Meet the cutest animals ever! They can get as big as a small pony and can cost up to £16,000. However, devoted owners insist that these rare-breed sheep make the ideal house pets. And plenty of Hobnobs and long walks make them happy.
Ali Vaughan’s beloved pet Marley just loves a cuddle with his owners, eating Hobnobs from his bowl and going on two-mile walks to heel along country lanes.
So far, so normal — for a dog. But Marley is a sheep, and a very special one at that.
He’s a Valais Blacknose, a Swiss breed considered to be the cutest in the world with their long, shaggy coats and little black faces. They often sell for £10,000 each and one, with an impeccable bloodline, fetched nearly £16,000 at a Carlisle show last year.
Since their arrival in the UK eight years ago, they have become popular pets here, cuddled, indulged and trained rather like puppies.
Ali Vaughan with her son Max and Sheep called Marley
Since their arrival in the UK eight years ago, they have become popular pets here, cuddled, indulged and trained rather like puppies
The value of Valais Blacknose sheep is largely down to their rarity, as there are only a few thousand in the world
‘I was smitten from the moment I saw him when he was a lamb. He looked like a little white poodle with a black face and black knees — far too adorable to resist,’ says Ali, 38, who lives with her children Ella, 14, and Max, eight, in the market town of Brampton in Cumbria.
‘I love him even more than I loved our labrador, Jess, who died 18 months ago. She was a brilliant dog but Marley is much better behaved. He skips and hops along beside me, unharnessed, when we go for a walk and always stops or turns around at the first time of asking.
‘He seems to understand everything I say and loves cuddles, but forgets that he has these big horns that stick out horizontally, like a Highland cow, so you have to be careful when you’re stroking him.’
The value of Valais Blacknose sheep is largely down to their rarity, as there are only a few thousand in the world. However, there are now several hundred in the UK, imported here after the breed enchanted viewers on BBC Countryfile.
Ali managed to buy Marley for £500 — a bargain — because he had been castrated and so did not have lucrative breeding potential.
She saw an advert for him on a local Facebook page in 2018 and convinced her then husband that he would make ‘a great lawnmower’ and keep the fields around their home trim
She saw an advert for him on a local Facebook page in 2018 and convinced her then husband that he would make ‘a great lawnmower’ and keep the fields around their home trim. But soon after he joined the family, Marley developed joint-ill, a bacterial infection that affects the joints of young lambs, and was so unwell that Ali couldn’t countenance leaving him in the paddock or barn.
‘I brought him into the kitchen where it was warm and I could keep an eye on him,’ recalls Ali, an artist and creative writing teacher. ‘I bottle-fed him round the clock and he curled up with Jess in her huge, fluffy dog bed in front of the Aga.
‘Whatever Jess did, Marley would copy, so he snuggled up with us on the sofa, nibbled on biscuits and would bleat loudly to come on dog walks until I gave in. He honestly behaved like a puppy.
‘When I took him to the vet, I’d be in the waiting room with Jess and Marley on leads and people were so confused, they’d ask: “What breed of dog is that?” ’
Marley’s convalescence took two months, by which time Ali had decided — not least because he was impossible to house-train and growing bigger by the day — that he should return to his natural outdoor environment.
But having got used to the easy indoor life, including drinking special formula milk for lambs from a bottle held for him by Ali, Marley could not be encouraged to act like a sheep and tuck into grass and hay. Ali had to buy a Coloured Ryeland sheep, Bear, to keep him company.
Marley and Ali still enjoy daily cuddles in the family home near Brampton, Cumbria
Much to her children’s amusement and delight, he acted as a mentor for Marley, showing him how real sheep live and eat.
‘Marley had got too big for the house — aged four, he’s now the size of a Shetland pony — so for both practical and hygiene reasons, he needed to be outdoors, to eat grass and run around,’ says Ali. ‘They have a lovely warm barn to sleep in so although I missed him, I didn’t feel sad.’
All the same, Marley and Ali still enjoy daily cuddles. ‘If I chop vegetables for him, he insists on eating them from my hand rather than stooping to eat them off the ground,’ she says. ‘As a treat, I’ll take him a couple of Hobnobs or Rich Tea biscuits and as soon as he finishes one, he puts his head on my chest and snuggles in, begging for more. He knows that where he’s concerned, I’ll always be a soft touch.’
Liberty May, 24, is equally devoted to her Valais Blacknose ewe Wilma, a surprise gift from her father for her 21st birthday. She knows enough about the breed to realise the four-month-old lamb would have cost him in the region of £5,000.
