North American Wensleydales

The North American Wensleydale is a very large longwool sheep with long-stapled, lustrous fleece that falls in ringlets.  They have been described by the British Meat and Livestock Commission as "probably the heaviest of all our indigenous breeds." It is a visually striking sheep with considerable presence. It has a bold and alert carriage which is accentuated by its broad, level back and heavy muscling in the hindquarters. It has a distinctive deep blue head and ears, which should be clean except for a well developed forelock of wool.  The breed has a quality known as 'central checking’ that prevents the formation of kemp in the fleece.  This characteristic is most pronounced in Wensleydales and responsible for producing a completely kemp-free fleece in pure-bred sheep. This attribute is passed on in high degree to cross-bred offspring.

The Wensleydale breed was developed in the UK to provide rams for crossing onto hill ewes, mainly Swaledale, Blackface, Rough Fell, Cheviot & Dalesbred.  The female crossbreds develop into prolific, heavy-milking, hardy breeding ewes while the wethers, under natural conditions and on marginal ground, provide quality carcasses at higher weight, with no excess fat.

SCRAPIE RESISTANCE

The Wensleydale has the highest genetic resistance to scrapie of all recognized sheep breeds in the United Kingdom,.  

The United States Department of Agriculture currently prohibits importing of live animals and embryos from the United Kingdom. The North American Wensleydale Sheep Association, with the enthusiastic encouragement and support of the Wensleydale Longwool Sheep Breeders Association, U.K., has developed guidelines for up-grading by using imported semen in order to establish the Wensleydale breed on this continent.  Rams recognized in the NAWSA registry, whether imported as semen or naturally bred, must test RR at codon 171.

USDA/APHIS regulations mandate that in order to purchase semen from the United Kingdom, you must be enrolled in the Voluntary Scrapie Flock Certification Program (VSFCP).