Lleyn re-emerged with NSA Wales & Border Ram Sales
13th September 2018
The recent history of the Lleyn runs parallel to that of the NSA Wales and Border Ram Sales and the sale has had a critical impact on the breed’s re-emergence. The Lleyn has risen from a very small local Welsh breed, teetering in the Rare Breed lists with, in 1971, only 7,000 ewes throughout Britain, to the largest non-hill purebred and the fourth largest non-hill ram breed.
The Lleyn is third behind Texel and then Suffolk crosses for contributing to crossbred ewes, outside the mule/halfbred types. The latest figures showed nearly half a million Lleyn ewes mated.
A stalwart of the NSA Wales & Border Ram Sales is Wynne Davies, President of the Lleyn Society, who runs the Bronallt Farm flock near Pwllheli. He has been selling at the multi-breed ram sale since its inception in 1978 – or rather he has been bringing rams to the sale since then.
He regularly wins breed championships at the NSA Wales & Border Ram Sale as well as at the Royal Welsh and other leading shows, but rather ruefully points out that his first visit in 1978 wasn’t altogether a success. It didn’t stop him persevering, though, and he credits the sale with having helped to re-establish the breed.
Wynne says: “I remember we didn’t sell anything at that first sale and so there is no record of our having been there. We took two Lleyn ram lambs and we didn’t have a bid on them. I don’t think we were even offered the killing price.
“Nobody seemed to know what they were! The breed society was re-established in 1971 and we started in 1973. There had been quite a decline in numbers and the breed was in the rare breed lists until the 1980s.
“We saw an advert for the multi breed ram sale, so we thought we might as well give it a try. Then the next year, in 1979, we sold four ram lambs. They went for 97 guineas, two for 31 guineas and another for 27 guineas.
“Suddenly it was a different trade, the price offered was above killing price. It was a new breed still establishing and we were getting the word out. We’ve been selling Lleyns at the NSA Wales & Border sales every year since then.
“Then we bought Texel ewe lambs and a ram at the sale in 1980. So we’ve been selling Lleyns at the multi-breed ram sale every year and Texels since 1982.
“The late George Hughes arranged for me to be given a commemorative tie when the sale was celebrating 25 years. He said I deserved it because I had been there from the beginning. I still have the tie.”
Wynne says one of the strengths of the sale is that it has evolved with the changing face of sheep farming. The Texels now dominate whereas, at the beginning, the sale was full of Suffolk sheep, with six or seven rings selling at once.
And he says at times it could be a challenge to keep across the trade. He and his wife Ann were often selling three or four breeds and had to be pretty nimble to get from one ring to another and to watch the trade across the sale!
But he likes the format. He says the sale is particularly important to his business. Geographically, he is surrounded by the sea on three sides and the mountains on a fourth. He can’t afford to wait for customers to come to him and so he successfully ‘went south to get new breeders and meet new faces’.
