A lamb has fetched a world record price of £367,500 at an auction in Lanark.
The sheep, named Double Diamond, was the subject of much pre-sale speculation at the Scottish National Texel Sale yesterday.
Having been met with an initial £10,000 opening bid, the price quickly escalated for the Texel lamb as a host of would-be buyers entered into a (rare) bidding war at the market.
The winning bid of 350,000 guineas came from a three-way partnership between buyers in South Ayrshire, Lancashire and County Durham, who hope to recoup their investment through breeding.
The bid set "a new UK and world record price for a sheep”, according to a statement on the Texel Sheep Society’s website, and beats the previous record price paid for a sheep of £231,000 in 2009.
Double Diamond was sold by well-known breeder Charlie Boden from their Sportsmans flock in Cheshire, and is a six-month old Texel ram embryo-bred lamb sired by last year’s Lanark champion, Garngour Craftsman and born at a farm in Macclesfield, Cheshire.
Texel sheep originally hail from the island of Texel in the Netherlands, and represent the most popular sheep for breeding in the UK because of the quality of their meat.
It was one of 19 lambs that fetched over £10,000 at the livestock auction.
