Black sheep feel at home in HentyHenty may not be listed in any tourist brochure as Home of the Black Sheep but it probably should be. With 1800 coloured sheep on 'Cora Lyn' at Henty, Cyril Lieschke is the largest breeder of black sheep in the world. "My closest competitor is from New Zealand, but he's only a third of my size." he said. People in 22 countries vie for the coloured Merino wool including a Florida woman who recently broke the world record for spinning the longest thread in a Tasmanian competition. Ten grams of Cyril's wool was used to spin 671.32 metres and the feat will now be placed in the Guinness Book of Records. Despite the success, Cyril's enterprise is frowned upon by the wool industry because of its long-held fear of contamination. "The Australian Wool Board has always taken a very hard line against coloured sheep because our country is renowned for producing the cleanest, whitest wool in the world. Their attitude causes a lot of studs to kill their coloured sheep as soon as they are born," Cyril said. Cyril's father, however, kept the outcasts until they were one year old when they were killed and used for meat. They were never shorn because of the risk of contaminating the rest of the wool and this practice continued for many years. That was until Cyril took an interest in running the farm. "I was 13 when Dad got me to round up sheep for the killing shed. I never managed to catch the black one because I loved it and didn't want to see it die," he said. The lone black sheep survived the cull until shearing time came and Cyril decided to harvest his first coloured fleece. "I had to wait until all the other shearers had gone home and when I was finished, I had to make sure there wasn't a single black fibre in the shed," he said. From then on, a solitary wool bale was kept in a corner of the shed where Cyril slowly built up his collection of coloured wool. That was until the wool sales of 1950 when the family made the annual trip to Melbourne. At 147 cents per kilo, Cyril's father got the top price for wool ... or at least for white wool. "I had 200kgs of clean, black wool and ended up getting 219 cents for it. I told Dad he could stick his white wool and I think I've still got the marks on my backside from the hiding I got," Cyril laughed. 'Cora Lyn' began with a flock of 1000 white and 28 black sheep which increased over time thanks to the generosity of neighbours. "I counted 31 black sheep one day and couldn't work out why. That was until I saw George Godde throwing a couple of black ones over the fence because he didn't want them," Cyril said. But hard times hit in 1967 during one of the worst droughts the district has ever seen. With all his dams empty and very little hay, Cyril decided to shear all 628 sheep — including 67 black ones — to bring some income back to the farm. It was only when the entire flock had been shorn the rain came and gave them all pneumonia. "It wiped me out completely, but I had 67 coloured sheep again within the next couple of months. I went to auctions all over the country buying up every black sheep I could find," Cyril said. There are 800 on 'Cora Lyn' at the moment and Cyril admits he is slowly allowing white sheep to infiltrate the mob. "I'm starting to think of retirement and the black ones are too much work. It takes a lot of letter-writing and sample-sending to sell my black wool overseas," he said. This has resulted from the AWB's intolerance of coloured wool which has left its farmers with no option but to market their product on their own. "They see me as breeding contamination so I have to do it by myself. I write letters to people all over the world and then visit them every few years," Cyril said. These tours prove to be sell-outs with his wool used for dolls wigs, Santa beards and habits for Italian nuns. But cleanliness has proven to be its greatest asset — especially in the American market. "American wool is absolute garbage. I know a lady who bought four kilograms of American wool but only had one kilogram left after she had washed it and taken out all the toenails, sawdust and manure," Cyril said. His expertise has also secured Cyril a placed on the organising committee of the world conference for breeders of coloured sheep in Geelong in 1999. Held every five years, the Henty farmer is only one of 13 breeders in the world to have been to every conference. And after building his livelihood around an animal that is still considered taboo, Cyril has an obvious affection for the black sheep of any flock. "There are no two coloured fleeces that are exactly the same and anything made from their fibres is totally exclusive. They are exquisite," he said.