COTSWOLD HISTORY NOTES

COTSWOLDS - THE GENTLE GIANTS

One of the world's most beautiful and rare sheep comes from
the hills of the Cotswolds in England, less than 20 miles from
the Welsh border. They are thought to be descended from a
long wool introduced by the Romans in the first century A.D.
This prototype sheep gave birth to the Cotswold, Lincoln and
Leicester.

The Cotswold was well established by the 15th Century and the
wealth obtained from these "gentle giants" paid for many of the
great Cathedrals and churches in England, most notable
Gloucester Cathedral. The word Cotswold stems from the wolds
(hills) and cotes (enclosures) which housed the sheep in bad
weather, hence the wolds of the sheep cotes.

Cotswolds played a great part in early American farming history
even though today they are rare.

They were first introduced by Christopher Dunn into New York,
near Albany in 1832.  By 1879 this was the most popular breed
in America. By 1914 over 760,000 were recorded and it was still
a very popular breed in the West until Merinos were introduced
from Australia. Merinos had the finest fleece and quick maturing
lambs. By the 1980's there were fewer than 600 Cotswolds in all
of Britain and in the US; in 1993 there were less than 400 lambs
registered.

Thanks to the American Livestock Breeders Conservancy and
other groups, Cotswolds have been removed from the "rare
breed list" and are enjoying popularity among spinners. The
Cotswold can yield 15 pounds of wool per shearing with the
fiber up to 12" long. It is highly lustrous fleece with a micron
count in the 40s and is sometimes called poorman's mohair.

The Cotswold is a large, polled breed, with ewes weighing up to
200 pounds and rams 300 pounds. The ewes are excellent
mothers, with few birthing problems and quick to accept lambs.
They are a very friendly sheep and there is definitely a queenly
quality about the ewes.

The meat has a very mild flavor and aroma. It has been proven
that long wool sheep have a less muttony flavor than fine
wooled breeds. Cotswolds are easy to raise and do well on
coarser feeds and are excellent foragers and can thrive in harsh
climates, even with a lot of rainfall.

The earliest Cotswolds were white but black Cotswolds were
recorded in Kentucky in 1858. They are even more rare than
the whites, and it is not known if the incidence of color is due to
recessive genes or some fence jumper from long ago! They
should have the same characteristics as the whites.

There is a revived interest in Cotswolds due to the desire of
sheep growers to improve wool quality and produce lean,
heavyweight lambs on less feed.