Blackshire Farm is owned and run by John and Jo Middleton. We purchased the property in early 2012 and live here with our family.
Wiltshire sheep
Having started with Arapawa sheep initially, we had 2 principle issues. Their feet could not cope with the wetter soils in our region and the cost for a mobile shearer was prohibitive verses the small amount of value from the fleeces. We spoke with a number of local breeders and the Wiltshire sheep came highly recommended. Late 2012 we made the swap over to Wiltshire sheep sourcing initial breeding stock from 3 different breeders.
Black Wiltshire sheep
One of the above breeders had a random black, full shedding ewe lamb appear in their flock in 2010, over the next few years, they ended up with a nucleus flock of 4 black ewes and a black ram. However, a change of circumstances with this breeder gave us the opportunity to purchase this flock and continue development of the black flock.
We trialed various crosses with our own white flock to improve the consistency of the Wiltshire traits like full shedding, sound feet, easy birthing and good mothering.
We continue with our breeding program, periodically purchasing and introducing new high quality Wiltshire genetics. This ensures good genetic diversity within the Blackshire flock as well as continual improvement in fleece and shedding characteristics.