World’s most expensive sheep sells at auction for $660,000

A six-month old Texel ram has sold for a world record of nearly £368,000, or $666,000, at the Scottish National Texel Sale in Lanark, Scotland, last Thursday. According to the Texel Sheep Society’s website, Double Diamond was “the subject of much pre-sale speculation and a crowd puller from the moment he set foot in the market”. The ram’s sale compares to the world record $450,000 Collinsville Merino ram, Lustre 53, that sold at the 1980 Royal Adelaide Show on account Neil Garnett, Collinsville Burra, South Australia, and bought by Richard Nitschke, of Willogoleche Merino stud, Hallett, SA. The Texel ram, Sportsman Double Diamond, was offered by Cheshire breeder Charlie Boden. The ram was the subject of much pre-sale speculation and a crowd puller from the moment it set foot in the market. It carries an index in the top 1 per cent of the breed. It sold to a consortium of three sheep farmers, who wanted the Texel ram lamb’s genetics to add to their award-winning flocks. The ram would now be shared by Hugh and Alan Blackwood’s Auldhouseburn flock at Muirkirk in Scotland, the Proctors flock in Lancashire, England, and Messrs Teward’s New View flock, in Darlington, England. Proctors stock manager Jeff Aiken said the high-priced ram eclipsed the previous record of £230,000. Mr Aiken told the Texel Sheep Society that the six-month old lamb was an investment that would add value to the buyers’ flocks for years to come. “This was so expensive because two groups of people wanted to buy it,” he said. The sheep’s official sale price was 350,000 guineas. Texels have been a big part of Mr Boden’s life since he started the Sportsman flock with his father back in 1974. They have had several successes on the show circuit, winning the Royal Show, the Royal Welsh Show and the Great Yorkshire Show. Texel sheep originally came from an island of the same name off the Netherlands’ coast, but Double Diamond was embryo-bred and raised on a farm in Cheshire, northwest England. The breed regularly attracts five-figure sale prices, but Double Diamond’s position in the top 1 per cent of the breed index meant he was always going to command considerably more than that.