Farmer Focus: Dipping our toe into cattle production

Like our terminal-sired tups, the Aberfield SRs have been flying through the ewes, with everything covered in a fortnight. It seems that the teaser has done his job well.

This group will lamb outdoors in April. They are our best ewes, from which we keep our replacement ewe lambs.

To help to continue improving the flock, we tag and record each lamb at birth, which enables us to only keep lambs from ewes that haven’t had any lambing issues or lameness.

See also: How to make best use of teaser tups to tighten lambing

About the author

Louise Elkington

Louise Elkington runs 500 breeding ewes and a small suckler herd in Lincolnshire with husband Chris. Gelston Lamb sells all meat produced on the farm through pop-up shops, deliveries and catering. They have 54ha (133 acres) of grass on a farm business tenancy and agreements for stubble turnips and hay aftermaths.

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We have tried many different breeds over the years, but the Aberfield SRs from Innovis seem to tick all the right boxes for us.

The tups, unlike others we have purchased in the past, don’t melt away at tupping, and thrive off a forage-based system.

Now we have the nervous wait until scanning to get an idea of how the next year will look.

Chris and I have talked about buying a few cattle to graze alongside the sheep for a few years now, and have finally taken the plunge.

We have recently bought four Stabiliser heifers, which are in-calf to a Stabiliser bull and are due to calve in May.

The plan is that the heifers will stay, and we will fatten the steers to put through the butchery. If it works well, we will look to increase numbers, as it would be great to sell our own beef.

However, it’s not just the end product that has encouraged us to go down this road: we also hope they will help us manage the grass better and spread the worm burden.

We then hope to cross them back over a Lincoln Red, as this is our local breed and will appeal more to our customers.

Christmas orders are flooding in, which is fantastic, and we have one more pop-up shop, on 14 December. Looking at the pre-orders, I think it might be a big one, so it will be all hands on deck.

Some of our more unusual products seem to be popular this year, such as our lamb blankets and rosemary and cranberry brie bombs, made with our award-winning lamb bacon.

We will be looking forward to the afternoon of 24 December when every order is out, and everyone is happy!