3000 New Zealand type Romney ewes genetically selected to breed lambs that will thrive and finish on forage

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100 New Zealand type Suffolk ewes kept to produce terminal sires for home use and sale

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Approximately 1000 ewe lambs are run on to shearlings as flock replacements and sale

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Rams, selected from the top five percent of ewes and further environmentally tested are sold to regular clients

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Ewes are sired at a ratio of 1:100

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Stud ewes are single sired with this season 1450 ewes being sired in 15 groups for 17 to 21 days

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Ewes that do not meet the exact breeding criteria but are still good performers are assigned to the “B mob” and go to the Suffolk rams

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Both Romney and Suffolk ewes live and lamb outdoors, lambing in April off grass

Lambs form the stud ewes are tagged with EID tags with 24 hours of birth. These can then be correlated to the ewes EID and programmed with all the other data

 

Regular monitoring of daily live weight gain and faecal egg counts are taken to measure lambs performance

 

Body Condition Scoring (BCS) is one of our key performance indicators, the ewes are weighed and scored at key times during the flock calendar and one of our selection criteria for our stud flock is that ewes maintain BCS throughout the year

 

We graze a wide variety of grass qualities from poor quality downland to improved leys

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Lambs are pushed on a variety of forage crops, grass, herbal leys, red clover and summer brassica

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All ewes and replacements are out wintered on turnips and more recently on fodder beet with oat straw as a buffer

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The farm is home to some valuable natural habitats, particularly for the Duke of burgundy butterfly which we work hard to maintain

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We are working to achieve the right balance of productivity while respecting any areas of environmental value.

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