Meat · Breed · Short entry
Lacaune
France's leading dairy sheep by numbers and milk output, kept mainly in the 'rayon de Roquefort' in Aveyron and neighbouring departments to make Roquefort. Its standard was fixed by ministerial order in 1902. In 2015 it became the first sheep breed in the world to move to genomic selection; a separate meat strain also exists.
The Roquefort sheep
Races de France calls the Lacaune lait the first French breed for numbers and milk production. It is mostly found in the rayon de Roquefort, the cheese's production area. The breed standard was fixed by ministerial order in 1902, collective selection tools were set up from 1947, and the UPRA Lacaune, now the approved breeding organisation for both the dairy and meat strains, was created in 1974. In 2015 the Lacaune became the first sheep breed in the world to use genomic selection. In 2022 there were 176,914 milk-recorded ewes in 379 flocks.
Spain's breed catalogue, where the Lacaune is an integrated breed, describes it as hardy and high-yielding. About 80 % of ewes have two milk let-down peaks, so roughly 80 % of the milk can be taken by machine without handling the udder.
How it connects
Breed
- similar Manchega
