's important to know the characteristics of the two types of market conditions. Digging Deeper Into Bull And Bear Markets
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For more information on sheep, visit Britannica.com.

Sixteenth-century European colonists introduced sheep into the Americas. They accompanied the Spanish to Mexico, while the English brought sheep to Virginia and Massachusetts. They came along with the Dutch to New York and with the Swedes to New Jersey. These animals were unimproved, however, because farm-ers had yet to begin selective breeding of their sheep.

In colonial times, famers raised sheep as a part of self-sufficient agriculture to supply wool for homespun clothing and not for commercial purposes. Because of wolves, improper care, and British competition, the number of sheep remained relatively few and the quality and quantity of the wool poor. The industry improved somewhat during the American Revolution but slumped after peace and the resumption of British trade.

The first decades of the nineteenth century witnessed a marked change. Two events of importance occurred: the introduction of merino sheep and the exclusion of British competitors from the American market by the various nonintercourse acts and the War of 1812. In 1801–1802, the first merinos arrived from France and Spain. In 1807, with the passage of the Embargo Act, native mills increased, wool prices skyrocketed, and the demand for fine-wool sheep became insatiable. A merino craze followed. Merino wool sold for $2 a pound, and the early importers sold sheep for $1,000 a head. In the midst of this craze, the Napoleonic armies broke the Spanish restrictions on the exportation of merinos, and between 1808 and 1811, importers brought approximately 24,000 merinos into the United States. Sheep raising had entered its commercial phase.

After 1815 British woolen importations again depressed the industry. Soon, however, the growth of the factory system and the tariff of 1828 revived it. Woolen manufactures doubled in a decade, the price of wool went up, and eastern flocks increased tremendously. In the 1830s, 60 percent of American sheep were in New England and the middle Atlantic states. After 1840, because of westward migration, improved transportation facilities, easy access to cheap western land, and an increase in the prices of foodstuffs, the center of sheep raising shifted westward. By 1850 it was in the Ohio Valley.

The Civil War produced a second merino craze. After the war, the type of sheep raised in the United States underwent improvement through importations of European breeds and selective breeding. Sheep raising continued to expand west to the Rocky Mountains and Pacific coast states. Farmers in this region at first concentrated on wool production, while those of the eastern United States, under the stimulus of growing urban markets, shifted to mutton production. Eastern sheep farmers turned to new English mutton breeds, including the Leicester and Shropshire. After 1890 sheep growers of the western United States began to place more emphasis on dual-purpose sheep, and mutton production and lamb feeding developed in this area as well.

The importance of western states in the raising of sheep continued into the twentieth century, and by 1935, 60 percent of all the sheep in the United States were in that region. The total number of sheep raised throughout the country reached a peak of 51.8 million that same year. By 1973 the number of sheep had declined to 17.7 million. Of these, only 48 percent were coming from the western states, which represented a shift away from the region. By 2000 the number had fallen even more steeply to only 7 million, but the western United States had regained its dominance of the industry, with Texas leading the nation in both number of sheep-raising operations and animals. Currently, 80 percent of sheep in the United States are raised for consumption, but because few Americans regularly eat lamb or mutton, Mexico imports the vast majority of the meat. Nonetheless, the burgeoning Hispanic and Middle Eastern population in the United States, which does frequently consume lamband mutton, is increasing the domestic demand for the product.

Bibliography

Carlson, Paul Howard. Texas Woollybacks: The Range Sheep and Goat Industry. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1982.

Crockett, Norman L. The Woolen Industry of the Midwest. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970.

Gemming, Elizabeth. Wool Gathering: Sheep Raising in Old New England. New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1979.

Miller, Char, ed. Fluid Arguments: Five Centuries of Western Water Conflict. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001.

Wagner, Frederic H. Predator Control and the Sheep Industry: The Role of Science in Policy Formation. Claremont, Calif.: Regina Books, 1988.

If the dog is humankind's best friend, then sheep are its most ancient provider. Sheep may be the first domesticated ruminant, tamed by nomadic people in the Middle East and Asia 11,000 years ago, perhaps even before agriculture gave rise to civilization. Thousands of years before sheep appear in the writings of Abrahamic faiths, they were slaughtered for religious rituals. Neolithic farmers, who raised them for meat, herded them into Europe. Wool breeds appeared at least 8,000 years ago, in plenty of time to supply the looms of ancient Egypt and Babylon. Vikings carried sheep to Iceland. The Spanish brought them to the Americas. Today, sheep are found from the Arctic region to Australia and in the tropics from Africa to the Caribbean. Yet the world's billion sheep are a modest source of meat. Humans eat ten times as much pork as lamb and mutton. Sheep is not a forbidden food, though. It is eaten readily by Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Christians. And thanks to its global acceptance, lamb can be a gourmand's delight. Its earthy flavors blend well with the spicy seasonings of Spanish asadar, Chinese red-cooked lamb, or just the smoke of an open-pit barbecue.

