On extensive high hills the main secret to success is to ensure that as many ewes as possible are mated, and that implies fit, active tups. As with all farm animals, the important ingredient in a successful breeding programme is to know the genetic merit of the breeding stock used, and most enlightened breeders are embracing estimated breeding values (EBVs), a technique based on accurate recording of performance.

Work undertaken in recent years by the Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) funded Scottish Sheep Strategy has clearly demonstrated the economic benefits of selecting breeding stock on EBVs rather than the age-old mystical science of selection on appearance alone. Erect lugs, bold posture and a “glint in the eye” may have their part to play, but real genetic progress will only come through the use of EBVs.

Pedigrees also have an important role to play in selecting breeding stock so that breeders can check the sheep’s own parentage or any progeny that is bred from it. Of course pedigrees depend on the integrity of the breeders supplying the information. Most are honest, but there is a minority who can be very creative with the information they supply their breed societies.

To check the accuracy of pedigrees, many breed societies have started DNA testing of sires. One of the first on the scene was the Aberdeen Angus Cattle Society that successfully introduced DNA testing to guarantee that cattle sold into the Aberdeen Angus premium scheme, really were sired by Aberdeen Angus and weren’t simply black Limousins and the like. Most recent is the Beltex Sheep Breed Society.

Compare that to the Blackface Sheep breed, Scotland’s dominant hill breed that do not have pedigree records and simply rely on the integrity of breeder’s word. Most tups offered for sale are described as bred by such and such a high-priced tup and bred out of ewe by such and such another high priced tup. I have yet to see a breeder declare that the tup lamb he was selling was born in early March and probably the result of an unknown chaser from a neighbouring farm having a clandestine night of passion. It has always seemed to me to be the height of madness to spend vast sums of money on rams that have no proven breeding record and no guarantee of provenance, their main selling point often the way they have been fed and brought out for sale.

To prove the point that the Blackface breed is facing something of a crisis, I alert the readers to the recent round of tup sales in the north of England when large numbers of Swaledale rams were bought and brought north to Scotland to mate with Blackface ewes. Yes even Scotland’s hills are experiencing an uncontrolled flood of immigrants! The fact that these shrewd breeders see the need for hybrid vigour in their flocks is worrying enough, but their widespread effect on the bloodlines over the generations will be covered up by word-of-mouth pedigrees.

I took heart from QMS economist Stuart Ashworth’s comments at Agriscot when he told me that while there was widespread resistance to the impending introduction of compulsory electronic identification (EID) of sheep, some of the more enlightened breeders are embracing it. They can see the benefits of electronically recording those ewes that always made a good job of rearing twin lambs. Properly set up, systems could be established that electronically feed information back from the abattoir that could easily identify the dams of the fastest growing lambs, or those with better conformation. They have the vision to imagine a flock of ewes passing through an electronic shedder where they were automatically scanned and the best selected to form an elite breeding group.

There is little doubt that extensive hill flocks will find it difficult to apply EID, but a significant number of other breeding flocks can, if they adopt the right frame of mind.

Now that sheep prices are buoyant, the original argument that the industry can’t afford the new technology has been undermined. Anyway, I am sure there is scope for the Scottish Government to take a leaf out of the book of other Member States and subsidise the introduction of the new technology.

In the words of the late John Hamilton, Allanton Farm, Darvel, taken from his Tup buyers prayer:

Oh Lord – make it a crime o’ size

For selling tups that are disguised

They’re fed on cabbage, heart and runt

Till they can only fart and grunt

Lord – heids blawn up, wae rape and kale

The skitter scooting by their tail

Oh Lord above, my Lord! And master

They tups are but a pure disaster

Their horns are roasted, burned and het

Twisted, screwed, turned and set

Washed in Rinso, Lux and Daz

And a’ the ither raz-ma-taz,

Lord – it’s a sin as sure as fate

They’re no even fit tae fornicate.