Sheep breed
Charollais
Charollais
A French meat breed: early-maturing, fast-growing lambs with little fat and a 1.7–1.8 lambing rate.
Charollais lamb. Photo: „charollais Lamb” – Simmy's Photography · CC BY 2.0 · Flickr · Resized and converted to WebP
Description1
A seasonal breeder with excellent maternal traits, a lambing rate of 1.7–1.8 and excellent milk. It matures early: ewe lambs can be bred from 7 months of age.
Lambs mature early, are well muscled and grow vigorously, reaching or exceeding 25 kg by 70 days after weaning. In commercial crossing, lambs by Charollais rams show little fat even at a 20 kg carcass weight; ewes weigh 80–100 kg and rams 110–150 kg.
A heavy breed with strong but fine bone; both sexes are polled. The head is never woolled; it is pink or grey, often with small black spots, and the ears are fine, long and mobile. The body is long, the chest wide and deep, the thighs thick and deep; the white wool is very short.
History1
Today
The breeding goal is to keep excellent maternal traits, early maturity, conformation and growth while raising prolificacy and body weight.
Breed standard and breed society
The official breed description, breeding goal and herdbook rules are published by the recognised breed society (MJKSZ).
- MJKSZ – Charollais juh fajtaleíráshttps://mjksz.hu/tenyesztes/fajtak/charollais-juh
Photo gallery
All photos are freely licensed (Wikimedia Commons, Flickr); author, source and licence are shown under each image.
Sources
Accessed: 2026-10-18.