https://www.yahoo.com/tech/montana-man-pleads-guilty-creating-003000858.html

How big are these sheep? An average male can weigh over 300 pounds with horns over 5 feet wide, giving them the largest sheep horns on the planet. The sheep are endangered and protected by both international treaties and U.S. law. Montana also forbids the import of these foreign sheep or their parts in an effort to protect local American sheep from disease.


https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/03/13/montana-man-80-nailed-by-feds-for-creating-mutant-hybrid-bighorns/
From 2013-2021, they created larger hybrid sheep to make a tidy profit from shooting preserves.
Schubarth sent genetic material from illegally-obtained Marco Polo sheep parts to labs. The labs created cloned embryos, which Schubarth implanted in bighorn ewes on his ranch.
One of them gave birth to a genetically pure Marco Polo that he named "Montana Mountain King (MMK)" MMK's sperm was then used to inseminate various other species of wild sheep ewes, producing the huge mutants.


https://www.businessinsider.nl/a-montana-man-trying-to-illegally-create-a-giant-sheep-hybrid-went-on-a-hunt-for-sheep-parts-and-testicles-the-authorities-say/


Schubarth bred his offshoot species from a single male argali sheep he kept at his ranch and called the "Montana Mountain King," prosecutors said.

He came into possession of the "Montana Mountain King" by working in 2013 with another Montana resident, who was unnamed, to bring in biological tissue of an argali that was hunted in Kyrgyzstan.

Schubarth then spent $4,200 making cloned embryos from the tissue, and in 2017, his male argali was born, prosecutors said.

The rancher brought the "Montana Mountain King" to his property in Montana despite knowing he was breaking state animal trafficking laws, per court documents.

He then extracted semen from the "Montana Mountain King," using it to inseminate dozens of ewes of different species, prosecutors said.

According to court documents, Schubarth sold the male sheep's hybrid offspring for as high as $10,000 per animal for two years. Schubarth called the more pure-blooded specimens "Montana Black Magic," prosecutors said.

In 2019, he also bought testicles of a Rocky Mountain bighorn for $400 so he could extract semen and breed bighorns crossed with the offspring of"Montana Mountain King," per court documents.

Prosecutors said Schubarth also obtained false documents to hide that the sheep cross-breeds were illegal.

He was convicted on one count of violating the Lacey Act and one count of conspiring to violate the anti-wildlife trafficking law.

Looks like he will most likely spend the rest of his days in prison.

We just can't have people breeding for huntable aspects



What round for Holstein?

Which honestly is horseshit - and likely the reason the feds picked up the case. Local courts he'd have walked.

Are these laws meant to actually protect anything?

Native species.

Like Spanish horses and Irish sheep