Our ewes

We keep a breeding flock of 20-30 ewes who lamb each year around Easter. They are very friendly sheep who are also excellent mums. Most of our ewes have twin lambs each year, but a few tend towards triplets...

Our small flock means we get to know the girls well. They all have their own personalities and preferences. Belle is the flock matriarch, and gets upset if she doesn't get taken for regular walks. Geraldine is the friendly, happy sheep who is always the first to greet every visitor, and loves a 'pronk' whenever she gets the change. Iris is auditioning for jobs in the circus with her walks on her hind legs, and Polly is a princess. 

Our Rams

We keep our own rams who are unrelated to enough of the ewes that we can breed from them. We have two 'main men' - Penni-Bach Jet, a prize winner from Yorkshire with a strong history, and Shutecombe Hercules who we bought as a lamb and is doing very well as a ram. Both have wonderful colouring. Both are very friendly and tame. We also have a 'teaser ram' (he's had a vasectomy) called Malt (Teaser). We use Malt to get the girls into heat before Jet and Hercules get to 'meet' them in the Autumn.

Our lambs

Each year we have 30-40 new lambs, who enjoy growing up on our farm. We can't keep them all, so we keep  our favourite 6-8 ewe lambs to add to the breeding flock - who then start breeding when they are 2 years old. The boys stay here until they are about a year old, when they either get sold (or kept) as rams, or go for humane slaughter to be meat. They live a very happy life here.

Our 'pets'!

Each year. we have one or more lambs who need bottle feeding. This is usually because their mum either has too many lambs to feed (triplets) or there is a problem with the mum (illness or worse). Much as we try and tell our bottle-feds to 'go and be sheep', and despite them living in the fields with the others they still think we are their parents and behave more like pets! Our 'pets' include Meatloaf (a weather, a castrated boy), Polly, Milly and Napoleon (a 'rig' - a boy who we failed to castrate fully.....).