Latvian Dark-Head Sheep

a breed of semifine-wooled, early-maturing sheep of the meat and wool type, developed in the 20th century in Latvia by crossing local coarse-wooled ewes with Shropshire and Oxfordshire rams.

The Latvian dark-head has a sturdy constitution and a delicate bone structure. The rams weigh 90–110 kg (maximum, to 150 kg); the ewes weigh 55–60 kg (maximum, 95 kg). The young weigh 28–35 kg (sometimes to 50 kg) by the age of four or five months. The dressing percentage is 50–55. The fleece is uniform (length, 8–10 cm; fineness, 48th-50th class). The clipping from the rams weighs 5–6 kg, and from the ewes, 3.5–4.5 kg. The pure wool yield comes to 55–60 percent. The fertility is 130–160 lambs per 100 ewes. The Latvian dark-head is raised in the Latvian SSR, the Byelorussian SSR, and the Ukrainian SSR. In the RSFSR, it is raised in Pskov, Novgorod, and Kaliningrad oblasts.