'ROUGE DE ROUSSILLON' SHEEP'

In the Eastern Pyrenees and some parts of the 'Aude' and 'Hérault' areas of France, there used to be a particular type of sheep, special because of its colour and origin, something between the local 'Merino'-type sheep and North African breeds.

In 1989, the 'Ferme Conservatoire' was perhaps the only place with the structure to take on a few of the last animals of the 'Rouge de Roussillon' breed, from the only flock where an effort had been made to preserve the pure breed. We hesitated to take a mediterranean animal to the oceanic climate of Bordeaux and so we only bought 12 animals, while the rest of the flock was dispersed. Further enquiries revealed their unique interest in these animals, and also the difficulties we would have in breeding from such a small group of animals, which were already showing signs of inbreeding. For this reason, we decided to implement an 'absorption cross-breeding' programme between the 'Rouge de Roussillon' and 'Limousine' breeds, where the 'Limousine' male is used to mate with successive generations of 'Rouge de Roussillon' females. To date, several hundred of these animals (first, second, third and fourth generations) have been carefully selected to obtain a 'Rouge de Roussillon' breed with a better genetic variability.

We also found out that the Nuremberg Zoo had imported a few of these animals 20 years ago. The director, Dr. Muhling, kindly offered us two males, which helped to fix this breed, as did the small flock we bought from M. Wieland in Bavaria.