Origins

Sheep, the species Ovis aries, are descended from the mouflon, an endangered wild sheep native to Asia Minor and Cyprus. The mouflon has a reddish-brown hair coat with an undercoat that is shed seasonally. Europe also has a mouflon that prefers rocky slopes of mountains and may have escaped from flocks of primitive domesticated sheep. Wild and domestic sheep and goats belong to the sub-family Caprini, which evolved ten to twenty million years ago in the mountains of Central Asia. They are in the order of mammals Artiodactyla, which means even-toed, hoofed. That order includes ruminant livestock such as cattle. Bacteria in the rumen help these animals digest cellulose in grasses. With more than two hundred domestic breeds, sheep may have the largest number of breeds that are in active commercial production.

In the United States, most sheep are eaten as lamb, animals that are less than a year old. Worldwide, much lamb, especially "spring lamb" slaughtered at three to seven months of age, is not grain fed. (In the United States, most lamb is grain fed, which gives it a milder flavor.) Lambs sold for meat usually weigh between 70 and 100 pounds, accounting for the relatively low rate of world lamb consumption as compared with other livestock. A mature market hog, for instance, is more than twice as heavy, and pigs are much more prolific. Adult female sheep, or ewes, weigh about 150 to 200 pounds while mature males, or rams, weigh about 250 to 350 pounds. Mutton, the meat of mature sheep, is more popular in Britain and Europe than in the United States.

Methods of Consumption

In the developed world, sheep are processed and slaughtered in much the same way as cattle and hogs, in assembly-line, refrigerated packing plants. But in the tropics and deserts where they are still herded by nomadic people, they offer the advantage of being small enough to be consumed in a day, eliminating the need for refrigeration.

As with other meats, lamb's fat content varies with cooking methods and the cut of lamb chosen. Lamb loin chops, which correspond to pork loin chops and New York Strip steak in beef, are slightly leaner than either the beef or pork cuts, with 9.73 grams of fat in a 100-gram cooked serving trimmed to ¼ inch fat and broiled, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture nutritional data. With 2 milligrams of iron, lamb has twice as much iron as pork, and nearly as much as the 2.47 milligrams in beef. Lamb is also a good source of phosphorus and zinc.

A comparison by the American Sheep Industry Association, a trade group, shows a 3-ounce portion of lean cooked lamb leg has 7 grams of fat, equal to that in beef round, less than fresh pork ham or chicken dark meat (both with 8 grams of fat), but more than the 4 grams of fat in chicken light meat.

The consumer group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C., lists lamb souvlaki at Greek restaurants as a relatively healthy food that compares favorably with other forms of red meat, at 310 calories and 11 grams of fat.

In a few less developed areas of the world, sheep are kept mainly for milk, or blood. A well-known vestige of sheep milking in the developed world is Roquefort cheese, made in France. Sheep's milk has almost twice as much fat as cow's milk (6.7 percent), but is denser in other nutrients as well, including calcium.

The main nonnutritional product of sheep is wool. Wool is one of the few fibers that will maintain body heat when wet. Wool also makes durable, fire-resistant rugs and carpets. Other widely used sheep products include skins and pelts for coats and rugs. Sheep lanolin, the purified grease that is washed from wool, is found in many cosmetics, salves, and ointments.

Nomadic Livestock with a Rich History

Archeologists have found evidence of sheep domestication from about 11,000 years ago, in northeastern Iran. Sheep bones nearly as old have been found in Palestine. A small statue of a woolly sheep from about 6,000 B.C.E. that was found in Iraq shows that the development of wool breeds is also ancient. By 6,000 years ago, Egyptians and Babylonians were weaving spun wool into fabric.

Sheep appear in early religious and mythological writing and history. In Ancient Egypt, the ram was the symbol of several gods. In Greek mythology Jason pursued the Golden Fleece. The Abraham of the Bible and Torah sacrificed a ram instead of his son. Long before agriculture gave rise to civilization, human hunting cultures seemed to have worshiped animals. The 30,000-year-old paintings of animals at the Chauvet Cave in France include the ibex, a wild relative of goats. Perhaps because sheep were domesticated early, their slaughter became ritualized in religious ceremonies.

