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Scotch Mules
We have been breeding Scotch Mules at
High and Low Airyolland for 30 years. The Scotch Mules that we
produce are primarily aimed to supply the Scottish market demands
for a ewe suitable for prime lamb production. Over the last
twenty years or so we have used local shows and in more recent times
the
Royal Highland Show as a shop window for our mules.
We have had first prize ewe lamb at the Royal
Highland Show four times in the last ten years. The picture on
the right shows us receiving the cup at the Castle Douglas sale in
2003 for the best pen of forty at the sale.
2009
This year we took one pen of 40 lambs to Castle
Douglas and sold the rest at home. This pen of lambs, off home bred
tups, sold extremely well and made £98 to Mr J McTaggart, Castle
Douglas. They were the 6th highest priced pen at the record breaking
sale of 9089 Scotch Mule ewe lambs.

| April 09.
Two lambs by homebred Z4 (sire Riddings X5, Dam
X23 by GreenriggsW9). Z4 is crossing so well and sired
some lambs in the top pen 09. He has been retained for
breeding at home. |
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2008
was a great year for us. We had a great run with
our show lambs which were all bred from homebred Bluefaced Leicester
ram lambs.
A very stylish ewe lamb bred from Airyolland Z5 was first prize at
the Highland and went on to lift the first prize at Stranraer and
Dumfries Shows.
Our
pen of three were also first prize at Stranraer and Dumfries Shows.
They were sired by three different rams.
They were: left to right, Airyolland 2801 Z5,
Airyolland 2801 Z 11 and Airyolland 2801 Z2.

Two lambs by Z12
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| Top pen of mules August 2008 |
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Top pen Mules August 2007
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Three show mules 2006 |
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Top pen mules 2006 |
Recently we have retained some of our Mule ewe lambs to cross
with the Beltex. We have found this to be a great success and
are very pleased with the ease of management with them at
lambing time. The lambs are easy lambed and quick to get to
their feet to suckle. We found that the ewes could comfortably
rear triplets without losing condition because the Beltex lamb
is more efficient.

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