Blackie matches £160,000 record price

The record price paid for a Blackface sheep was equaled at Lanark yesterday, when a ram lamb from the Dunlop family’s Elmscleugh flock, based at Dunbar, sold at £160,000 .

That sale, plus another 17 at five figures, helped boost the average by more than £900 on the year, to £5,550 for 156 head.

The sale topper is sired by the £45,000 Midlock lamb, bought last year, while the dam is by the £100,000 Nunnerie tup, bought in 2014.

The final bidders were the Campbells at Glenrath, Peebles, and Hugh and Alan Blackwood, Auldhouseburn, Muirkirk.

The Blackwoods reclaimed their share of that purchase, however, when they sold their pen number one at £80,000, to Ewen Macmillan, Lurg, Fintry, and the Kays at Gass, Straiton.

He is a son of the £75,000 Dalchirla ram, while the dam is by a £160,000 Dalchirla.

Another from Auldhouseburn reached £28,000, selling to a consortium of four buyers – Jamie and Matthew Dunlop, Upper Wellwood, Muirkirk; Jim and Eoin Blackwood, Dalblair, Muirkirk; Andrew and Ian Cullens, Dollarbank, Dollar; and Rory Kerr, The Glen, Drymen.

Sandy Patterson, Auchloy, Crieff, sold to £26,000 for a son of an £8,000 Auchloy, out of a ewe by a £38,000 Auchloy. He was knocked down to Charlie Phillips, Finglen, Draperstown, and Eoin McKenna, Tullykeeran.

The ram from the Elmscleugh flock.