Cambridge

The Cambridge is a dark faced, medium sized sheep with an average quality white fleece. It was founded in 1964 at Cambridge University. The female foundation stock consisted of very prolific ewes selected within native breeds. Most ewes were from the Clun Forest breed, but the Lleyn, Llanwenog and Kerry Hill breeds also contributed signficantly, and the Radnor, Ryeland, Border Leicester, and Suffolk to a lesser extent.

These ewes were crossed with Finn rams and the resultant F1 males were backcrossed with the foundation stock to reduce the Finn contribution to 20 percent. The particular value of the Cambridge is for crossing with other breeds and crossbreeds to produce a superior halfbred ewe. The breed has a very high prolificacy, most of which can be attributed to the presence of a single gene which has a major effect on ovulation.

Breed categories: medium wool, meat, prolific