A six-month-old Texel lamb from Cheshire has become the world's most expensive sheep after fetching an eye popping price of £368,000 at an auction in Glasgow,Scotland on Thursday. The lamb, a pedigree Texel ram called Double Diamond is a breed originally from Texal, Netherlands. It was sold by breeder Charlie Boden with an opening bid of £10,500 at the Scottish National Texel Sale in Lanark.

The particular lamb is considered to be an exceptional breed as it is quite known for its lean meat and wool which is typically used for hosiery yarns. The lamb was born in Macclesfield in Cheshire,UK.

According to the Texel Sheep Society, the young Double Diamond was "the subject of much pre-sale speculation and a crowd puller from the moment he set foot in the market." His perfectly toned torso, his perfectly shaped head, muted gold colouring as well as his place of birth were important price factors as to why he smashed the previous record price bid of £231,000 in 2009. He was bought by a group of three breeders, Auldhouseburn, Proctors and New View, who joined forces to acquire the winning bid. The group plans to use Double Diamond to breed other lambs.

In an interview with one of the buyers, Jeff Aiken, farm manager of the Procter's flock, said:

"In the pedigree breed you start looking at the smaller characteristics of the sheep - the hair, the colour, the shape of the head.", BBC reported.

Mr Aiken added: "We had to pay that amount of money to get the genetics."

The Texel breed is supposedly the number one terminal sire breed in the UK, with a siring rate of 30 percent of all lambs that are born in the UK each year.

Texel Sheep Society chief executive John Yates said:

"This ram lamb has the potential to sire many, many rams which will, in turn, go on to breed many thousands of lambs themselves. This is the very top of the sheep breeding industry in the UK and as such the buyers are investing in the future of their businesses," he added.

Double Diamond was already the talk of the market even before the sale as he was fathered by last year's champion Garngour Craftsman.

UBTPOTY2018 Pictures of the week
19 January 2018: Sheep graze in a snow-covered field in Thornhill, Scotland. (And if you're wondering why they are orange, farmers regularly used a harmless dye on their blackface sheep to deter thieves) Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Netherlands Scotland