Sheep breeds have outlasted civilizations. The Merino, which has come to dominate high-quality wool production today in Australia, the world's top wool exporter, may date to the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius in the first century C.E. Many in the sheep industry believe that the breed was developed then in what is now Spain when breeders crossed the Roman Taren-tine breed with the Laodician sheep of Asia Minor. When the Romans reached Britain, other sheep breeds were already there. The Romans built Britain's first woolen mill in Winchester in about 50 C.E. In the centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire, both Britain and Spain dominated wool production. In Spain, selling Merino sheep without the permission of the king was a crime punishable by death.

Spanish monarchs did allow explorers to bring Merinos to the New World. The Navajo sheep in the United States and the Criollo of Latin America are their descendants. When slaves were brought to the Americas, African sheep breeds adapted to hot climates came with them. These breeds have a coat of shorter hair and do not produce wool. The West African Dwarf type of sheep gave rise to several tropical American breeds, including the Barbados Blackbelly. The Tunis breed of North Africa was two thousand years old when George Washington imported some to rebuild his own sheep flock after his presidency.

Sheep have long been herded by nomads in Central Asia. The portable dwellings, or yurts, of Mongolia are made of wool felt. In the fourth century B.C.E., the Chinese called the hinterlands of central Asia "the land of felt."

In contrast to tropical sheep, primitive sheep breeds from northern Europe have long outer wool coats of up to 15 inches in length as well as a soft inner coat. The Icelandic sheep, brought to Iceland by the Vikings in 874 C.E., are the purest breed of this type.

Modern sheep production began in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with two important developments. One is that the Spanish monopoly ended when Napoléon invaded Spain, making Merino sheep widely accessible. The other was the development of meatier breeds of wooled sheep in Britain in the eighteenth century by Robert Bakewell, an English agriculturalist who revolutionized the breeding of sheep and cattle through selection and inbreeding. At a time when wool prices were depressed, Bakewell began to select Leicester sheep that were heavier and stockier. This helped feed Britain's Industrial Revolution. Sheep were not herded long distances in Britain as they were in Spain, so the British Isles developed many more local breeds. Other breeders followed Bakewell's example of choosing breeds that have a dual purpose. In the United States, dual purpose and wooled breeds that excel in meat production are preferred in the eastern half of the country. The finer wool breeds are preferred for the western range because they are easier to herd.

Though adaptable and hardy, sheep are more difficult to raise in the humid tropics. They are scarce in Southeast Asia and the islands of the South Pacific and even northern tropical Australia.

Effects of Domestication

Domestication has changed sheep so much that they are almost helpless in the wild, according to animal scientists M. E. Ensminger and R. O. Parker, who in Sheep and Goat Science note that "domesticated sheep of all breeds are universally timid and defenseless and the least intelligent and least teachable of all the domestic four-footed animal. . . . Unlike other farm animals, they are unable to return to a wild life" (p. 4).

The Merino are among the most easily herded sheep. For centuries in Spain they were driven to northern pastures in the spring and back south in the fall. This resulted in selection for ease of herding. More primitive breeds remain more independent. Sheep farmers in Iceland often lose a few of their Icelandic sheep when driving them from summer mountain pastures to lowlands. One unusual type of sheep in Hawaii, the Feral Hawaiian, mostly of Merino stock, has confounded the experts by actually going wild. It was introduced in 1791 when Captain George Vancouver visited the islands.

Trends in Sheep Production

Britain and Spain once dominated sheep production and trade. In the early twenty-first century, dominance has shifted to former British colonies of the Southern Hemisphere. Australia ranks first in wool exports. Second-ranked New Zealand is a big exporter of carpet wool, mainly from its Romney breed, a native of English lowlands. Both nations are also top exporters of lamb. At the end of the twentieth century, Australia had 115.8 million head of sheep, slightly behind the world's largest flock, 131 million head in China (where they are mainly for domestic use). New Zealand was third with 45 million sheep, followed by South Africa and Turkey. China is a leading importer of wool for its mills.

By contrast, the United States produced only about 7 million sheep and lambs in 2001, a sharp decline from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the United States had nearly ten times as many sheep—61 million head. U.S. wool production has fallen from 260 million pounds to 49 million in a century.

