I just liked the picture. It's a Scottish Blackface sheep in Menstrie Glen, near where I live in Scotland.
I was told what it was by Heather Sinclair, friend, former colleague at Glasgow Science Centre, and freelance shepherdess. Heather writes:
The Scottish Blackface is a hardy hill sheep. They are small, lean and very agile as well as being pretty but quite grumpy and shy, and boy do they know how to use those pesky horns. They have poor quality wool: it has lots of other fibres apart from wool in it, like hair, and so is used for carpets and the like. The one in the picture is not a grand example of the breed, however, and although she is pretty she loses quite a few marks for different points. This breed came from a native Scottish sheep crossed with one that the Romans brought over during the conquest, but is classed as a native breed now. They are used for hill situations, and also when they get older they are brought down onto the uplands and lowlands (then classed as draft or cast ewes) and used with other breeds of tups to give very fine cross lambs which are then used for further breeding and meat. These F1 progeny (usually they use a Suffolk, Blue-faced Leicester or Texel type tups) are excellent mothers and are a lot larger than their mothers when they grow up. Their wool is usually of better quality too, especially those from the Blue-faced Leicester (lamb from this cross is known as a Scottish or Scotch mule) which has a very very fine curly short coat.
She looks as if she is in lamb too. Hill tups go out in October or November time and they have a 5 month (less 1 week) gestation period. These sheep have 1 to 2 lambs per year and their lambs are stunning and very feisty. Usually the males are castrated and used for meat, unless they are very good when they are used for breeding. The females are left to run with their mothers where they learn their own territory (known as hersels).
The red mark that you see on her side is known as a keel mark and is done with a special paint. The keel you see is a difficult one to place on the sheep as it is a side keel. Shepherds are very precise about the position of these marks as they can have several meanings - for example, marks to tell which farm or even which hersel within the farm that they come from. This breed of sheep are usually also branded on the horn (which is painless for them) with the year they were born and the farm they belong to as well as being lug marked (ear notches in specific places on the ear), and more recently due to all the new legislation ear-tagged too. At clipping time sometimes the paint is put on using a number or letter stencil; this is known as bisting.