Starting to lamb outdoors after years of doing it inside, significantly increasing the size of his flock and introducing an electronic identification system – JOANNE PUGH went to meet the sheep farmer who is adamant that, despite how it sounds, life is in fact getting much easier.

The first year he started lambing outside, after years of doing it indoors, was a ‘test of nerves’ for Northumberland sheep farmer Duncan Nellis.
A mixture of Lleyn and Charollais rams are used on pure Lleyn ewes.

He decided from the very beginning that the flock would be completely left to its own devices at night time with him and his family only working during the daylight hours.

Changing the system so drastically was not easy and Mr Nellis admits sitting in the house counting the minutes until the sun came up in those early days.
“The hardest thing to do is to just leave them alone,” he said.
But this year, the second time lambing was done outside, the system has proved its worth within the family set-up at Thistlehaugh Farm, Longhorsley, Morpeth.
And it is very much a family enterprise with wife Zoe, parents Henry and Enid and brother and sister-in-law Angus and Janice all playing a part in the farm and the busy bed and breakfast business run from the main farmhouse.

Although brother Angus spends much of his time on the farm’s suckler herd and fat cattle, he is also very involved in managing the sheep. The two brothers are also busy in the summer months contract shearing up to 30,000 sheep.

The farm stands at 680 acres, with another 70 acres rented in on FBTs. Additional summer grazing is also taken each year.
The majority of the farm is grassland, plus 23 acres of spring triticale, 21 acres of peas, 15 acres of winter wheat and 14 acres of oats, all grown for ‘arable silage’. This is used solely to feed the cattle.

Ewes that produced one lamb are currently at Thistlehaugh while the twins are at summer grazing away from the farm.
There are 400 cattle on farm – 130 spring calving suckler cows with two generations of mainly Aberdeen-Angus cross calves. Around 80 store cattle are bought in for finishing each year. The sheep enterprise numbers 1,100 pure-bred Lleyn breeding ewes plus 200 hoggs that lambed this year.

The farm is in organic conversion, having started in September 2005, and this has meant changes on the farm. For example, less arable crops are now grown to make way for more grassland, and red clover has been introduced.
However, said Mr Nellis, converting had ‘solved more problems than it had thrown up’ and had sharpened many of their management techniques.
“A lot of it is common sense, – like having more white clover instead of buying in expensive nitrogen,” he said. “We’d almost eradicated nitrogen from the grassland before we went organic anyway. We made the decision to convert because we thought we hadn’t got a lot to do.”

The conversion has not affected the sheep enterprise and, said Mr Nellis, that was important for him and his brother as their focus was increasing the flock and going organic could not get in the way of that. “It wouldn’t be much of an idea, when we’re both still in our 30s, if it had meant we’d have to be cutting back,” he said.
Expansion has been quite rapid, with sheep numbers increased from 850 to 1,100 in just two years.
Although the aim is to grow quickly, Mr Nellis is still very selective and has a clear idea of the females he will use as breeding ewes.

To that end, the flock is split in two, with 900 Lleyn ewes kept pure and 250 Lleyn ewes put to Charollais rams. Those 250 are females that Mr Nellis said were strong ewes, but had been ‘disqualified’ from the main flock for showing various traits he wished to avoid.

Pure-bred lambs kept each year as replacements automatically qualify for the main flock – i.e. they are put to a Lleyn ram as hoggs – but can be moved to the second flock if they fall short of Mr Nellis’ expectations immediately or in subsequent years.
Hoggs run with the ram for one cycle and, if not served in that time, are not bred from. This year 75 per cent were served. The ewes and hoggs served scanned at 184 per cent last lambing season with 1.7 pure Lleyn lambs produced per ewe and 1.58 per hogg.
The ewes carrying Lleyn cross Charollais lambs are lambed indoors from April 1, while the ewes and hoggs carrying pure Lleyn lambs are lambed outside from April 20.

