Texel (sheep)

The Texel is a breed of domestic sheep originally from the island of Texel in the Netherlands. It is now a popular lean meat sheep in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay and Europe. The Texel is a heavily muscled sheep. It produces a lean meat carcass and will pass on this quality to crossbred progeny. The wool is around 32 micrometres and is mostly used for hosiery yarns and knitting wools.

The Texel sheep originated on the isle of Texel, the largest of the Wadden Islands off the north coast of the Netherlands. The exact origin of the breed is unknown although it is thought to be a cross of multiple English breeds. It was slowly bred into a meat breed of outstanding carcass quality. It is now one of the most common meat breeds in the Netherlands, making up seventy percent of the national flock.

The Texel breed is a white-faced breed with no wool on the head or legs. The breed is characterized by a distinctive short, wide face with a black nose and widely placed, short ears with a nearly horizontal carriage. They have black hooves. The wool is of medium grade (46’s-56’s) with no black fibers. Mature animals shear fleece weights of 3.5 kg (7.7 lbs) to 5.5 kg (12.1 lbs).

The most outstanding characteristic of the Texel is its remarkable muscle development and leanness. Texel-sired lambs show an advantage of one full leg score in breed comparisons and less total carcass fat—especially seam fat.

A mutation in the 3' UTR of the myostatin gene in Texel sheep creates target sites for the microRNAs miR-1 and miR-206. This is likely to be the genetic cause of the muscular phenotype of this breed of sheep.

In 1985, the first Texel in the United States were imported by the Meat Animal Research Center at Clay Center, Nebraska. In 1990 and after a five-year quarantine, some were released for purchase by private individuals

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