A HIGHLY sought after Texel lamb has set a world record price for a sheep after selling for 350,000 guineas (£367,500 or $666,400) at the recent Scottish National Texel Sale held in Lanark.
According to the Texel Sheep Society, the six-month-old ram named Double Diamond was the subject of much pre-sale speculation and was met with a bidding war from a brace of consortiums last week.
It was eventually sold to the three-way partnership of Alan Blackwood, Auldhouseburn, Muirkirk, Procters Farm, Procters, Lancashire and Messrs Teward, New View, Darlington.
The lamb carried an index in the top 1 per cent of the breed and was embryo-bred by Charlie Boden and family, from their Sportsmans flock, Stockport, Cheshire.
According to the BBC, the consortium of buyers hoped to recoup their investment through breeding and Jeff Aiken, farm manager of the Procter's flock, said it was an "obscene amount of money to pay for a sheep" but it was a price they had to pay to get the genetics.
According to the breed's society, the Texel sheep originates from the island of Texel, one of the north-western islands off The Netherlands.
Ewes don't need heavy feeding to raise twin lambs, doing well in sparse vegetation in upland regions and excelling in the lowlands on better pastures.
The Texel dominates the UK sheep industry with about 27 per cent of the ram market according to TSS, while Texel crosses also account for 1.6 million crossbred ewes too, more than 12pc of the total ewe flock.
Elite genetics regularly sell for five figure sums and rams have been known to reach six figure price tags, with a ram reaching £231,000 ($419,000) at the Scottish National Texel Sale in 2009.
The Australian record price for a ram stands at $450,000 for a Collinsville ram sold at the 1989 Royal Adelaide Show.
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