Estonian Ruhnu
sheep breed
Estonian Ruhnu sheep (Estonian: Ruhnu maalammas) are a breed of native domesticated sheep found on the small Estonian island of Ruhnu in the Gulf of Riga in the Baltic Sea.
The Estonian Ruhnu sheep population is thought to descend from sheep left on Ruhnu by Swedish-speaking inhabitants who settled on the island in the 14th century.
In 1944, a population of 300 sheep was documented. The current population of the breed is around 30 animals. It is thought that Estonian Ruhnu sheep were originally raised for producing meat and wool.
Physical adaptations of the Estonian Ruhnu sheep population to seaside pastures and small paddocks suggests that these sheep have had a rather long period to adapt to their environment. Most of the small population of Ruhnu sheep are white or cream colored with greyish head and legs and some have a distinctive "badgerface" pattern. The ewes are polled, and approximately 10% of rams are horned. The sheep have short or medium- length tails. Distinctive from many other breeds of sheep, some Estonian Ruhnu sheep have one or two beads under the jaw.
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This entry incorporates text from “Estonian Ruhnu” 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.