This Quiz Goes 'Baa'

Answer: Barbados Black Belly

The Barbados black belly, so called for its black stomach, is a Caribbean sheep bred mainly for meat. Sheep are not native to Barbados and at the time of colonisation by the British, the only domesticated animal was the pig. West African hair sheep and European wool sheep were introduced to the island, but the latter could not survive on the coarse Barbadian pastures.

By 1980, the Black Belly made up one-third of Barbados' sheep. A crossbreed variant, the American Black Belly, was created by crossing the Barbados Black Belly with the Corsican mouflon.

Answer: West African Dwarf

The Cameroon Dwarf is a member of the Djallonké aka the West African Dwarf family, and is a hardy beast with a brown coat and a black belly. They are hair sheep and primarily reared for meat. The ewes are more likely to accept their newborn lambs than other sheep breeds. They can also produce up to three crops of lambs over a two-year period.

Answer: Churra

The scruffy little Churra comes from the Spanish autonomous community of Castile and Léon and is bred for milk, meat and wool. Its wool is used to make carpets and its milk is used to make cheese; in the province of Zamora, Churra sheep milk is used to make Zamorano cheese, a creamy cheese with a nutty flavour.

There are regional variants of Churra spread across the country, such as the Churra Tensina, which lives in the Pyrenees, and the Andalusian Churra Lebrijana.

Answer: Wales

There are different colour varieties of the Welsh mountain sheep, such as the Badger Face - which has a black and white striped face, and the Balwen, a black sheep with a white stripe down its face. The Black Welsh Mountain sheep, pictured here, is entirely black ('du' is Welsh for 'black') and is bred for its wool and meat; in the past, sheep farming was a major source of income for Wales and even today, there are over 8.7 million sheep in Wales. Black Welsh Mountain sheep are bred for hardiness, milking ability and mothering quality; they have very high fertility rates.

Answer: Wool

The full name of this sheep is the Gansu Alpine Fine-wool, which is kind of a giveaway! It was bred by crossing Mongolian and Tibetan sheep with the Xinjiang Fine-wool sheep, then crossing the result with some fine-wool breeds from the USSR, such as the Salsk and Caucasian sheep.

It was bred in the mountainous Huangchen District in Gansu Province. Gansu is in northern China and has Inner Mongolia next door to the north, so the sheep involved in creating this breed needed to be hardy and used to cold temperatures.

Answer: Cocktail

Arapawa rams have twisty horns and the sheep have a hunched appearance, as they carry their heads low. Cocktail Arapawa sheep are a distinctive-looking variant, with white patches across their bodies. The Arapawa was originally thought to have descended from Merino sheep who had escaped from their flock, but DNA testing has revealed that it is more likely to be descended from Gulf Coast sheep which had themselves descended from Spanish sheep brought to the US by early settlers. Captain Cook is believed to have left some of these sheep on or around Arapawa Island.

Answer: US Virgin Islands

St Croix is an island in the Caribbean and a district of the US Virgin Islands. Bred for its meat, the St Croix sheep was originally known as the Virgin Island White because the sheep imported into the US were selected for their white colouring, but some of them may be brown, black or spotted.

They are a tropical breed with a resistance to parasites and are thought to have descended from African hair sheep brought over on slave ships. Unlike many other breeds of sheep, the rams are usually polled, meaning they don't have horns.

Answer: Charollais

If you know about cattle, you might have heard of the Charolais, a big white beef cow. The Charollais sheep - note spelling - is from the same region of Charolles in the Saône-et-Loire department. In the UK, it is used to produce lambs from purebred ewes and mules (in an ovine context, a mule is the product of a Bluefaced Leicester ram and a purebred hill ewe such as a Swaledale).

It is used as a terminal sire, meaning that if it sires female lambs, they will not be kept alive for milk.

Answer: Merino

Merino wool is particularly soft and fine and is prized by clothes manufacturers, as it provides insulation in cold weather and can be good for people with sensitive skin. It can be used for all sorts of knitted goods, from hats and gloves to shawls and cardigans.

The Merino is a Spanish breed and originally, exporting the sheep (though not its wool) was punishable by death, although this ban was lifted in the 18th century. The Merino spread across Europe and then the rest of the world, and many variants exist, from the German Merinolandschaf to the Australian Booroola.

Answer: Wensleydale

Although the blue face and white wool of this sheep make it reminiscent of Stilton cheese, it's the Wensleydale sheep, named after the Yorkshire valley. Wensleydale cheese, as beloved by Wallace of 'Wallace and Gromit' fame, was originally made with ewes' milk.

The Wensleydale sheep is an endangered breed and was created by breeding a Leicester Longwool ram with ewes from a now-extinct long-wooled breed. Rams are used for cross-breeding to produce lambs for market, and it is also bred for its wool, as the wool - which resembles ringlets - is fine and soft.