Gradually commercial reality brought round the Culleys’ critics to their finer-boned, barrel-shaped Leicester. As their sheep became more sought-after, the brothers formed the Mill-field Society, along the same lines as Bakewell’s Dishley Society, or ‘Ram Club’. It was not long before farmers and landowners from all over the north were hiring tups from the Culleys (sometimes even from Bakewell himself) and the Culley Sheep established a formidable reputation throughout the livestock-farming districts on both sides of the border.
After Bakewell’s death in 1795 the northern breeders of the Dishley Leicester began to distance themselves from their southern confrères, and gradually the Culleys’ version of the Leicester developed into the distinctly different breed that has come to be called the Border Leicester. It became apparent in the early nineteenth century that this Border Leicester when crossed with native hill ewes, particularly the Cheviot, made a fine hybrid, which by 1850 had become renowned as the Scotch Half bred and became the principal sheep export from the Scottish Borders. It has unrivalled maternal instincts, and when crossed with a Down ram is capable of rearing a set of twins to the same size as their mother within four months. This is hybrid vigour in action and is Bakewell’s and the Culleys’ enduring legacy.
The great success of the breed is proof of the feeling for livestock that is the defining characteristic of Borders stock farmers. It is no coincidence that the largest ram sale in Europe takes place at Kelso every year in early September, when thousands of rams from all the Longwool and Down crossing breeds are dressed up for sale in their smartest clothes and offered for sale to buyers from all over the country.
In the 1950s the Border Leicester expanded its appeal into the Welsh Marches, where, crossed with Welsh Mountain ewes, it created another great British hybrid, the Welsh Halfbred. This crossing proved nearly as successful as its Scottish cousin, and at the height of its popularity hundreds of thousands were bred each year for selling on to lowland farmers to cross with terminal sires. This trade has declined considerably in recent years, but the hybrid still forms a successful and valuable part of the national flock.
Modern pedigree breeders of highly valued sheep, such as the Border Leicester, use all the latest scientific breeding technology: embryo transplants, artificial insemination, fertility treatment, ultrasound scanning and frozen semen. As a result it is now possible to have two ram lambs from the same ewe by different mothers and the same or different sires: one could be a fresh embryo and the other a frozen embryo from a previous impregnation, both implanted in a donor ewe, using the same techniques as in modern human fertility treatment. Stores of deep-frozen semen from prize rams can be held at very low temperatures in liquid nitrogen and kept viable for decades. It is no longer necessary to export live rams for breeding. And now that they can be milked of their semen, the best rams make proportionately higher prices. One successful Border Leicester breeder I spoke to also practises ‘line breeding’ – the same incestuous method that the Culleys copied from Bakewell. He wryly summed it up: ‘when it works it’s line breeding and when it doesn’t it’s in-breeding.’ In livestock breeding, of course, you (or someone else) can always eat your mistakes.
It is becoming common practice to flush out huge numbers of eggs from one particularly good ewe, fertilise them with different rams and implant the fertilised eggs into donor sheep. The same pedigree breeder ‘harvested’ eighty-nine embryos from flushing five ewes in 2010. He didn’t use them all, but it shows how much quicker an animal’s breeding potential can be evaluated now than in Bakewell’s day. Pedigree breeders don’t have to hire out their rams and sneak meanly around the countryside spying on their progeny over hedges.
Ultrasound pregnancy scanning of ewes is now routinely used in sheep farming, and is exactly the same as practised in ante-natal departments across the world. Opinion is divided between those who scan to find out how many lambs each ewe is carrying, so they can feed accordingly, and those who don’t see the point because they feed according to each ewe’s condition no matter how many lambs she might be carrying. There is also a romantic view that scanning is a waste of money and an unnecessary upset for the ewes, and knowing exactly how many lambs the flock is going to have takes the fun out of lambing. It is also too tempting to count your chickens before they’ve hatched. As some lambs are bound to die, the shepherd can only ever feel he has suffered a loss.
‘It should have a head like a solicitor,’ explained one old Blue-faced Leicester breeder when I asked him what a good one looks like.