American agricultural practices and the rise of industrial fibers—plastic—contributed to this decline. The industry survived in Great Britain, partly due to European Union subsidies. In the United States, government subsidies rewarded eastern U.S. crop farmers who grew corn and soybeans instead of those raising small marginal flocks. Corn and soybeans then flowed to large, mechanized complexes for hog and poultry, which convert grain to protein faster than can sheep. In the western range land, the federal government dropped wool subsidies in 1996 only to reinstate them in 2002 in an attempt to help a struggling industry. Only about 1 percent of the meat consumed by Americans was lamb. By 2000 per capita lamb consumption in the United States was less than 1 pound per year, compared to an estimated 221 pounds per year of all red meats and poultry. Growing popularity of ethnic foods, along with immigration from Mediterranean nations that relish lamb, ensured a remaining niche market for this meat. But outside of large cities, many consumers had to hunt in grocery store meat cases for a package or two of lamb chops or perhaps a single leg of lamb.

Reasons for the decline in U.S. sheep production seem to be both economic and cultural. Competition from plastic fibers, including polyester fleece, which has some of the desirable properties of wool, has hurt demand for a key product from sheep. A booming economy in the late twentieth century contributed to the already tough task of finding workers willing to take on the solitary task of herding sheep on the western range.

American taste for lamb may have been hurt by bad experiences of American servicemen and women during World War II, who sometimes ate old mutton from Australia and New Zealand and mistook it for lamb. But the main factor is undoubtedly economic. With a small market for U.S. wool, and therefore lamb, the meat has become an exotic, more expensive specialty food. A similar decline has taken place in Canada.

North America has also faced stiff competition from New Zealand and from the Australians, who rival the Spaniards as finicky producers of fine wool, developing several strains of Merino breeds best adapted to their climate. Both Australia and New Zealand offer longer grazing seasons than the northern United States and Canada, giving those nations another advantage. New Zealand farmers can graze their sheep from eight to twelve months of the year and are world leaders in developing microchip-controlled electric fences to allow the most efficient use of pastures. A flock is moved into a small paddock where the sheep graze all of the available forage before moving into another small field. New Zealanders can raise twenty-five sheep on a hectare of land (2.47 acres) with this method.

Unlike American and European farmers, Australia's and New Zealand's sheep producers receive no large government subsidies, which keeps their farm economies lean, preventing artificial inflation of land prices that boost costs. As the twenty-first century began, both nations had an exporting advantage of lower-valued currencies compared to the American dollar.

Even so, the returns in 2002 on sheep production in Australia lagged behind those enjoyed by U.S. grain farmers, and in New Zealand, where there are a dozen sheep for every person, the sheep population has declined from a peak of 70.3 million in 1982 to about 45 million, "due to declining profits compared to other types of farming," explains a wool products website, Sheep World.

The biggest challenge to sheep may still be plastic. Australian researchers are looking for new ways to turn wool into a fabric without weaving—a response to a 10 percent annual growth in "nonwovens," synthetic fabrics used in car seats, home draperies, and disposable wipes. Ironically, felt, the original nonwoven material, was made from sheep's fleece before spinning and weaving were invented. If the wool industry can compete successfully with the plastics industry, the availability of lamb as a food might increase.

A Case for Saving Sheep

From a gastronomic perspective alone, it would be a shame if sheep became extinct. Chefs Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly argue in The Complete Meat Cookbook that lamb's flavor "makes this animal a favorite in cuisines all over the world. . . . No meat marries better with the pungent flavors of garlic, mustard, rosemary, thyme, oregano, savory and fennel, to name just a few" (p. 427). Among the world's most notable lamb dishes are Moroccan lemon tagine; kabobs (called souvlaki in Greece; sis kebabi in Turkey); and baked leg of lamb asadar from Spain (in Spain a whole lamb is roasted in a wood-fired brick oven).

Do-it-yourself gourmands should be aware of pitfalls. To avoid lamb's hard fat, which some people find disagreeable when it becomes cold, trim as much fat as is possible from lamb before cooking and be sure to keep lamb dishes hot at the table.

Other practical reasons for saving sheep include environmental ones. Although sheep were associated with some of the first human environmental degradation—soil erosion associated with overgrazing—properly managed, sheep can improve grasslands and range land. They will eat weedy plants that cattle ignore, including sagebrush, leafy spurge, and tansy ragwort. Some ranchers and wheat farmers consider them more effective at controlling plant pests than herbicides.

