Having held a highly successful breeding ewe sale just a couple of weeks ago, James Alexander and his team at Jalex are going again, with another on-farm sale scheduled for Friday 20 August at 7pm.

This sale will be the flock's first ram (tup) sale, with approximately 70 lots on offer.

Over 50 of these will be Suffolk rams, with Texel, Blue Leicester and hybrid rams also on offer.

The sale will also include a select sale of 20 Suffolk hoggets.

Desired ewes

James said: “We started putting a few Suffolk females together in 2017; this was driven by the difficulty we found in sourcing the type of Suffolk tup we wanted to use on our commercial ewes in order to produce the breeding ewe lamb that we desired.

"So we started to select and source a few females to merge and create a flock of Suffolks with the attributes that we want in the tups.”

In doing this, James believes that many of the rams offered for sale next week are more ready for a commercial set-up.

We need lambs to be up and sucking with loads of vigour

“We are looking for tups with tight skins, medium bone, black silky, clean hair on their heads and legs, tups with character and carcase.

"We are lambing approximately 700 ewes, so we need lambs to be up and sucking with loads of vigour, particularly as we lamb the twins outside.

"We cannot have lambs with big heads and short necks being slow to suck. We find that avoiding too much bone and selecting tups with lift that are lively and vigorous avoids this.”

Length and character

The commercial flock at Jalex has sold between 400 and 1,000 hoggets each year for the last 25 years, giving James great insight into what works and what doesn’t.

And while there is always room for improvement, he said he is very happy with the way the shearlings are coming forward, as they are a real Kelso-type sheep, with nice black heads, plenty of length and super character.

James finished by saying: “We have moved to a standalone tup sale, as we hope to grow on the numbers each year and we thought that selling 70 tups on the same day as the 1,000 commercial females would be too many for one day.”

The Jalex tup sale will take place on-farm in Toomebridge, with online bidding available through Marteye via Richard Beattie.

All sheep are eligible for export on the day, with any making over £700 including insurance as a luck penny.