Until after the last war, the Bluefaced Leicester was almost unknown outside its home territory in the country around Hexham in Northumberland. But over the last fifty years or so it has spread the length of the British Isles and rather eclipsed its Border Leicester cousin. These are such odd-looking sheep that it is hard to see why anybody would want to keep them, especially when you take into account their propensity for dying on the slightest pretext. In fact, keeping them only makes sense in the light of their hybrid progeny. They are the most specialised and refined Longwool crossing breed, developed at the beginning of the last century especially for crossing with black-faced horned sheep, particularly Swaledales, (as we have seen), to produce the hybrid Mule.
At first they were considered to be the poor man’s Leicester because they were thought inferior to the Border Leicester, and their progeny inferior to the Scotch Half bred. But things have moved on since then. If anything, Mule gimmer lambs are more sought after than Scotch Half breds and the best Bluefaced Leicester rams are now beyond the reach of paupers.
It is astonishing that the early breeders could see that such an odd sheep would match so perfectly with a Swaledale. Tall, long in the body, with blue-black colouring to the skin, and forwardly erect blue ears, Bluefaced Leicesters are the only breed that often sit with their heads back and their Roman ‘solicitor’s’ nose in the air. The ewes are very prolific; on average every ten ewes will rear twenty-five lambs, five having twins and five triplets. Such prolificacy is remarkable even in Longwool sheep. Their fleece is sparse, 1–2 kg of demi-lustre wool, and much finer and shorter than the Border Leicester’s; in fact there is hardly enough wool to keep them warm. But in combination with the Swaledale, the lustre wool of its father and the heavier fleece of its mother result in a high-quality, much heavier lustre wool-fleece. This is only one of the more obvious ameliorating effects of the first cross. Just why it should produce such an outstanding breeding sheep is one of the mysteries of ovine genetics, because when crossed the other way round – Swaledale ram onto Bluefaced Leicester ewe – the result is disappointing.
Those who created the Bluefaced Leicester did so by a combination of instinct and practical experiment. There were no geneticists involved; they undertook no scientific research; and yet by knowing what they were aiming for, by trial and error and an almost Bakewellian understanding of the qualities that lay within, they created a sheep that has transformed the value and productivity of draft Swaledale ewes and the quality of British lamb for the table.
Bluefaced Leicesters are sheep of the ‘Shire’ – that part of Northumberland south of the River Tyne that would, but for historical accident, belong to Co. Durham. The land has been settled far longer and on a more human scale than the straight lines and huge rectangular fields in the rest of the county across the Tyne. Bright streams splash down wooded denes between small hilly fields and narrow roads tunnel in diffuse green light through overgrown hedges, more like the lanes of Somerset than the wild country to the north or the windswept moors in the south. This is classic livestock-rearing country and the home of the Bluefaced Leicester. The flocks are not large: thirty pedigree ewes is a respectable size. Most commercial farmers haven’t the patience to bother with pedigree sheep. So the whole thing depends on a few dozen specialised breeders who maintain the integrity of the breed.
How do they decide what they ought to look like? Do they breed them how they fancy they ought to look, or are they aiming for some obje
ctive ideal standard? Most breeders are no better at describing what they are aiming for than the one who thought they should have a head like a solicitor. I know that much of livestock breeding is instinctive, but surely there must be some Platonic version of the Bluefaced Leicester against which they judge their stock? If you ask them breeders will point out one of their sheep as a ‘good one’, but it is almost impossible to see why it should be better than any of the other sheep standing next to it.
One of the best breeders, and a respected judge, said he usually only sees the faults in a sheep; ‘nothing catches my eye like a defect,’ he told me, ‘but I take their virtues for granted’. He explained that he carries in his imagination a picture of the ideal Bluefaced Leicester against which he judges the real ones. And the best breeders spend their lives trying to create this ideal. But where the ideal comes from is almost impossible to say. And just because a ram is a good specimen does not mean it will make the highest price at auction. Breeders will sometimes buy a ram with qualities that might correct some defect in their ewes, always keeping in mind the ideal sheep they are trying to create.
