Share this:

I’ve just got the bill from our vet (South West Sheep Breeding Services) for our latest  layer of the “security blanket” for my precious Bowmont sheep. Nearly £500. This is for preserving the semen from two  of my best rams from my current crop. This means I now have a total of three rams in store plus embryos from another unrelated ram/ewe combination.  Each time I add to this cryo bank I sleep a little more easily at night. When Foot and Mouth strikes, (not IF you notice) or if some other nameless horror from foreign shores gets into the UK and the government adopt its usual  “kill first – think later” approach, then, assuming I ever recover from the trauma of the horrific experience a slaughter here would undoubtedly be, I could start again. In fact I doubt I could start again. My heart would have been buried with the carcasses and I could not bear it. But, someone else could and all my work and the 25 years work of the Macaulay Institute which preceded it would not have been in vain.

I do the same  for my Cashmere goats although finances dictate that it tends to be one batch of either sheep or goats a year. Costs are high as you can see and every year there is a storage charge for the total amount of genetic material in the freezer.

Why do I bother you might ask? Because I have an absolute passion for quality.  By preserving the very best genetics I can I ensure the work I am doing here can go on. I am not interested in making a huge profit out of my animals. I AM interested in making sure their qualities are available in the future. Until I find sufficient people in the UK who are just as committed to quality as I am, preserving the genetics in this way has to be the only sure option.