Not all sheep need to have their tails docked.

It is usuallly not necessary to remove the tails from the hair sheep breeds: Katahdin, American Blackbelly, Barbados Blackbelly, St. Croix, Wiltshire Horn, Pelibüey, Santa Inês, and Royal White®.
Katahdin ram lamb	Hair sheep ram lambs in Barbados
Some wooled sheep have naturally short tails or thin, woolless tails that do not require docking. These breeds are called Northern European short-tailed sheep or "rat-tailed" breeds. They inlcude Finn Sheep, East Friesian, Shetland, Icelandic, Romanov, and Soay. These breeds originate from Northern Europe. Using some of these short-tailed breeds as a basis, scientists in Australia and New Zealand are hoping to breed sheep with short tails that do not need docked (shortened) and make the sheep less prone to fly strike.
Finn Sheep	East Friesian ewes Photo courtesy of Crane Creek
Some sheep have "fat" or broad tails or rumps. It is not customary to remove their tails. The fat tail is considered a delicacy.
Awassi ram in Kazakhstan	Rahmani ram in Egypt

Go BACK

Choose a topic from the drop down list

Basic Sheep Info Sheep Terms Sheep vs. Goats Kinds of Sheep Sheep Breeds Colored Sheep Hair Sheep Lambing Tails Sheep Behavior Are sheep stupid? Butting Horns Cud Chewing What Sheep Eat Sheep Grazing Products from Sheep Eating Lamb Dairy Sheep About Wool Shearing Wool Qualities Sheep Farming Predators Sheep as Pets Diseases from Sheep Sheep Dogs Sheep in History Interesting Facts -- Sheep101 Home Page --

This web site is optimized for screen resolutions of 1024 x 768 and higher. You can change your screen resolution by right clicking your mouse on the desktop, then clicking on properties, followed by settings. The web site contains a lot of images and pages may take awhile to load on computers with slow connections.

About the SITE | SITE MAP | About the PHOTOS | About GEORGE

Last updated 24-Dec-2007 by Susan Schoenian.

Go baaaaa . . . ck to Sheep 101 home page

Sheep 101 is affiliated with sheepandgoat.com and baalands.com.