In such a small world as pedigree breeding, where nearly everything is sold at auction, if the leading breeders appear interested in a particular sheep that will tend to push up the prices. So they try to avoid being seen bidding for fear someone will ‘run’ them – bid up the price without intending to buy – either because it is believed that the ram must be something special, or just to have some fun and see how far the bidding can be pushed before someone chickens out.
They usually get someone else to bid with instructions not to go beyond a certain price, while the real buyer sits back and watches. Breeders will often spend the money they have made selling their own rams by buying someone else’s rams. It is not unknown for the auction price to be manipulated to enhance the seller’s reputation by trying to ‘top the market’ and make a name for himself and his flock. One well-known trick is for the seller to make an agreement with a buyer that he will refund a proportion of the hammer price either because he has agreed to keep a share of the animal or simply in return for the buyer pushing up the price. This is a fraud, and would invalidate the sale, but proving it is another matter.
The Bluefaced Leicester has now divided itself into two types: the ‘fancy’ kind, which vies with its once grander cousin, the Border Leicester, for crossing with Cheviots and other white-faced sheep like the Welsh Mountain; and the commercial type supposed to be better for crossing with Swaledales to breed a Mule hybrid with strongly contrasting dark chocolate and white markings. It is hard to fathom why such starkly contrasting markings are so popular with breeders crossing with the Swaledale. There is nothing to say that sheep with such colouring make better mothers or have more and better lambs. It’s just a fashion. But it’s a fashion driven by the market for lamb meat, which the pure Bluefaced Leicester and its Mule offspring, and her lambs, are created to satisfy.
Another variation on the Leicester theme is the Wensleydale, whose crossing mate is a cousin of the Swaledale, the Dales-bred, naturalised on the moors of Upper Wharfedale and Nidderdale. Dalesbreds are a good example of domestic selection varying a breed over time. They are similar to Swaledales, with the same short, loose fleece, long legs and active nature, but have been selected for their sharper black and white colouring. They cross well with the Wensleydale to create a breeding female, the Masham, named after the North Yorkshire town and a rival for the Mule. The Masham has a heavier, more lustrous and pirled (falls in ringlets) fleece and is reckoned to be more prolific than, but not as hardy as, the Mule.
The Wensleydale is one of the few pure breeds whose ancestry is known for certain. A couple of hundred years ago, in the lower parts of the Yorkshire Dales, particularly Wensleydale and Teesdale, the indigenous longwoolled sheep were called Teeswaters, members of the great family of English Longwools, probably with a common Roman ancestor. David Low described them in 1839 as
the most remarkable of the inland breeds … so named from the valley of the beautiful river which separates the counties of York and Durham … The breed extended with some change of characters, northward into Durham and southward through the greater part of Yorkshire, until it merged in the heavy-woolled sheep of the marshes (Lincolns) on the one hand, and those of Leicestershire on the other.
These Teeswaters were probably the biggest sheep in Britain in the eighteenth century: tall, lean, large in the frame, with a heavy lustrous fleece, up to 24 lb, and second only in quality to that of the ancient Lincoln. But they had ‘an exceedingly uncouth form, with coarse heads, large round haunches and long, stout limbs’. They required the best of pasture, like cows, and could not survive the winter without supplementary feeding with hay and corn. Well-kept they were most prolific, usually bearing twins and triplets, and were fine milkers, capable of suckling and rearing all the lambs they produced. They took three or four years to grow to full size, but that did not matter because their huge carcase was never intended to be eaten, or at least not until it had produced a respectable amount of wool. One animal, killed for Christmas 1779 at Stockton-on-Tees, had a dressed carcase weighing 17 stones 11 lb, plus 17 lb of tallow. Alive it would have weighed about 40 stones, about the same as a Shetland pony, and probably as edible.
