WEST Wales sheep farmers, Eirlys, Barry and Stuart Jones from Maes-Glas, Wolfscastle have recently made Hampshire Down Breed history.

They were celebrating the long trip to Cumbria after selling their prize winning homebred ewe lamb, with sire and dam both homebred, for a breed female record of 2,000 guineas at the autumn sale in Carlisle.

Earlier in the day, the ewe lamb was awarded the Supreme Championship at the society show, heading the line-up of 110 Hampshire Downs that had entered the sale.

No stranger to the show ring in 2016, this ewe lamb has captured many awards, both locally and further afield. This included interbreed championship at Nevern Show and Breed Championship at Pembrokeshire County Show, 2016.

However, the undoubted showing highlight for the ewe lamb took place at the Royal Welsh Show in July, where not only she was awarded the breed championship, but, alongside another homebred Maes-Glas ram lamb, was awarded the supreme interbreed pair champions of champion at Llanelwedd.

This was not only the first time a Hampshire Down pair had won this most prestigious award, but the first time a lamb pair of any breed achieved this accolade.

Enfys said of the Carlisle success: "The purchasers, David and Gaynor Cormack and McDowell of Leicester, experienced stock people with an established flock of Blue Texels stated that the ewe lamb had caught their eye through seeing her on the Maes-Glas website www.hampshire-down.co.uk and had heard so much about the progress of the Hampshire Down as the terminal sire of the future.

"We believe that the success of the ewe lamb is largely due to the management system at Maes-Glas and the focus of commercial genetics as the ewe lamb was in the breed society’s top 25% for performance.

"The ewe lamb is undoubtedly the best show lamb we have produced in over 20 years of breeding pedigree Hampshire Down sheep and this is due, by and large, to the focus we place on studying and recording the genetics in our selection policy.

"The flock is run as a commercial enterprise and is the largest fully recorded flock in the UK; to be sustainable and profitable we need to study and record the genetics in our selection as the use of concentrate feed is simply not an option in this financial climate.”