562 SHEEP MOUNTAIN AND MOORLAND 



eliminated by careful breeding. The famous Welsh-flannel, 

 Welsh-shawls, and woollen goods of various sorts (with which 

 the names of Owen, Owen, & Co. are associated), are made from 

 those parts of the fleece which yield the finest of wool fibre. 



Mountain flocks range on the hills from April to 

 November, but come down to the low land during the 

 winter months. The ewes are cast at four years old, and 

 crossed usually with a Shropshire ram with the object of 

 producing fat lambs for the May market. 



The Kerry Hill is the most important of a number of 

 recently formed breeds of Welsh sheep. It derives its name 

 from a continuous range of hills extending 15 miles east 

 and west through the parish of Kerry (22,000 acres) in 

 Montgomeryshire, although registered flocks are also found 

 in Radnor, Hereford, Salop, Worcester, Denbigh, Brecon, 

 and Cheshire. The annual fair of the village of Kerry, 

 near Newtown, had been held from time immemorial on 

 September i6th, but since the formation of the Kerry Hill 

 Sheep Breeders' Association, it has been altered to the 

 first Friday in September, " when drafts of ewes, rams, and 

 ram lambs from all the leading flocks are offered for sale, 

 at one of the finest shows of sheep in the kingdom," the 

 auctioneers being Messrs Morris, Marshall & Poole, of Chir- 

 bury, Shropshire, the Secretaries of the Flock Book Society. 



The foundation breed of the Kerry Hills was described 

 in 1809 i tne Agricultural Survey of Wales, "as the only 

 sheep which produces perfect wool, that of every other Welsh 

 breed being more or less mixed with * kemp.' . . . The char- 

 acteristics of the breed are large, woolly cheeks, white bunchy 

 foreheads, whitish heads covered with wool, no horns, and a 

 beaver-like tail. They are very hardy and comparatively 

 tame, and not so disposed to ramble as most other hill sheep. 

 In shape, however, they lack compactness and symmetry. . . . 

 They weigh when fat from 10 to 14 Ibs. per quarter." 



Thomas Halford, Newtown, North Wales (to whose 

 historical notice of the breed, written in 1898, indebtedness 

 is acknowledged), says that the Kerry Hill sheep about 1840 

 were " larger and heavier woolled than the pure Welsh sheep," 

 had "nice heads, with white faces and legs, but in many 

 cases speckled with small black spots, or they had self-coloured 



