Swifter
The Swifter is a modern Dutch composite sheep breed created in the late twentieth century to serve as a prolific dam line for lamb production. It was developed from Texel and Flemish Milk Sheep ancestry, aiming to combine the Texel's meat qualities with the milk yield and litter size of dairy-type sheep. Swifters are generally white, polled, and moderately large, with ewes selected for fertility, mothering, and the ability to rear twins or triplets.
On farms, the breed is valued most when records are kept on scanning results, lamb survival, udder quality, and growth to weaning. Extra lambs are an advantage only if nutrition, lambing supervision, and colostrum management keep pace, so many flocks use pregnancy scanning and feed ewes by litter size. Swifter ewes may be mated to terminal sires for market lambs, while replacements are chosen from sound, milky mothers rather than from birth numbers alone.
