The Wiltshire Horn is an attractive and active breed in which both sexes have horns. Its particular claim to fame is that it is a self-shedding breed, that is, it has only a rudimentary fleece which it sheds every spring, being kept only for meat. It is a very ancient breed which was developed in the rough hill country of middle England to be able to range widely to forage without any shepherd supervision. Thus they are a very hardy, intelligent and self-sufficient breed. They have bare face, legs, belly, crutch and under-side to the tail, and the lack of any fleece means that they don’t get tangled and caught up in rough vegetation like bramble or gorse, and a particular bonus is that they don’t need dagging. Their other very valuable attribute, especially here in New Zealand, is that they are not prone to flystrike, in fact we have never had it in any of ours despite the fact that we don’t cut off their tails and we don’t use any fly deterents. And of course, because they are self-shedding they don’t need shearing , so they are the original and true easy-care sheep, especially if run on an organic system when they don’t need drenching either.