Help for nature in lambing season

From long experience, the pattern up here is to aim for first lambs in mid-April. Meanwhile, the job is to keep the ewes fed. They live outside all through the winter but we give them hay and concentrated feeds. They would probably survive without the help. But you need a bit more productivity than nature would give you.

Left alone, a flock like ours might produce 20 pairs of twins. Nowadays, with selection and feeding, we can expect about 300. You need the twins as well as the single lambs in order for the flock to sustain itself and produce some spares for sale.

We run Swaledales, the breed that was invented in these parts – nowadays an important part of the supply chain that leads from the hills to the butcher. Swaledale ewes and Bluefaced Leicester rams make the Mule. And Mule ewes, hardy and prolific, are then crossed with a terminal sire from a meatier breed to give a good output of lambs which can grow plump on lower pastures.

That means we are mainly selling our spares – Swaledale rams and ewes and a few young Mules – to other farmers. But the market pressures at the end of the line do feed back to us.

It has been a good year or so for sheep and lamb prices, because of a shortfall in British production, after a run of bad years. It has been much much harder in beef lately – we do a bit there too.

But everything in farming goes in cycles and finished lamb prices are starting to dip. That means farmers who paid us good prices for breeding stock last year are in danger of losing money. And if they do, they will not be coming back to us this year.

n The Yorkshire Post is sad to announce that Edward Hart, the founder of The Year Round, and its writer for more than 45 years, died on Thursday at the age of 86. Consequently, this will be the last instalment of The Year Round. An obituary of Mr Hart appears in today’s edition of the main paper.