Animal Directory Featured species in the planned Children's Farm habitat
Babydoll Sheep
Ovis aries
LC
Fun facts
- A miniature heritage breed — adults stand 45-60 cm at the shoulder and look uncannily like living plush toys.
- The "smiling" face is real, not anthropomorphism — the underbite and short muzzle create a permanent upturned-mouth expression.
- Descended from the Olde English Southdown, a near-extinct breed rescued from the brink in the 1980s by a single American breeder, Robert Mock.
- Increasingly used in vineyards as four-legged groundskeepers — small enough to walk under grape vines without damaging fruit.
- Domesticated breed; not IUCN-assessed (its wild ancestor, the mouflon Ovis gmelini, is listed as Vulnerable).
From the master plan
The Babydoll Sheep is the plush-toy moment of the Children’s Farm — staged in the central feeding yard alongside the Nigerian dwarf goats, with brushing stations sized for small hands. The breed’s recovery from near-extinction also gives keepers an easy conservation story to tell.
No IUCN assessment exists for domestic sheep. We default to LC for consistency in the schema and call out the domestic-breed status explicitly.