Keen Texel buyers at Lanark push bids to 16,000gns

It might have been a difficult year for Texel tup sellers but the big names were back in action again at last week’s Select Seven sale at Lanark where bidding reached 16,000gns for a gimmer shearling from the Cambwell flock of T and A Laird and averages went as high as £2668 for the nine gimmers offered from the Springwell flock of Henry Gamble.

Buyers were clearly here to shrug off the grim days of 2007 and look forward to the year ahead. And it was a gimmer by the appropriately named Cambwell Laird from the Laird family’s flock at Biggar, Lanarkshire that caused the day’s biggest stir.

Bred out of a ewe by Tima Icarus and from the same family that bred the 110,000gns Newhill Major, she was in-lamb to Llangwm Nut Cracker and heads for the Kelso-based flock of Malcolm Reid.Banff-based Graham Morrison called the winning bid of 7500gns to secure a gimmer from the Clarke family’s Garngour pen. By Brague King’s Pride, she is out of a Clynnog Joe Tex ewe that stood inter-breed champion at East Kilbride Show this summer and hails from one of the flock’s top money earning families. She is in-lamb to Hexel Lexus.

Taking another top ranker back to her successful Milnbank flock in Aberdeenshire was Margaret Lyon who gave 7000gns for a gimmer from Gordon Gray’s Ettrick flock at Selkirk. By Douganhill Lionheart, this gimmer was inter-breed champion at Peebles Show as a ewe lamb. She had been successfully flushed and had produced six embryos but was in-lamb to Ettrick No Limits.

There were three bids of 4800gns for Springwell gimmers. Buyers were David Simpson, Co Antrim, Jim Warnock, Lanark and a split deal between Gordon Gray, Selkirk and Robert Cockburn, Crieff.

Averages: Springwell – nine gimmers £2668; Watchknowe – six gimmers £308; Cambwell– 13 gimmers £1875; Ettrick – 19 gimmers £1556; Craighead – 16 gimmers £447; Garngour – eight gimmers £1739; Teiglum – six gimmers £917; Turin – 12 gimmers £484; Champany – 16 gimmers £613.