World record-breaking prices for Powys sheepdogs

Henna, a fully broken working sheep dog, was bought by a buyer from south Wales and eight-month-old part-broken bitch Nant-y-Moel Tara has found a new home with ‘Britain's Fittest Farmer’ on Orkney in Scotland.

Top breeder and trialist Kevin Evans, of Llwynfedwen Farm, near Brecon, established the £20,000 highest price ever paid for a dog at an official sale, with his tri-coloured bitch Henna, who will turn four next month.

It eclipsed the previous world record price of £19,451 for a bitch sold earlier this year at a virtual sale in Wales – and by Kevin’s father no less, Brecon-based trialist David Evans. This pipped the former world record price of £18,900 established at Skipton in February - the last live dog sale before lockdown – by another bitch from Northumberland shepherdess Emma Gray.

Henna has found a new home a few miles away in Llanbedr, near Crickhowell.

Fully broken and already described as a "class act" with many trials placings, Henna is a daughter of Mr Evans’ own Moss, a red dog that won a couple of nursery trials before being sold privately to Norway a few years back. The dam is fellow Welsh breeder Ian Fowler’s Fran, whose own father was Mr Evans’ old Jaff, a dog that won multiple trials at the highest level and also successfully represented the Welsh national team on several occasions.

The new world record price sheep dog returned to south Wales when claimed by Black Mountains hill farmer Donna Jones, who had first viewed online video footage of the dog being put though her paces, then made the half hour trip to Kevin’s farm on the final morning of the sale to work Henna herself, before joining the online bidding frenzy for the top-notch prospect.

“And, believe me, I had to press the online bidding button many times as the price rose and rose in order to get her!” Mrs Jones said. “However, Henna reminded me so much of my old home-bred bitch, Tikka, being exactly the same colour. She is the spitting image, so I just had to have her.”

Mrs Jones farms on her husband and father-in-law’s farm at Llanbedr, near Crickhowell, and Henna will be put to work on the family’s two sheep flocks comprising 500 Suffolk-cross ewes and 250 Welsh Mountain ewes, as well as store cattle.

Floss was sold to a buyer in Oklahoma, USA for £13,500

Born and bred in Cwmdu, which stands at the heart of the Black Mountains, the new owner of the world’s most expensive working sheep dog has a lifelong love of the breed, both working and breeding them ever since being a child growing up on the family farm run by her parents, Mr and Mrs Greenhow.

In years gone by, Mrs Jones used to trial sheep dogs locally and says she has aspirations to return to the trials field now that her three children – Bethan, Ryan, and Megan – are fast growing up.

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Kevin Evans, who has set the working sheep dog world alight with multiple top price and other leading four-figure sales this year alone at Skipton, had two further standout successes with impeccably bred bitches at the autumn fixture, both carrying bloodlines from some of the Welsh handler’s top dogs.

He achieved second top call of £13,500 with a fully broken two-and-a-half-year-old Welsh-bred black, white and mottled bitch, Floss, by Gerard Lewis’s Sam, out of Roy Price’s Nell, who is herself by Mr Evans' own Caleb and whose breeding goes back to another of his famous dogs, Mirk, a former International Supreme Champion and dual World Sheep Dog Trials finalist. Like several of Mr Evans’ past Skipton sales, Floss found a new home across the pond in the United States with a buyer from Oklahoma who requested anonymity.

Nant-y-Moel Tara will live in Orkney off the north-east coast of Scotland.

He then sold a much younger eight-month-old part-broken bitch, Nant-y-Moel Tara, for £4,200, itself thought to be the highest price ever paid at an official sale for a dog under ten months-old. She is by Mr Evans’ own Tanhill Glen, a dual European Nursery and Royal Welsh Champion, out of Floyd Farthing’s Wheatwood Sue, a daughter of Mr Evans’ European Nursery Champion and dual Welsh and International Brace Champion, Derwen Doug.

Tara found a new home on Orkney off the north-eastern coast of Scotland with Sean Cursiter, who farms sheep and cattle at the family-run Laga Farms in Evie, home to flocks of 750 pure Lleyns and 280 New Zealand Romneys, along with a 100-strong suckler cow herd. As well as working on the farm he also has a farm contracting arm undertaking work with his dogs and travelling extensively across the UK as a sheep shearer and as far south as Devon and Cornwall.

READ MORE: Powys sheepdog breeder nets £22,000 at auction

Mr Cursiter, 31, also hit the headlines last year when crowned ‘Britain's Fittest Farmer’ after beating hundreds of competitors in a UK wide competition designed to promote mental and physical health in agriculture.

He first took a fancy to Tara after seeing her at work via online video footage, before entering the online bidding.

“She appeared a class dog who I could bring on. I also wanted a bitch to breed from and eventually start selling my own dogs,” Mr Cursiter explained.