About us

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We are John and Shelagh Prescott.  We live and work on our farm on the edge of Longhorsley, near Morpeth.

John is a retired vet. He was principal of a large practice in Morpeth, which is now in the hands of our son Sam and his fellow Directors. Sam lives in our village and runs a small commercial flock of sheep. (We put some Wensleydales to  his Texel  ram giving some good, well priced fat lambs)

West End Farm

Our farm is also home to our exotic animals accumulated over the years. John has a collection of tortoises, mostly rescue animals from the surgery, but also some rare yellow headed ones which he has been successfully breeding.

Gaby is our second camel, a pure bactrian. Our first camel, Gloria, was a cross bred and huge.  We still have a few llamas, wallabies and emus together with many other birds.

Land and location

Our farm is 40 acres and together with Sam’s land, which he rents, the holding is 60 acres. We are 25 miles north of Newcastle on the Road to Coldstream, 100 miles from Edinburgh and only 2 miles off the A1 ( view a map here).

What we sell

We have sold sheep to Scotland and Orkney, Germany and Estonia, Isle of Man, Ireland and in the UK

We sell sheep at Skipton and the RBST show and sale,  at Carlisle and off the field.

We sell fleece  from the farm and online and exported Semen to New Zealand last year. 

Our flock

The West End Wensleydales was established in 1986 with a few white ewes and a Fishwick ram. Two years later we bought our first black sheep, a ewe and a ram Scotston Moor. Since then we have concentrated on breeding animals with good size and conformation and wool quality in both flocks.

Our society flock number is 694 and this is used for both flocks. (at one time letters were used for the black flock which was FID)

At present we have over 40 white ewes and 10 blacks and their lambs, 10 yearling rams, 9 shearling rams ( born 2018)  and the senior tups and some 16 yearling ewes.

We no longer take part in the MV accreditation scheme but for export orders the sheep can be blood tested for MV and scrapie resistance. Testing takes up to 2 months and for the last test the bloods must be taken no more than 1 month before transportation.

We have a number of bloodlines and can generally supply ewes with an unrelated ram.

Showing

You will find more information about our show appearances here.