As the Bakewell influence spread, Teeswater breeders recognised the limitations of their local sheep as meat sheep and began to introduce Dishley Leicester rams into their flocks to try to breed a better mutton carcase. One Richard Outhwaite of Appleton paid 40 guineas in 1838 to hire ‘the best Leicester ram ever bred’ from the famous Leicester breeder Mr Sonley, from Helmsley in North Yorkshire. Apart from being of enormous size, this ram had a striking dark blue/black head. One of his lambs, born in the spring of 1839, not only inherited his father’s size and blue/black head, but, unusually, the rest of his skin was almost black and covered in fine, white, lustrous wool. He grew to be huge, over 32 stones as a two-shear, and was euphemistically described as ‘extremely active’, and judged to be the best ram in the north of England. His owner named him ‘Bluecap’ and it is from him that the Wensleydale breed descends.
Outhwaite refused 100 guineas for him in 1841 (when you could buy a small farm for 300 guineas), although he hired him out to breeders across Yorkshire to use on their Teeswater flocks. It was found that he strongly passed on his improving characteristics to his sons and he became much in demand for crossing with the local Teeswaters on both sides of the Pennines. His blood then flowed down the generations without any further outcrossing, combining the hardiness, activity, size and lean flesh of the Teeswater with the early maturity and better carcase of the Leicester. The new breed also bore Blue-cap’s distinctive dark coloration of the skin, particularly on the head and ears. There is nothing comparable in the sheep world to being able to trace the emergence of a breed to a single mating with a single ram. However, just like the Border Leicester (and the other Leicester descendants), the Wensleydale’s true vocation only emerged decades later when a first cross with local hill ewes was found to produce a superior type of hybrid.
Breeding and showing Wensleydales is very much a minority interest and rather out of fashion. It takes an obsessive attention to detail coupled with empathy for the sheep in your charge, amounting to love. Mark Elliot has both. Early in life he determined to follow his calling to breed Wensleydales and he has never repented of his decision.
Mark is widely acknowledged to have a genius for preparing sheep for showing. He knows instinctively how to clip and shape the wool to enhance the best points and diminish the worst. He understands the perfection he is aiming for, and has the perseverance to keep trying to achieve it even though he knows he never will. He has shown his Wensleydales at most of the national shows over the years and won at most of them. The Great Yorkshire Show is the one he values the most, not for parochial reasons, but because the competition is stiffest. To win there is to know you have reached the top.
There are many simple tricks, such
as that the pirl of the wool can be improved by swimming the sheep a few days before showing, in full fleece in clean flowing water, for just the right length of time. If it was summertime, Mark’s father would take his show sheep to Pateley Bridge and swim them in a pool in the River Nidd. He would strip off and swim in a deep pool with each sheep on a halter. On one of these outings, as he splashed around in his underwear, he heard his arch-rival’s voice from behind some trees on the bank, ‘Ah your secret’s out now, Elliot!’
He also used a special pirl dip that put a spring in the ringlets, like giving them a perm. But they no longer use pirl dips, although Mark would not tell me what he has replaced them with. It’s a trick of the show-ring and part of the showman’s art. Dipping sheep for parasites is not routinely done now because they can be inoculated with a systemic preparation that does the same job and avoids manhandling them. This is a welcome innovation that avoids wrestling sheep the size of Wensleydales into the dipping tub.
A remarkable feature of the Longwools, in particular the Wensleydale, is that whereas the quality of most sheep’s wool varies depending on which part of the body it grows – neck, leg, tail and belly wool is inferior to the rest – a Wensleydale fleece is the same all over, even on its legs and the mug on its head, and the long-staple lustre wool is pirled to the very end of each ringlet. It is the highest-priced white wool in the BWMB’s schedule, which in 2011/12 was 380p a kilo – which made the average fleece worth about £25. The main market is in the manufacture of worsteds for the best suiting cloth. Also unlike short- and medium-wool fleeces, which come off as a whole, the fleece of a Longwool divides into two halves, parting along the spine. Mark Elliot clips his sheep standing up (both he and the sheep) sweeping the shears in hoops from belly to backbone, parallel with the ribs, rather than laterally across the ribs where the cutter would tend to leave unattractive lateral steps in the growing wool.
Counting Sheep Page 13