Harlequin mini meat sheep have 'bolted' since they were first developed in 2006

Ms Bell has spent her life around animals and as a full-time employee of a Gippsland saleyard, running a large mob of woolly sheep or a herd of cattle was not a straightforward option.

After investigating alternatives, she came across Harlequin mini meat sheep, bred predominantly for smaller, rural operations for people who want to grow out their own lambs for slaughter.

"These sheep are great for people on smaller acreage because they're low maintenance and because of their size, you can run double the amount and get the same meat value as you would if you were running one normal sheep," Ms Bell said.

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The breed does not require shearing or tail-docking and is known for its placid nature.

The breed was developed by using crosses of White Dorper rams and Persian ewes and aimed at recreational breeders wanting smaller sheep which are easy to handle and manage.

Ms Bell said the size of the breed was one of the most attractive features of the sheep, particularly due to a number of injuries she had experienced in recent years.

"There's not a huge amount of breeders around and off the top of my head, there's half a dozen in WA, one registered breeder in Tasmania and perhaps up to 20 in Victoria," she said.

"Breeding-wise, you never know what the results will be because the colour of your ram and ewe doesn't determine the colour of the lamb.

"The variations in the colours and patterns on the lambs can be quite remarkable, it's a bit like a Kinder Surprise and they look like guinea pigs on steroids."

According to the Australian All Breeds of Miniature Goat & Sheep Society, the Harlequins' ideal liveweight is 40-44 kilograms.

The society said the breed was not excessively muscled, making them safer to work with compared to other larger, heavily-muscled breeds.

Ms Bell's Hope-ta Harlequin Mini Meat Sheep stud at Longwarry, 90 kilometres south-east of Melbourne, includes 20 registered stud females, which produce up to 60 lambs each year.

In the past, she has sold sheep to buyers as far as NSW and Queensland, but mainly focuses on marketing the sheep to prospective purchasers across Victoria.

"I was looking for a name for the stud and I always say 'I hope ta do this' and 'I hope ta to that' and I hoped to do well with the stud and that's how its name came about," Ms Bell said.

"I could see a bit of an exciting future and thought I could make money off these guys in a smaller space than I ever could raising dairy heifers."

Ewes lamb twice a year across three lambing cycles with lambing rates up to 170 per cent in the Hope-ta stud.

"They're low maintenance and a bonus for kids and landowners who don't want to get sheep shorn," she said.

Ms Bell, who only retains a handful of lambs each year, said her mini meat sheep were sold by word of mouth and through social media.

"I keep a few ewes for breeding but I usually sell the balance," she said.

Denis Russell created the Harlequin mini meat sheep breed in 2006 when he imported speckle Persian sheep from South Africa and mated them with White Dorpers.

Initially, he ran the hybrid breed in a commercial operation up until 2013 and since then, more than 60 breeders across Australia have taken up breeding Harlequins.

"The hybrids showed up the same colours as the Persians but were smaller than a Dorper," Mr Russell, Naracoorte, SA, said.

"I spotted them as an ideal small-farm sheep and decided to keep them as a separate breed."

Mr Russell also established the Meatmaster hybrid breed, a hard-doing sheep designed for pastoral country in the mid-1990s, through his Genelink stud.

"Interestingly, the mini Harlequin sheep had a better temperament than either of the breeds which made them up," he said.

"They became more responsive to human interaction and easier to handle and could be trained with a bucket of food."

Mr Russell said ewes sell between $400-$600 a head on average, while rams ranged from $400-$1000, and lambs sold direct to the public could command prices anywhere from $200-$600.

"They do prefer drier climates but they are everywhere now because a lot of these smaller farmers are in mostly more developed areas and not far from cities," he said.

"The breed's actually bolted far beyond my expectations."