It’s a Sheep With a Face of a Badger? This Odd Animal is Being Bred in the UK

But why would you breed a sheep with the face of a badger?

Transcript

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.