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The Sheep

History

The sheep enterprise has been evolving since 1988, when we had 15 milking sheep. This was gradually expanded to 100 ewes and sheep’s milk ice cream was being sold in Hyde Park. Then in 1994 we decided that it was not going to be financially viable without a large injection of capital, so the milking flock was disbanded with the sad loss of Rambo and Rupert the two main rams. A commercial flock of 400 mules was then established to produce lambs for meat and initially these were born indoors in March. It soon became apparent that the numbers of sheep that would be required to be economically viable would need more housing than was available. The decision was taken to change to outdoor lambing in May, initially with the mules. Then it was decided that we needed a smaller pure bred ewe in order to breed our own replacements, so we chose the Defaid Lleyn.

Present

In 2007 the flock currently consists of just over 1100 ewes plus replacement breeding ewes, producing about 2000 lambs. Half the flock is put to Lleyn rams to produce the replacements with the rest going to Charollais rams to produce lambs for meat.

Since 2005 the flock has moved into the technological age. With the help of Martin Tomkins of Border Software every sheep has become electronically identified. Inside each ear tag there is an electronic transponder, which means with the use of various gadgets and Martin’s program we can now trace all the records back to individual animals, be it weight, medical, observations or lambing records. These can then be analysed so that we can select the correct sheep for our system.

A Year in the Life of a Sheep

The year starts with the rams being put with the ewes on 5th December (C), having first selected which ewes should go with which rams. The rams are left in for 6 weeks.

During the winter the silage that has been made during the summer (D) is fed to the ewes, most of whom are kept outside for the winter. In May the ewes are brought down to the fields around the farmyard to lamb (E).

During the summer the ewes rear the lambs (F).

The sheep are sheared in June (G). From September onwards lambs are sold for meat (H). Ewe lambs are selected for breeding in the autumn, after consulting the records stored on the computer (I).

Then another year begins…