Photo of the Week: Football fan lambs enter Pedigree league

This week’s photo of pedigree Shropshire ram lambs sniffing their new toy was sent in by Mark Openshaw.

Mark produces the 25-strong flock with Yvette Openshaw.

He says the football idea was introduced some years ago to help socialise the lambs early, get them up and moving together and give the ewes some well-earned rest.

And they definitely seem to enjoy it. Mark says: ”It’s also funny to watch the ram lambs dribbling the ball in competition with each other across the shed by kicking and tupping it with their head.“

See also: Photo of the Week: New triplet lamb gets some TLC

© Mark Openshaw

The pedigree flock was established in 2008 and has become known as “The Holtridge Flock”, which is a pretty good name for a football team, too!

The flock is bred for breeding and showing, and some lambs are occasionally selected for meat production.

Last year, among many other prizes, they won Breed Champion at both Oswestry and Minsterley.

Lambing started early on Christmas Eve with a pair of twin lambs, and the last lamb of this batch was born on 16 January.

Mark said: “Last year was a crazy season with the lack of rain. And even though we still had grass, we believe it had an impact on ewes cycling, so we had a few empty ewes at scanning.

“Having put the empties back in with the tup, they are now due to lamb in mid-March.”

Have you got lambing photos you’d like to share? You can upload them to our Lambing 2026 gallery. You can also upload your other farming photos to our Farmlife Framed gallery.