Now his pedigree Lleyn flock shares pride of place with his established Texel flock on his West Country sheep and arable farm.
In fact the Lleyns have now replaced his former commercial ewe flock and are thriving on a sheep management regime that fits in well with his arable system. Sheep and arable complement each other on the farm, as do his two sheep breeds.

Mr Tavernor came to his farm, Bridge Farm, South Petherton, Somerset, in 1986 after a number of years working on farms both in the UK and New Zealand. During this period he had already developed an interest in sheep and had established his own Texel flock. He had previously studied for an HND at Harper Adams University College,

Mr Tavernor's family had run the farm for many years largely as a mixed dairy and arable unit. He took over the farm after the retirement of his uncle and the dairy herd was sold to settle various family financial interests. It was therefore decided to take the farm forward as a mixed sheep and arable business.

Bridge Farm is a low lying unit of 328 acres of which about 240 acres are taken up by arable crops and arable set aside land. The remaining land is pasture, much of which is subject to regular flooding and, therefore, cannot be cropped. Arable cropping takes in wheat, barley, potatoes and peas.

"The main reason we have stock on this farm is the low lying permanent grassland that is subject to flooding. When we came here I already had a Texel flock of about 50 to 60 breeding ewes so it seemed reasonable to add a commercial ewe flock, especially as we also had short term, largely 18 month, grass leys, in the arable rotation."

"This temporary pasture is also extremely useful as we can graze and stock it very heavily in the summer then out winter sheep on it knowing that it is shortly to be ploughed up". The original commercial ewe flock were largely Friesland cross Exmoor ewes which we put to Texel tups, then retaining Texel cross ewe lambs as flock replacements. When put back to the Texel tups this gave us a strong three-quarter Texel meat lamb to sell.

"This worked very well, though we were always concerned about the health risks of buying in replacement commercial ewes". Around the same time we were reading about Lleyns and went to a NSA open day at Mick Wright's South Wales Farm. What particularly impressed us was the Lleyn's ability to look after its lambs plus of course its ease of management. In addition we had the prospect of very high lambing percentages.

"We rang up the Society secretary saying that we were looking for 200 to 300 Lleyn ewes and that, ideally, we were looking to buy these from a single flock to minimise disease risks. She told us that we were unlikely to be able to do this because most flocks were too small to meet our needs.

"Then, by chance, we saw an advertisement from Ralph and Shirley Evans of Modbury, Devon, who had decided to sell their Lleyn sheep flock and to have a year without lambing. We visited the farm and bought virtually the flock, a total of 210 ewes, plus a ram and two teaser rams.
"When we bought the flock we initially thought of putting the majority of the Lleyns to our Texel rams but having seen the prices that pure Lleyn sheep were realising we decided to keep the Lleyns pure and run them as a pedigree flock An additional Lleyn tup was bought in from the Lleyn Sheep Society's Ross-on-Wye sale.

"Ironically the two-shear stock ram that we bought came from Ralph and Shirley Evans who were only selling him because we had bought all their ewes a few weeks earlier!
"Now we have just under 400 Lleyns, including ewe lambs. Our ewes are about 60 to 70 kg liveweight and we are often achieving over 200 per cent lambing. The flock is out wintered apart from being brought in for lambing. Ewes are run with teaser rams so that they all lamb over a two to three week period. It does mean a short period of intensive work, similar to our arable operations, but is easier to manage than if lambing was spread over a longer period. It also has the advantage of enabling us to wet foster multiple lambs on to ewes only having a single lamb.
"All our wether lambs are sold deadweight, mostly grading 2-3R or 2-3L. We have always sold breeding stock privately and recently had a request for 100 Lleyn ewe lambs, the buyer asking if we could also supply some Texel tups to go with them. Since then the same buyer has returned for 120 Lleyns plus four Texel tups. With increasing concerns about flock health, we believe that there will be a growing market from farmers seeking to buy all their replacement stock from a single source," said Mr Tavernor.
Nick Tavernor was Sheep Farmer of the Year in 1992.

Gross Margin Lleyn Flock
Nick Tavernor 2002