<<Why don't folk sell through the ring? I'd be interested to know.>>
We no longer sell through the ring, but only sell privately. This gives us the chance to see where our animals are going, and to choose not to sell to people we don't think will give good care to our animals. Because we breed a rare type from an already minority breed, we want to be sure that new owners understand the genetic importance of the stock and will breed them accordingly.
In our early days we had some bad experiences in the ring, where one or two of our sheep were bought by people we thought were downright cruel - and once they had bought them there was nothing we could do.
OK so you may well get a better price when selling through the ring (or a worse one) but we do put our animals' welfare well ahead of profit.
A further reason to not sell through the ring is to reduce the stress on our stock. All that travelling, there being so few rare breeds sales around the country, the stress of going through the ring, more travelling then a strange new home v one journey and a new home - the latter would always win.
I know we need to support the rare breeds sales to keep them viable, as they do have their plus points such as the exchange of genetic material from one end of the country to the other (downside of that is the potential spread of disease). If we still had a large flock then perhaps we would be more prepared to put some of our animals on general sale, but now we have reduced our flock size drastically we have to be careful where all our stock goes. Thainstone in particular is not, as far as I know, an RBST approved sale, so even the safeguards that status gives is not there. It would be great if it could become a 'real' rare breeds sale.