Nr Nellis said the decision to move to outside lambing for the majority of the flock was to make it even more obvious to spot negative traits.
“Lambing outside makes it clear where the problems are and we don’t keep anything that’ll give us management problems,” he said.
Priorities are good feet, udder confirmation, strong maternal drive and lamb vigour. Mr Nellis said there was ‘not much point in ignoring lamb growth rate’, but he always looked for survival traits first.

Additional advantages of lambing outside, according to Mr Nellis, were less health problems, particularly joint ill and watery mouth, and significantly reduced labour requirements.
However, management, and particularly management of nutrition, were absolutely paramount or all those advantages would disappear.
"We’ve managed to really reduce the labour at lambing. The key to it, lambing outside, is not to have problems because if you have problems they’re four times as bad,” he said.

The dangers of having ewes too fat at lambing had become very clear to them, he said, and, although it sometimes felt like they were being too hard on them, that was not the case.
“You’d think that reducing concentrates would give you more problems. It’s how we’ve been brought up – to get good fettle on them – but by far and away the most problems are caused if they’re too fat.”
Therefore, singles are given no concentrates, twins no more than 0.5kg and triplets ‘a little more’. Everything is winter-shorn into housing in mid to late February and given 10 to 15 days to ‘harden up’ before the ewes carrying pure Lleyns are turned outside on to set stocking at five ewes to the acre with no more concentrates.
The ewes carrying Lleyn cross Charollais lambs are fed more conventionally at 1.25 to 1.75kg, but 1,300 sheep were still lambed this year on only 20-tonnes of concentrates. This was important, considering the price of organic concentrates, said Mr Nellis.

Despite lambing outdoors, very few ewes are left with three lambs. Mr Nellis said some wet fostering was done in the field, but some singles were brought indoors to marry-on an extra lamb.

All lambs are finished without concentrates and last year, apart from a few sent to a local butcher, everything was sold deadweight. The pure Lleyn lambs averaged 19.9kg and most were R grade or over.
It was this ability to finish off grass that attracted the Nellis family to the Lleyn breed, along with their hardiness.

Initially a handful were purchased and ran alongside their existing flock of North Country Mules put to Charollais tups. However, having made the decision to operate a closed flock and move away from the ‘gamble’ of buying in replacements, the idea of keeping pure Lleyns appealled more and more.
“The Mules were doing us very well, but we were spending an awful lot of money each year buying replacements and each time we could be buying in a new set of problems,” said Mr Nellis. “The idea of breeding our own replacements was very tempting.”
This change was made in 1996 and the number of Lleyns has done nothing but increase since then. Now the only stock bought in are replacement stock rams.

Keen to reduce even more elements of risk within their breeding strategy, introducing electronic identification was the next logical step.
They were very excited about the prospect of being able to follow different bloodlines and more effectively eliminate unwanted traits. The system can identify rams that generate problems.
However, Mr Nellis is now also realising the benefits of being able to record positive traits too, such as eight and 20-week growth rates.
Although lambing outside makes it impossible to record birthweight, Mr Nellis said there was no reason why EID should be more difficult for outdoor lambing flocks. Labour requirements were so much lower, he said, there was time to tag lambs at birth.

The system was introduced late last year, with all the females tagged at once, so this lambing season was the first time new-borns were tagged.
The investment was £400 for the hand-held scanner, £350 for the computer software and 75p per tag. Mr Nellis said he had been happy with this because, as yet, the equipment had not let them down.
“We thought it was a great idea, but we were worried about the software,” he said. “However, the only thing that’s let it down is me hitting the wrong buttons. The technology’s been grand.”
He did acknowledge the system was not for everyone, for example people buying in replacements every year, and did not think it should be forced on the whole UK flock.
However, it suited their farm and their goals. It certainly suits Mr Nellis personally, who is a great believer in EBVs and having access to breeding information that cannot be seen with the naked eye.

He also said that, while all the recording was currently about improving their own breeding females, if the day came when they were selling pedigree stock, he would be proud to have all the data to back-up claims about those animals.
“You can spend a lot of money on a ram yet it can be an incredible gamble,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of disbelief with genetic recording but I don’t see why you can do it with Holstein bulls, but not Lleyn rams.”

Article kindly supplied by www.farmersguardian.com