It’s a Sheep With The Face of a Badger? This Rare Animal is Bred in the UK
But why would you breed a sheep with the face of a badger?
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00:00These might look like ordinary sheep from behind, but from the front you might notice
00:07they have the same facial patterns as badgers.
00:09But that's no accident.
00:10These are what are known as badger-faced texels.
00:13They're the product of painstaking breeding, which animal experts at Lippiat Farm in the
00:17UK say they spent the better part of the last year turning their three badger-faced sheep
00:21into ten.
00:22But why?
00:23Sheep expert Anne Farmers, who Andrew says that more exotic sheep are becoming more popular,
00:27adding,
00:28At the moment, though, they are only being sold to pedigree breeders and passed to new
00:31farmers across the country, so the idea is that later on they will be a good new source
00:35for commercial breeders.
00:36To breed them, they bought the female sheep from the Netherlands and mated them with a
00:39very popular Scottish ram, resulting in these distinctive badger-looking creatures, with
00:44Andrew explaining,
00:45If you're going to keep something as a bit of a novelty, it's worth it having a purpose
00:48too, so they'll do well commercially.
00:50And commercially speaking, apparently, they're delicious.