Meat · Breed · Short entry
Bleu du Maine
A prolific meat sheep from the Maine area of western France, named for its dark blue head and legs. It was formed in the early nineteenth century by crossing local ewes with English Leicester and Wensleydale rams. Its herd book opened in 1936; numbers peaked around 1985 and the population is now estimated at a little over 2,000 ewes.
English rams in the Maine
The regional breed conservatory CRAPAL says the Bleu du Maine was born in the early nineteenth century from local sheep of Maine-et-Loire, Mayenne and Sarthe crossed with English Leicester and Wensleydale sheep, imported at the same time as Durham (Shorthorn) bulls. A first breeders' syndicate was formed in 1927, and in 1936 the newly founded Société des Éleveurs du Mouton Bleu du Maine opened the herd book; the same year the breed showed at the Concours Général in Paris.
Exports to Germany, then Britain, Belgium and Switzerland, began in the early 1970s, and the breed reached its peak around 1985 with more than 80,000 breeding animals. Numbers then fell: 3,913 ewes were recorded in 1981 and 557 in 2002. They have risen again since 2015. The breed is often kept in small flocks alongside cattle, which graze at a different sward height.