Buying in the best of bloodlines certainly doesn’t guarantee success in pedigree breeding, but building up a strong female flock is an ideal way to start, and gives a solid base on which to work from.

That’s proved the case for Jim Innes, of Dunscroft, Huntly, who re-established his family’s interest in Texels in 2000, after his father Jim’s original flock had been sold off in the early 1990s.

On 3500 acres, the Innes family run a substantial enterprise, including 1700 acres of arable – growing spring and winter barley, oilseed rape and wheat – and a 700-strong beef herd, from which the calves are all fattened and sold through Woodhead Brothers at Turriff. They also run a small herd of pedigree British Blue cattle, along with the 30-ewe Texel flock, both of which go under the Strathbogie prefix.

With such a set-up, there’s not a huge amount of time to spend working with pedigree sheep, but Jim and shepherd/all-round farm worker, Michael Leggat, have become keen enthusiasts of the Texel breed and are clearly passionate about bringing out quality stock.

When buying in foundation females back in 2000, Jim was keen to select the best he could, and it’s descendants of the first two purchases that he says remain the strongest females in the flock today.

Bought at Lanark for 2200gns apiece, they were Baltier-bred gimmers by Culter Allers Exocet and in-lamb to Turin Fantastic.

Around the same time, other gimmers joining the Strathbogie flock included one from Muiresk at 1100gns and one from Glenside for 1800gns.

A bigger investment, three years later, was a Castlecairn gimmer which won at the Highland Show, by the 50,000gns Craighead Hercules. Jim bought her that year at Carlisle from Bruce Renwick for 11,000gns, and she’s another that’s proved an impressive breeder of females, including the current show ewe.

“There are certain tups that won’t click with certain females, but there’s no doubt that you need good quality females to have any chance of breeding decent lambs. It’s about finding the right tup for your particular type of females,” explained Jim, who used AI tups on the flock to begin with, while building up the numbers.

“We didn’t have great success with the AI, but once the numbers were up a bit, we were able to justify buying a stock tup, which has made a big difference to the progress of the sheep. It’s only really in the last five years, since we’ve chosen the stock tups ourselves, that we’ve started feeling that we’re getting somewhere with the flock,” he added.

The Innes’ don’t tend to shy away when they’ve decided what tup is for them, and that was true of their first buy, Castlecairn Kung Foo Fighter, bought in 2005 for 28,000gns with Gordon Gray, Ettrick.

“He worked really well with the Baltier gimmers line of breeding, and some of his daughters have gone on to be great breeders,” Jim explained.

After building up the ewe numbers, Jim sold gimmers for the first time in 2008, at the Carlisle Christmas Stars sale.

The top two, AI daughters of Milnbank Lyon King, reached 5800gns and 5000gns, with one being out of the 11,000gns Castlecairn ewe. A year later, Strathbogie gimmers again proved popular, selling up to 3400gns, for one by the home-bred tup, Strathbogie Nixon II, and out of a home-bred ewe.

Nixon, a son of the Lanark-bought Eastfield Merlin, is the flock’s top price tup to-date, selling for 11,000gns at Lanark in 2007, where he had stood pre-sale champion.

“We’ve been lucky enough to share stock tups in the past few years, which allows us to get the one we want without forking out a massive amount of money. Two years ago, we bought a quarter share of the 29,000gns Millar’s Outstanding, with Graham Morrison, Inchbruich, Margaret Lyon, Milnbank and Allan Chisholm, West Moy. He bred our pen leader last year, Strathbogie Python, which sold for 9000gns.”

Over the past couple of years, Strathbogie sheep have enjoyed a fair amount of success in the show ring too. At last year’s Highland Show, a ewe lamb by the Millar’s tup stood first in a strong class, and this year, Jim secured the same ticket again, and finished reserve champion at Turriff, this time with a daughter of the flock’s new stock tup, Mossknowe Pudsey, bought last year for 7000gns.

“When we first got into the Texels, we were quite focussed on heads, but now we aim for sheep with good heads, but also good carcase and skin. Pudsey certainly has that, he’s a big, strong tup with a great shape, and he’s bred that size and shape into his first crop of lambs,” said Jim.

Four of the five Strathbogie tup lambs heading to the Lanark sale on August 25 and 26, are sons of Pudsey, with the pen number one, Strathbogie Rocket, being a full brother to the show ewe lamb. Also destined for sale in September and October, in addition to ?? lambs for the second Lanark sale, are a batch of 36 shearlings which will be sold at Thainstone and Huntly.

“I’d say buyers are looking now for bigger sheep, with better carcases, so that’s the way we’re aiming to go – whilst keeping good heads too. Breeding lambs for Lanark and shearlings for Kelso would be the ideal scenario.

“A lot of good bloodlines were lost through the scrapie scheme, but I’d say the breed is definitely getting bigger and better again now. We don’t have a lot of time to spend on the sheep, but Texels have plenty go about them and they’re easy handled,” added Jim.

Through flushing up to 15 of the best ewes, the Innes’ have more than 100 embryo lambs born in a tight lambing period at the beginning of February each year. While female numbers had been cut back a bit, they plan to build the flock back up to 45 ewes, by keeping select females – maintaining the quality which has ensured the Strathbogie flock a second place for the past two years running, in the North of Scotland Texel flock competition.