Llandovery Whiteface Hill Sheep

The Llandovery Whiteface Hill sheep is a breed of Welsh Mountain sheep that has been bred for generations to thrive in the area of the Black Mountain in Carmarthenshire and is a little larger than other Welsh Mountain sheep.  Development of the breed has focused on retaining the hardiness and maternal quality of the breed whilst improving conformation to ensure that demand for ewes for breeding stock and lambs for the food chain and the focus remains on improvements for the meat market.  There is no focus on improving the fleece.  Demand for breeding ewes come from all across Wales and beyond for the production of Welsh Mules and Welsh Half-breds. The Llandovery Whiteface Hill Sheep Society was founded in 1998 by a small number of local farmers wanting to progress the genetic development of the breed.  However, they do not appear to have a website as yet.

Llandovery Whiteface Hill ewes

Llandovery Whiteface Hill rams

The Llandovery Whiteface Hill sheep, at the time of writing, is in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust category 6: "Other UK Native Breeds" (over 3000) registered breeding ewes.  Breeders remain in the localised area of Llandovery and the sheep are sold at Llandovery Market.  There is no information about this breed in either of my two reference books and one of them is produced by the British Wool Marketing Board, who couldn't tell me anything about the breed when I approached them for information and if it wasn't for the fact that this breed is listed on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust website I would not have known that it even existed.  There is also very little information on the Internet about the breed either and nothing about the qualities of the fleece, micron counts, weight or staple length or how best to prepare it.  It seems that it is undiscovered from a hand spinning point of view.

They are a medium build sheep with a whiteface and legs, which are free from wool, white ears and black nostrils. Ewes are naturally polled but rams can be with or without horns.

They produce a medium size dense white fleece, mine arrived at a little over 3kg, that contains a large amount of kemp in both white and red.  The staple length is around 4-5 inches (10-12.5cm)

The advise in my reference books for similar fleece is that they can be spun from teased locks, it can be carded or combed. If you leave the kemp in that it is going to create a very textured scratchy yarn with interest from the red kemp.  If you comb it and remove the kemp then you will be left with lovely soft wool.

Yarns spun from Llandovery Whiteface Hill fleece that contain the kemp are definitely suited to household items and upholstery and if you have removed the kemp then I would say that they are definitely good for next-to-skin use.  

This one has been extremely difficult to get my hands on and it has taken me over a year to obtain a fleece. I couldn't find any for sale anywhere because it is not well known and I discovered that the British Wool Marketing Board just clump the fleece in with other white Welsh Mountain fleece.   Given that there is no website for the breed society there was no obvious point of contact.  I did find a blog post that mentioned the breed and I contacted that person, who was very helpful and put me in touch with a farmer of the breed who informed me that his sheep were sheared the previous week, on 16th June 2021, and he was happy to sell a fleece to me.  Then it went silent and I never heard from him again.  I feared it might have been due to Covid but it wasn't and I eventually gave up on him.

I recommenced my search in April of this year, just before the start of shearing season, and the best time to make contact with breeders to reserve a fleece.  Seeing as how the Rare Breeds Survival Trust know about how many of this breed there are I contacted them for help and they gave me an e-mail address for the breed society.  I made contact but never got a response.  Browsing Instagram one day I suddenly got the idea to search for Llandovery and lots of business accounts came up, one of which was a wool shop in the town, so I made contact.  I got a response the following day to say she couldn't help but she put me in touch with someone else.  That person couldn't help me either but she gave me a phone number to call so I rang the number and it was the Llandovery Market, where they sell the sheep.  I explained to them what I was doing and that it was the last fleece I needed to complete the project.  They gave me a name and a phone number of a local farmer who, in their words, is very approachable and helpful.  I rang and left a message and after a couple of chats on the phone I purchased a fleece and it arrived quite quickly.

I have bought this breed in as a full fleece from Wyn Morgan in the Brecon Beacons and it arrived on 8th June, my 20th wedding anniversary, and it weighed just over 3kg.  I had a little peek inside the top of the bag and it looked very kempy but I wasn't able to get it out of the bag and examine it until I had time to start washing it on the 10th June.

About half of the fleece was washed on 10th June and it filled my drying hanger so the rest had to wait until this was dry.  This first batch filled a pillowcase and weighed 1,105g (excluding the weight of the pillowcase.  The rest of the fleece was washed on 14th June and weighed 811g once it was dry, giving me a total of 1,916g of clean but kemp rich fleece to prepare.

I combed 228g of fleece to get 94g of gorgeous, soft, hand combed top, just enough for my project.
  

Look at how white and fluffy that single looks on the bobbin

My finished yarn is of good quality to the touch of the hand it is really soft and squishy and light with just a very tiny crispness to it if you squeeze it hard. I have 93g/230m of sport weight yarn. My knitted piece for the project took 46g/114m so I have some left to do whatever with, and the rest of the fleece of course.