The Blackdown Flock of around 100 -120 high index ewes was formed after the 2002 Foot and Mouth epidemic.  Lambed and reared outside for the whole year on permanent grassland in the Blackdown Hills in Devon (hence the flock’s name) in an Environmentally Sensitive Area  at between 800 -1000 feet above sea level, the farm is also within the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.  Our aim is to produce good confirmation, hardy breeding animals for the commercial market, through careful use of recording and targeted genetic improvement, all the time keeping the correct breed characteristics and the highest Scrapie resistance results.

In-lamb ewes with above average indices were originally acquired from Blackhill, Sherborne and Trevilley.  Semen from the Centurion Sire Reference Rams was used in a proportion of the ewes, with two Ramsden rams, Alexander A102 and Chaka C133, to widen the genetic base.  Huish Archie A54 and Zulu Z405, then followed by Gortleigh Charlie C849 and Huish Destroyer D83 with Sherborne Federal F34 improved our quality further.  Blackdown Felix F26 (a son of Chaka) and Blackdown Hugo (a son of Destroyer) were then used, joined in 2007 by Blackdown Jensen, J56, the highest index stock sire out of UK born sires that year, Blackdown Harvey,H2, and Homer,H42, joined these stock rams.  2008 added Blackdown Knight, K67, the highest index poll ram lamb out of UK born sires that year.

Only above average ewe lambs are retained, and we only use rams from the top 10% of recorded sires.  The flock is the best connected to all recorded flocks, so ensuring our index data is highly reliable.

The average Terminal Sire Index for our progeny has improved by over 70% to 278 which is in the top 25% of recorded flocks, and the average Maternal Index is up 40% to 207 which is in the top 50% of all recorded flocks.