I am not a natural sheep farmer and was brought up on a cattle farm with no sheep. My first experience with sheep was at agricultural college.

I bought my first animals at the age of 21, with 25 ewe lambs and a ram to get me started off.

At the time I received a lot of negative comments from so-called friends.

I remember one saying to me that by getting sheep it was a sure way of falling out with your neighbours.

I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but his words have turned out to be true.

I have had lots of disagreements with my neighbours as a result of owning sheep. They have broken out many times and there have been numerous dog attacks.

Spade

I also recall another friend who warned that after buying the sheep, the next thing I should buy is a sharp spade. I quickly understood what he meant. At times it does feel that the only goal in life that a sheep has is to die.

The other piece of advice I received from him was about money, or the lack of money.

He described sheep farming as a poor man’s way of farming.

It is this statement that has bugged me for years. I am someone who hates to give in to negative advice or warnings.

With improvements in fencing the sheep don’t break out as often, while the dog attacks are one that we have to live with, and hope that owners keep their dogs under control.

After the rules changed around how you can dispose of deadstock, the sharp spade is long gone, but with a good health plan in place you can reduce the deaths, although not totally eliminate them.

This still leaves the one about money.

Subsidy

When I first got the sheep, there was a subsidy payment per head, and I thought that by chasing this, it was the way to make sheep farming profitable.

I would keep more and more ewes, and retain all my tail-end lambs for breeding. I didn’t worry about the lambing percentage. More ewes meant more subsidy.

When the system changed to area-based payments, things started to look very different. I started to benchmark my flock and it soon became apparent that I had a very poor flock.

My lambing percentage was at 140, and the performance of the lambs was mediocre. I had lots of wee lambs with bad feet, which was the direct consequence of keeping these types as replacement stock for years.

It was clear the whole flock needed a major overhaul. My target had to be to get to the magical 200% at lambing, and I needed lambs that would perform on grass and be good on their feet.

Mule ewes

The first thing I did was to buy in some mule ewe lambs to increase lambing percentage.

Then I put a New Zealand Suffolk ram on these. These are easily lambed, good on their feet and suit a grass-base.

At present, I am using a Belclare to cross on my New Zealand Suffolk ewe lambs. The aim is to maintain hybrid vigour, and push on towards the 200% lambing.

While doing all this I kept a replacement rate of between 30% and 40%. I have been very ruthless, culling for bad feet, and trying not to not keep replacements out of lame ewes.

Difference

I’m five years into this system, and this is the first year that I can see a real difference. I have almost two lambs per ewe in the field, and I only had to treat three ewes for bad feet at turn-out.

My benchmarking figures for the sheep flock are starting to reflect the positive changes that have been made.

I have proved to myself, and my friends of yesteryear, that sheep need not be the poor relation when it comes to making some money out of farming.

It is challenging work, but it can be worthwhile when you take a long hard look at what’s going wrong and devise a plan to put it right.

Ends

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