One can be forgiven for thinking all 43 Valais Blacknose sheep owned by Sarah Murch and Andrew McNaughton were bottle-fed and hand reared as they bear down in a cacophony of bleating toward any visitor to their Toolamba property.
“Every time I walk into the paddock they will want to bowl me over,” Sarah said.
“We had four on the bottle, but the ones that are not bottle-fed will still come up to you.”
The couple began breeding the irresistible variety through artificial insemination in 2022 and are now part of a boutique community of 70 breeders managing a national flock of only 300 purebred and 800 animals registered as F1 or up.
Sarah said the breed was ‘not quite’ in the country when she first saw one online in 2019, and soon found importing one from overseas was ‘as good as’ impossible.
“We have quite strict biosecurity rules in Australia,” she said.
“I did make some inquiries, but there were just too many barriers.”
The solution was to buy semen straws (at up to $1000 a pop) to inseminate the 25 English Leicester ewes they bought in Tasmania.
“The English Leicester is the breed most similar to the Blacknose,” she said.
“That produced our first generation — the F1 — which is 50 per cent Blacknose.
“And those F1 lambs are now first time mothers — we are now up to F2.”
The fifth generation will be officially classified as purebred.
“So, it’s a really long and expensive process.”
Sarah admits they are not into making money from the venture, but are doing it purely for enjoyment.
“They are friendly, they are funny; even their behaviour as adults is very much like children,” she said.
“The boys are a bit of a byproduct, so we sell the boys as pets.”
Despite the need to be shorn twice a year, Valais Blacknose do not produce a high-quality fleece beyond use as felting and carpet.
After some losses to foxes last year, the sheep were bred inside a shed.
The integrated management paid off.
“Because they are AI we know when they are going to lamb within the same time window,” Sarah said.
“We have also got alpacas, so we have not lost any to foxes this year.”