Determined to have a similar bond with her sheep as she has with her long-haired weimaraner dog, Sully, one of the first things Liberty taught Wilma was how to climb the steps up to the family home in Barnstaple, Devon.
Given that house-training was beyond Wilma’s capabilities, Liberty’s mother was, unsurprisingly, less keen on having the sheep indoors.
‘She’s only allowed in the kitchen and lounge,’ says Liberty.
‘She has watched TV with me — it depends what mood Mum’s in as to whether she’s allowed to stay, but I get told off for letting her on the couch.
Determined to have a similar bond with her sheep as she has with her dog, Sully, one of the first things Liberty taught Wilma was how to climb the steps to the family home
‘Sheep can recognise the faces of others in their flock and Wilma is so familiar with mine that when I’m walking towards her from a distance, she starts baa-ing and then nuzzles in and nibbles my hair.
‘Of course, she’s hoping I have a digestive biscuit, but once she has eaten, unlike other sheep that would just wander off, she prefers to hang out with me all day.’
Whenever Liberty walks Sully, she gives corkscrew-horned Wilma the chance to trot along beside them, using a lead and collar until she gets a feel for which direction they are heading in.
‘I make TikTok videos — it’s quite a novelty for most people seeing a sheep on a dog walk — and my friends find them very funny,’ says Liberty. ‘Wilma is really obedient and if I say “Stop”, she’s better than Sully at doing as she’s told.’
Mari Wilson feels a similar maternal instinct towards these sheep, having spent weeks bottle-feeding and changing her own little lamb’s nappies.
Hattie, who was bought for £1,000 as an embryo, then implanted in a Texel-cross-Mule, was rejected by her surrogate mother at birth as she was too weak to feed, so Mari and her partner Charlie stepped in.
‘We would sit on the sofa feeding her like a baby, and cut holes in nappies for her tail,’ says Mari, 37, from Tonbridge, Kent. ‘We fed her on demand, as her mother would have, though I could have done without the 2am bottles.
‘My mum took her for a while to give us a little break, just like she might a grandchild.’
Now nearly two and the size of a Great Dane, Hattie, who is insured for £5,000 and monitored by CCTV, lives in a paddock opposite the house and spends much of her time trying to get back in.
‘We have chestnut-rail fences that slide and she can unhook them with her horns and jump through,’ says Mari. ‘If the patio doors are open, she comes in and heads straight to the kitchen, looking for the biscuit tin. She’s also partial to a jam doughnut.’
Whenever Liberty walks Sully, corkscrew-horned Wilma trots along beside them
Hattie, who was bought for £1,000 as an embryo, was rejected by her surrogate mother at birth as she was too weak to feed, so Mari Wilson and her partner Charlie stepped in
When one of Mari’s other pet sheep, a Greyface Dartmoor called Jasmine that was deaf and partially sighted, died five months ago, Hattie mourned in a manner not usually associated with sheep.
‘Hattie was Jasmine’s eyes and ears, like her carer, and she pined for days after she died,’ says Mari. ‘She just sat by the gate calling for her friend. It was heartbreaking.
‘I’ve never seen a sheep react like that, which is further evidence that Hattie is just more human than your average ewe.’
Jenny Campbell, an entrepreneur and former ‘dragon’ on TV show Dragons’ Den, set her heart on having Valais Blacknose sheep as pets after seeing them on another BBC show, This Farming Life, during lockdown.
The 60-year-old bought three — Polly, Dolly and Peggy — from a breeder in North Wales last year for between £2,000 and £5,000 each.
‘To me, of course, they’re priceless,’ she says.
She views them firmly as pets rather than livestock and indulges them terribly: ‘Their barn is more like a bedroom, all cosy and windproof with the right lighting, though I haven’t put a TV in there — yet,’ says Jenny, laughing. ‘I open the door each day and say: “Good morning, girls, shall we go for a walk?”
‘We have a little chat and a cuddle. They are rightly known as the cutest sheep in the world and it makes me so happy when they come cantering up for a ginger biscuit, then put their heads in my lap for a scratch and a cuddle.’
Jenny is currently getting her ‘girls’ used to being on a lead and wearing a harness around the grounds of her Georgian manor house, as she has promised her brother that, when he visits in the summer, they will take one of the sheep on a walk to the pub.
Eccentric? Well, maybe. But very, very cute.
