Dunnet shepherd nets £15k for three lambs

A PART-time shepherd was hailing her tremendous trio of North Country Cheviot lambs when they sold for a five-figure sum.

Morven Coghill (36), of Seaforth near Dunnet, took home over £15,000 from the Lairg NCC ram sale last Tuesday.

At the sale of lambs to be used as breeding rams, Miss Coghill’s trio was one of the highest earners of the day.

Borders farmers Jimmy and William Thomson, from Yetholm, bought two of her lambs for the sums of £8000 and £6500, with the third lamb selling for £650.

Delighted Miss Coghill, who owns a smallholding which is home to 25 ewes and which produces around 40 lambs a year, said that she had never made anything above three figures before.

“I’m still in total shell shock about how much they had made in the auction,” she said. “It is more than most shepherds earn in a year. They have been purchased by one of the leading sheep breeders in the ?country.

“The reason that they sold for so much was due to their physical attributes, having tremendous length and being well bodied. They were seen as having physically developed perfectly to be used in breeding.”

Her previous record for top price was £750 and despite her new-found wealth she is not planning to invest the money in more sheep.

“Despite the small size of my flock, there were farmers there who had 500 to 1000 sheep which did not make as much as I did,” she said. There was also success for her sister, Tina Robertson, from Inkstack near Barrock, when she sold one of her rams for £7000 to Badanloch and North Lochnavar estates.

The top price at last Tuesday’s auction was £12,000 for a ram sold by Dennis Henderson of Torrish ?Estates, Kildonan.