A closed commercial flock running 200 homebred ewe’s, predominantly now Rouge X Texel/Beltex. Our aim is to produce good quality smart commercial lambs and good reliable replacement females. Originally a dairy farm running a small flock of ewe’s alongside. When milk production ceased it left the way for a increase in sheep numbers. Once I returned home to farm full time we wanted to improve and modernise our foundation flock of good quality Texel bred ewe’s. I wanted to improve on the flock’s lambing percentage and the ease of which they lambed, I felt lambs could be more vigorous at birth and ewe’s milkier. I also wanted to produce a better quality carcase and produce a flock that was ideally better to handle due to my bad back and health issues.
Having had experience of several breeds and non proving to be of our liking, we decided to purchase a Rouge ram in 2009, Jets Highway, along with two females, our decision was based on the Rouge’s fine bone and carcase quality. This proved to be for us a valuable decision. The resulting gimmer shearing’s have gone on to be the turning point in our flock. They had remarkable ease of lambing, excellent mothering abilities, were extremely milky with excellent feet. Something the original Texel’s struggled with, on our very sandy soils. The next year we purchased our first Beltex ram, purely to add extra shape and tightness of frame to the finished lamb. In 2010 we purchased another Rouge ram, Langlands Lord Almighty, who has produced some outstanding and much valued daughter’s in our flock. The ewe’s we are now running, some now being three quarter bred Rouge, have proved they are excellent prolific mothers, easy to handle, can adapt to change quickly, being on sandy land we can go from lush grass to dessert like conditions in a matter of days so its important ewe’s can adapt, they have good strong feet and produce quality quick growing solid lambs.
