Venray Sheep Companies

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The Venray sheep companies were a group of Dutch livestock merchant companies who dominated the European trade in sheep in the 19th century.With an area of almost 150 square kilometres, Venray, a municipality in the northern part of Limburg, is one of the largest municipalities in The Netherlands. More than half of the land used to be part of the Peel, an area of vital importance for the local farmers. The presence of wide areas of moorland led to the development of sheep farming and related cottage industries, such as the production of yarn, cloth and hats. Sheep produced an average of 2,5 kilograms of wool each per annum, and were therefore a welcome source of secondary income, quite apart from the droppings that they left on the land. At that time sheep were not reared for their meat.