Our Flock of Shetland Sheep

Our current flock of Shetland sheep were imported from a renowned Dutch breeder and are all pure bred.  During 2010 we will also be importing a champion Shetland ram and additional breeding ewes into the flock  directly from the UK.

All our sheep are very friendly and will follow us all over the fields in the hope that we have some food for them.  To deter predators such as foxes (which we have in abundance in the area) from considering making a meal of any of our sheep, the flock share their fields with some of our llamas who are renowned guardians.  When we bred Shetland sheep on our farm in Wales, we never lost a single lamb to predators, whereas a lot of the neighbouring farmers suffered large scale losses during the lambing season. Guard llamas are extremely effective in their role and form a permanent bond with their flocks.  If you would like to know more about llamas, please visit our other web site at Border Llamas.

As Shetlands are browsers, they also love the verity of different greenery we have to sample on the farm (they are perfect for keeping the hedges in check).

Our breeding objective is to maintain a high quality pure bred flock (i.e. no cross breeding and no in-breeding) of Shetland sheep and to maintain the characteristics of this wonderful breed.

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Our breeding flock have all been Scrapie Genotype tested with the following results:

Name                Sex                                       Scrapie Genotype

Obama                  Ram                                                        ARR/ARR

Odalys                   Ewe               Katmoget                         ARR/ARR

Olympia                 Ewe               Katmoget                         ARQ/ARR

Ophire                    Ewe                Moorit                             ARQ/ARR

Octavia                  Ewe                Moorit/Katmoget            ARQ/ARR

Olicia                     Ewe               Grey gulmoget                   ARR/ARR

Olexa                     Ewe                Grey bersugget                 ARR/ARR

Nesta                    Ewe               Katmoget                          ARQ/ARR

Nena                     Ewe               Fawn                                ARR/ARR

Ophelia                  Ewe               Black Krunet                    ARQ/ARR

What is Scrapie Genotyping;

Scrapie genotyping is a blood test which identifies whether sheep are resistant or susceptible to scrapie but it does not indicate whether a sheep is infected with scrapie.

Scrapie genotypes, expressed in the form of a six letter code, enable breeders to make informed decisions about their future breeding policies and help to breed sheep resistant to scrapie.

Scrapie genotypes are easy to understand and follow the simple theory of heredity. Scrapie resistant sheep confer a level of resistance to their offspring depending on their mating.

a) Mating two fully resistant sheep with each other results in fully resistant offspring.
b) Mating a fully resistant sheep with a semi-resistant sheep results in some fully resistant offspring and some semi-resistant offspring.
c) Mating a fully resistant sheep with a susceptible sheep results in semi-resistant offspring.
d) Mating two semi-resistant sheep results in some fully resistant offspring, some semi-resistant offspring and some susceptible offspring.
e) Mating two susceptible sheep results in susceptible off-spring.

Scrapie resistant sheep of all breeds are already commanding premiums in both pedigree and commercial breeding sales. This trend will continue as UK and EU policy moves towards excluding non-resistant sheep from the human food chain.