One serious problem that could instantly make sheep an unwanted food source is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. Sheep may have been the indirect source of this dreaded affliction, known as mad cow disease. The incurable disease literally turns a cow's brain spongy, causing a progressive dementia that kills the animal. In Britain, rendered sheep, goat, and cattle not fit for human use were added to cattle feed to boost the protein content. Some scientists believe that a related disease in sheep, scrapie, somehow crossed the "species barrier" when the rendered sheep were fed to cattle in the 1980s. Scrapie, a rare but very old disease of sheep, has never been known to infect humans, but BSE apparently has killed Britons who ate infected beef. This family of diseases, which also includes chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, is poorly understood. The infectious agent is a prion, a type of protein that has no genetic material, like a virus or bacteria. Prions are extremely resistant to heat and antiseptics and can survive in soil for years. Yet certain types of sheep seem to have a greater genetic disposition to scrapie than others.

European and British health officials are concerned that sheep in that part of the world may also have been infected with BSE, rather than normal scrapie. If so, it would have the potential to make European lamb unsafe to eat. Even though scrapie itself is not deadly to humans, the possible confusion of BSE in sheep with scrapie has led the United States to start a scrapie eradication program in domestic sheep. New Zealand and Australia are believed to be free of the scrapie as well as BSE.

Finally, the loss of sheep and lambs to competition from plastic fabrics and more industrialized meats would be a blow to the collective memory of human history and tradition. The Bible has more references to lambs and sheep than to any other animal. The blood of the lamb protected Jews during the first Passover. Muslims break the month-long fast of Ramadan with a meal of lamb and rice. And to Christians, the lamb is the symbol of Christ sacrificed on the cross.

As a result of the efforts of rare breed preservationists, hobbyists, and home wool spinners, it is unlikely that sheep will ever become completely extinct, even if their long-term commercial success faces challenges.

Bibliography

Aidells, Bruce, and Denis Kelly. The Complete Meat Cookbook. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

Dohner, Janet Vorwald. The Encyclopedia of Historic and Endangered Livestock and Poultry Breeds. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.

Ensminger, M. E., and R. O. Parker. Sheep & Goat Science. Animal Agriculture Series. 5th ed. Danville, Ill.: Interstate Printers, 1986.

Gatenby, Ruth M. Sheep Production in the Tropics and Sub-Tropics. New York: Longman, 1986.

Harris, Marvin. Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985.

Sheep World Web site. Available at http://www.sheepworld.co.nz.SheepFarming.htm.

Simmons, Paula. Raising Sheep the Modern Way. Pownal, Vt.: Storey, 1989.

United States Department of Agriculture. Nutrient Database for Standard Reference Release 14. 2001. Available at http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/SR14/reports/sr14page.htm.

—Dan Looker

Member of the species Ovis aries. They are classified into several types including merino, shortwool meat breeds, longwool, carpetwool, fat-tail, wool-shedding, Karakul. All domesticated types are characterized by a wool fleece.

• Bighorn s. — see bighorn sheep.
• carpetwool s. — includes blackfaced mountain, carpetmaster, drysdale, elliottdale and tukidale.
• Dall s. — see dall sheep.
• s. dog — see shepherd dogs.
• s. dip — see dip.
• dual-purpose s. — breeds generated to provide meat and wool. Include charollaise, corriedale, cormo, dormer, gromark, perendale, polwarth, zenith.
• easy-care s. — see easy-care sheep.
• fat-tailed s. — see fat-tailed sheep.
• s.–goat hybrid — mating and fertilization can be achieved but the fetus dies early or is aborted.
• heafed s. — sheep such as Herdwicks and Swaledales in the UK that graze the same area of unfenced hill area without shepherding, year after year, and teach this behavior to their lambs. Also called hefted sheep.
• s. itch mite — see psorergates ovis.
• s. ked — see melophagus ovinus.
• s. loco — astragalus nothoxys.
• s. measles — see ovine cysticercosis.
• meat s. — includes English Longwool breeds (see under wool sheep below) and shortwool or Downs sheep, e.g. southdown, suffolk, hampshire, oxford down, dorset horn, poll dorset, ryeland, shropshire and charollaise, cheviot, clun forest, colbred, columbia, coopworth, dormer, dorper, many indigenous fat-tailed and fat-rumped breeds, finnish-landrace, north ronaldsay, wensleydale.
• s. nasal bot — oestrus ovis.
• s. pox — see sheeppox.
• s.-scab — see psoroptic mange.
• s. sorrel — rumex acetosella.
• s. tick — sheep ked. See melophagus ovinus.
• wool s. — includes australian merino (including a wide range of strains and types especially booroola and comeback), cormo, corriedale, polwarth, sharlea, american rambouillet and English Longwools such as lincoln, leicester, border leicester, cheviot, coopworth, romney marsh.