Morphological Characteristics

  • Head: Small, always straight –even slightly hollowed– profile on females and sub-convex on males. Big and lively eyes. Prominent eye sockets. Its ears are small and point to the front. Black sheep, apart from gueifes, have the same colour in the snout. No spots on their whites, or maybe just some little ones (xara).
  • Neck: medium in length, and firm, more noticeable on the males. They show a kind of hair all along the neck and up to the chest that gives them a muflón-like expression. At the bottom of the nape there appears the melota, a sort of mane formed by very abundant hair. The tail is short and reaches the hocks.
  • Trunk: long. Straight on females, a little hunched at the cross on males. Well-curved ribs.
  • Extremities: Fine, with small, hard nails. Good support at the front legs, there being many examples with the heels twisted outwards.
  • Skin: Fine, without wrinkles.
  • Mammary glands: well-developed, small teats.
  • Horns: only on males. Their shape of a turned, compressed spiral, of singular appearance and with wrinkled sides.
  • Weight: Female average is 22 kg and male average is 33 kg.
  • Height: 55.5 cm for females; 61 cm for males. (Campa Torres measurements yielded a 54.8 cm average).
  • Cuernos: Solo los presentan los carneros. Su forma es en espiral envuelta, apretada, de aspecto característico, tallada por surcos transversales.
  • Colour: black, white, cardín and pezu. The black ones can be coronistes or moñiralbes (with a white spot on their head), gueifes (white spot on the snout) and coreyalbes (white spot along their neck). As their wool grows, it turns reddish.
  • Fleece: over the hocks. Fibres of variable length. Small tufts. The head has some wool on the moña, particularity on the forehead with small and very thick curls. Wool is 1.05 kg on females and 1.71 kg maximum on males.