The high prolificacy of the pure Bluefaced ewe is something of a two edged sword, in next to no time we were over run however it allowed us to maintain the top end quality, by crossing the bottom 25% to the Texel, in what seemed to be a natural progression. Mary bought a very tight skinned correct lamb from Cairness, being a late born son of the £220,000 record holder.The extreme quality of his get persuaded us to purchase a half dozen older ewes from the Northhouse dispersal, the result was some very smart lambs,but with only average performance.

In an epiphany moment, stemming from my management days, (when I was deeply into recording, having witnessed in my first job the dramatic improvement in feed conversion, growth rate and carcase quality leading to an inevitable uplift in profit in a pedigree Large White herd. And later in the Nationally recognised Oldhamstocks herd of Landrace, selling high performance Boars and Gilts throughout the UK.) I realised that if we continued on our present tack we would simply be in the business of “multiplying” sheep rather than attempting to improve the commercial value of the genetics we hoped to pass on to the commercial buyer. This thought led to an immediate change of direction, with the purchase of two top 1% recorded in lamb gimmers from West Knock followed by two in lamb ewes and 5 gimmers from the Drinkstone dispersal all top 1%.

The first lamb crop from these predictably left some very high indexes, both male and female.One of the Drinkstones going on to be the highest indexed adult female in the UK surpassed only by her ewe lamb with indices of 486 and 489 respectively. We have been careful to select correct females, with good skins (fully coated, since we are not in the beauty stakes, we can ignore the present somewhat irrational fashion for peelers.) with good mouths, feet and udders with well placed teats.

This is a “Young Flock” and our advancing years will no doubt preclude its becoming an ‘Old Established’ flock, however we aim, through careful sire selection to get, and keep, the whole flock into the top 1% of the breed whilst maintainng sheep true to Texel type. Enabling us to pass on profitable genetics and to enjoy the sheep and the challenge along the way.