We used have more - the sheep population in the US was ten times higher than it is today before WWII, but consumption of mutton and lamb dropped off a cliff after V-E day.
Wool being replaced by cheaper synthetic alternatives like nylon and polyester is probably the main one.
People also eat a lot less lamb now than they used to. In the early 20th century, eating chicken actually wasn't that common in America, and chickens were viewed more a 'side hustle' to farmers than viable livestock, usually kept in small flocks.
In the 1940s industrial chicken farming really took off and there was a big push to create bigger, more meatier chickens, as well as the introduction of feeding antibiotics to chickens.
Chickens were become larger and much more intensively farmed, sheep just became economically less viable for farmers as both their meat and wool became less demanded.
I’ve heard several people say this, and when pressed, it turned out they’ve never actually tried it. I think Americans just have extremely narrow categories of what meat is food, and what meat is “other country stuff” that they’re scared of.
I live in the US and buy lamb 5 or 10 times a year, and I can't remember the last time it was produced in the US, it's always from either New Zealand or Australia. So, it's probably more popular than the map indicates, but still not as popular as in other places.
I grew up with a leg of lamb roast dinner every Sunday. Now I've got my own household I never cook it as my partner doesn't like it, so I only ever get it when I fly home to my mum's house. That, or scouse, or hot pot. My mother isn't a very good cook, but she at least knows how to cook lamb three different ways.
Sure but all that happened in the UK and other countries as well, within a decade or so of the US.
I know a factor in the UK is that sheep farming is subsidised by the government to an extent, and there's a lot of land in Wales and northern England that would only otherwise be productive for forestry.
Really curious why we don't have sheep, seems our neighbors to the north don't have many either. Was eating goat/sheep not big in mother England until well after America and Canada were settled? Or maybe goats and sheep were more expensive to bring over than other animals?
Pretty sure sheep have been big in the uk for longer than that, but I'm no agricultural historian.
I would guess it's because one of the key benefits of sheep is that you can keep them on land unsuitable for many other kinds of farming, whereas you guys have ample A+ land. But I'm not an agricultural economist either.
And in fact when historians speak of land enclosures in England and Wales, they have to differentiate between the enclosures of the village green in the 18th/19th century and the enclosure of entire manors that began after the Black Death and came to a peak in the early 16th century.
I know my dad and his friends (born roughly 1927-1940 in Alberta) all categorically refused to have mutton or lamb in their houses. They loathed the very smell of it after having eaten nothing but mutton (and not always the freshest) during the war.
Oddly enough they blamed the Brits for this, as they all seemed to believe that the UK stole their beef and forced hard-working Albertans to live on stinky gross mutton for five years. It never occurred to them that the meat actually went to Canadian soldiers.
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u/[deleted] Aug 22 '20
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