July 2013

Throughout July I seriously considered renaming our farm ‘Khaki Farm’ to reflect the colour of all our grazing fields! Unfortunately, the lack of rain and any green grass, forced me to review my carefully thought out ‘Grazing Management Plan’ for weaning the lambs at the end of the month. So, rather than stress the lambs even more by taking them away from the ewes AND putting them onto a virtual starvation paddock, we left the happy families together for a couple of weeks longer.

On a positive note, the weeks of sunshine during May and June made the most wonderful hay; we mowed our 7acres on the 5^th and three exceedingly hot days later our barn was full of sweet-smelling meadow hay. Our years of walking and hand-weeding the hayfield has paid off and now we can be confident that it’s free of ragwort, thistle and dock, on which basis we’re able to sell all the excess, at a premium, to horse owners.

In so many ways it’s been a very peculiar year! Mid-month we weighed all our lambs in line with our pedigree Performance Recording; this gives us a really clear idea of how they are performing genetically. As a terminal sire breed, it’s important that the lambs gain weight steadily on mother’s milk and grass alone, and this year they have excelled themselves, giving us confidence that our flock improvement ‘strategy’ is heading in the right direction. Our best-performing Hampshire Down lambs achieved 0.43kgs Daily Liveweight Gain (DLG) from birth to 13 weeks off grass, and surprisingly, the best-performing lambs were all females!



Our “Poultry on Your Smallholding” programme is getting tantalisingly close to completion, but as with any livestock project, the filming schedule is largely dictated by the rhythms of nature! We’ve been following the progress of a gaggle of goslings – currently a few days old, yellow, fluffy and endearing – and we shall revisit them in a few weeks time to film their transition from heated barn and a regular supply of grower’s pellets, to an outdoor life being reared on lush Somerset pastures. Our final visit will be in winter, when they’ll be fully-grown and ready for their Christmas table destiny.

One of the best aspects of belonging to a Breed Society, in our case the Hampshire Down Sheep Breeders Association (HDSBA), is the social side, including flock visits organised by the Society. We travelled on from our filming in Somerset to a grassland farm in Devon. Set in the most glorious rolling countryside the farm was the birthplace of our current stock ram, Yarcombe Maximus! Our hosts, the Derryman family, are one of the top Hampshire Down breeders, and they also milk a herd of traditional Friesian cows – a lovely sight to see! A trailer ride around the farm had been arranged, so that we could see each of the breeding groups of sheep. The Yarcombe flock was established in 1970, and years of careful breeding have produced an outstanding ‘type’ of sheep that will reliably express itself in the next generation, meaning that a prospective purchaser of breeding stock can be confident of bringing the desired traits into his flock. Our Yarcombe ram has certainly brought some excellent genetics into our flock, as did the Owslebury ram before him, and the Westland ram before him!



At this time of year, with weaning imminent (weather permitting), my thoughts turn to planning the next year’s breeding cycle! Already, most of the pedigree sheep breeders are well into tupping (mating), aiming for a December or early January lambing, but I still prefer spring lambing so our ram won’t join the ewes until 1^st November for an April lambing. Nevertheless, there are many treatments that need to be scheduled, especially in view of the need to vaccinate against the Schmallenberg virus for the first time this year, as well as the Toxoplasmosis vaccine following our lambing losses this year – so I’ve been updating my Flock Health Plan for 2013-14. It still needs a bit of refinement, but I’m happy to share this as an example of the broad range of treatments and management actions the shepherd needs to consider each year! Click HERE to view my ‘work in progress’ – comments and questions welcome!

And finally, Carole Youngs of The Smallholder Series has written a comprehensive guide to ram selection and management for the autumn edition of Practical Sheep, Goats & Alpacas magazine, which will be on sale in all good newsagents later this month, so make sure you order your copy!

www.smallholderseries.co.uk