The objective of this study was to evaluate inbreeding and inbreeding depression in the Czech populations of 3 major meat type sheep breeds: Suffolk (SF; n = 45 924), Charollais (CH; n = 13 046) and Texel (T; n = 9 490). Growth rate was evaluated based on weight at 100 days of age. All animals were divided into four classes based on the inbreeding coefficient: the first class included non-inbred animals (F=0), the second, the third and the fourth classes contemporized inbred animals (0 < F ≤ 0.10, 0.10 < F ≤ 0.20 and 0.20 < F ≤ 0.30, respectively).