I moved last year to a very rural farm community. I was simply fed up with the populations of people everyplace near the coast.
So now I have quite a bit of land which took about 8 months to fence with 48" sheep fencing, it's a variable mesh smaller at the bottom then the top. The whole place is fenced now without any cross fences, except for the corral the orchard, the garden and house area.
I wanted something to entertain me here, and plain old live stock was not gonna do it. I also did not care to have an 8ft fence for the more skilled jumpers. I ran into a breeder of Corsican sheep and it seemed a good mix.
Your description of them is pretty good, but I can help fill in a few blanks. I have been to the breeder meetings and the Ag dept sites to learn quite a bit about this breed. It is a mixed breed to a degree, but now that it's been bred true to form for about 70 years there are some really strong repeatable traits that are being used to register "Pure Corsican" stock. Much like pure bred dogs were all mixed breeds at one time until enough interest and a breed standard was develeoped.
Corsican sheep were originally bred from the Barbado, which is a hair sheep, but they are polled (both sexes are hornless) merino sheep are a rather ugly but large wool breed with big horns, and Mouflon, another hair sheep with notable history.
The Barbado has twins and triplets frequently and breed all year around. A good trait but no horns. The Merino is a very big but ugly wool breed, not very trophy worthy farm sheep but has the trait of the big horns. The Mouflon has the wild streak and the wonderful coloration.
So this developed the corsican, now there are Texas Dall which is simply a white corsican which has been selectively bred from unusual colored white corsican sheep, Then there are Hawaiian Blacks, which are Corsicans that were born black and then selectively bred for this new "breed", and then Painted Desert sheep, which are multi colored Corsican sheep.
Every one of these is a Corsican sheep, but has been selectively picked from the flock for color and then the breeding was done to increase and improve the blood lines for a specific color. They are nothing more then specific colored Corsicans. The 777 ranch was one of the first to have this color specific breeding program. Texas Dall have ZERO dall sheep blood, and the Hawaiian Blacks were just a melonistic freak of a corsican. They are not unique to Hawaii, nor were they first shot in Hawaii.
Then we have the American Black-belly which is a Corsican sheep 100% in every way, but ..........it's a more politically correct name for a farm breeder that wants to distance himself from the Hunting industry where the "corsican" is the trophy species, the Black-belly is the livestock/ meat breed.
This short bit of info is available in a number of formal government documents today. There is also a formal specification for the breed standard of the Corsican( American blackbelly), and a registry for pure bred sheep. It's the reason I chose them over any of the others. The various color spin-offs are simply corsicans of another color. I like the original color best, and they have the longest pure bred history of them all. This would be like calling a black bear that is brown, Cinnamon or blond another species, rather then just a color phase difference.
What will I do with mine,.........I have no idea! I have over 20 now with the lambs born this year. I have more lambs coming in the summer too, the beauty of the Barbado genetics that have multiple babies and year round breeding! Guess I'll have to butcher some this fall, and maybe sell some off. Mine are all registered pure bred specimens too!
