Istriana
sheep breed
The Istriana or Carsolina, Croatian: 'Istarska Ovca', Slovene: 'Istrska Pramenka', is a breed of domestic sheep from Istria and the Karst regions of the northern Adriatic, from north-east Italy to Croatia and Slovenia.
History
The Istriana breed appears to derive from inter-breeding of local Italian stock with breeds from the Balkans, and particularly with animals brought to the area by the Morlachs, Dacian refugees from the Ottoman invasions of the 17th century.
In 1869 the sheep population in Istria was estimated at 160,000; the Istriana was the predominant breed. In the 1980s it was to a large extent supplanted by sheep of pramenka type from Kosovo, Macedonia and Metohija, which had a similar resistance to the harsh conditions of the peninsula, but lower productivity of both milk and meat and lower resistance to disease. Attempts were made to increase the milk yield by cross-breeding with Awassi, East Friesian and Sarda stock. A project for the recovery of the traditional type of Istriana sheep has been launched in Croatia, and involves exchange of genetic material with Italy. A breeders' association, the Associazione degli Allevatori della Pecora Istriana nella Regione Istriana "Istrijanka", was formed at Sanvincenti (Svetvinčenat) in 2005. Breeding stock is estimated at 2300 head. The total number reported for 2013 was 2900–3300; for Slovenia it was 1150.
In Italy, the Istriana is one of the forty-two autochthonous local sheep breeds of limited distribution for which a herdbook is kept by the Associazione Nazionale della Pastorizia, the Italian national association of sheep-breeders.
The public source identifies “Istriana” as sheep breed. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Istriana, sheep and breed.
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This entry incorporates text from “Istriana” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.