Recently, Agriland made the trip to Co. Cavan, to speak to sheep farmer David Beattie about his journey from taking over the family farm and starting with having no sheep, to building up a flock of 300 purebred Lleyn ewes.
David, who also works off-farm, started farming in his own right seven years ago, taking over the farm and running it himself after it had been leased out to an uncle of his prior to that.
The farm, before David took over, had been grazed by cattle and, according to David, the ground didn’t particularly suit cattle.
Therefore, he made the decision to go down the route of sheep farming seven years ago.
Speaking to Agriland about taking over the farm on his own, David said: “Up until seven years ago, the farm was leased out to my uncle.
“My father passed away when I was young, before I could really take it on – so it was leased out before taking it over myself seven years ago.
“I always wanted to go farming myself; there’s a reasonably good farm of land here of 120ac.
“The land, you could say, would be better suited to sheep rather than cattle – so that’s why I chose to go sheep farming and then I was looking for a good, hardy, prolific ewe, and I came across the Lleyn breed; I haven’t looked back since.”
David’s system
David runs a mid-season lambing system, with lambing commencing typically after St. Patrick’s Day.
He built a grant-spec sheep shed two years ago, which he uses to house and lamb-down his ewes in.
Ewes are generally only housed a week before lambing commences, with the ewes prior to housing, found cleaning up paddocks on neighbouring dairy farms.
No meal is fed, David said, until ewes are housed; once they are lambed-down, no more meal is fed and they are on a grass-only diet.
Ewe lambs are kept on as hoggets, with some kept as replacements and the rest sold at the Lleyn Sheep Society sale in Roscommon, yearly.
Up until this year, the majority of ram lambs were finished and sent to the factory; however this year, David is optimistic of there being a good store trade, and plans to sell his ram lambs as stores.
Why Lleyns?
David said he was drawn to the Lleyn breed for a number of different reasons.
He explained: “I find Lleyn ewes [to be] excellent mothers. The best way to describe them is that the man-hours per lamb is very small.
“They are good hardy sheep, have great maternal instincts and have plenty of milk to rear two lambs.
“They give very little feet trouble and to be honest I can manage the 300 ewes and their lambs very easily.
“Back seven years ago, I was looking for a breed of sheep that was prolific because at the end of the day, it’s all about the number of lambs you produce.
“I stumbled across the Lleyn breed, by accident really and I bought 11 ewe lambs seven years ago and from there, I built up the flock to where it is today.
“As well as breeding my own replacements, I was buying in ewe lambs and hoggets from the Lleyn society sale in Roscommon, to boost numbers that bit quicker.”
How prolific are they and are they easily lambed?
Touching on the prolificacy of the Lleyn ewes, David said his flock of ewes scanned 1.94 lambs and in the field at the minute, there are 1.8 lambs per ewe.
80 ewe lambs were also bred and are rearing 1.2 lambs currently.
He said: “They’re really good at multiplying. If you have 100 Lleyn ewes let’s says, there is a good chance you will have the best part of 100 ewe lambs fit for breeding from them 100 ewes.”
David said he has never had a vet call out to assist a ewe lambing in his seven years of having them.
He added: “This year was the first time I had a vet call out to the farm, but it wasn’t related to a difficult lambing.
“Lambing is generally not an issue. I used to lamb the ewes outdoors for a few years and it’s no problem for these ewes.
“But when you are performance recording and your lambing outdoors, it can be a tough task to do right, so that’s why I built the shed, to make that job that bit easier.”
Are the lambs easy to finish?
As David finishes his ram lambs, well at least up until this year, he said that he finds them relatively easy to finish.
He said: “I don’t find them hard to finish, but they are that bit slower to finish.
“A purebred maternal breed is obviously going to be slower finish than a terminal breed let’s say.
“They will finish comfortably off-grass as long as you keep it in front of them.
“In terms of growth rates, single lambs would be gaining about 400g/day, while the doubles would be fetching about 285g/day on average.
“They perform pretty well in fairness to them.”
Repeat custom
David said more and more farmers seem to be taking a liking to the Lleyn breed and he has seen this first hand with farmers coming to him to purchase his ewe hoggets.
On this point, David added: “The last number of years I’m finding that farmers are coming here and buying five or 10 ewe hoggets and they’ll come back again the following year for a few more.
“They are an ideal ewe to breed with your terminal breeds, that will produce good lambs, that you will get finished as quick as any other breed of sheep,” David concluded.
