Farm of the Week: Luings and lambs usher in new era as farm moves on

Five years ago, he bought a whole new set of cattle. And this spring, he is looking at several new kinds of lamb from an almost entirely new pool of sheep.

Paul, 38, works with his father Geoff, 65, and their partners, on Hall Farm, Kildale, a rented mix of grass and heather which rises from 500 feet above sea level on the moors between Stokesley and Whitby. Thanks to the winds off the North Sea, spring starts a fortnight later than it does in the Tees Valley, below.

Up to the end of the old Common Agricultural Policy, in 2004, the farm made sucklers out of dairy herd spares of all sorts – whatever came in at a reasonable price. All the cattle were inside from October to the end of April and indoor ailments added to the costs.

When the new Single Farm Payment came in, without an element for productivity, it was time for a rethink.

"We were farming for headage payments," Paul sums up. "Just getting the cattle on the farm was the point."

While at college in Edinburgh, he had had a friend who kept Luings (say Lings) – a Shorthorn-Highland blend from the Hebrides. It was bred to survive high rainfall, poor grass and hard winters, he told his dad.

"I know people say the same about the Angus," he says now. "But the Luing caught my eye early and became the breed I decided I wanted to get to know."

Over 2005 and 2006, the Proudleys bought 70 'draft cows' – middle-aged beasts with a few calves left in them – from the island of Luing, between Islay and Mull, and later added a 4,000-guinea bull from the main annual breed sale in Castle Douglas. They got in at the right time. In 2007, bulls at Castle Douglas hit a record average of 7,000 guineas. Heifers averaged 1,600 at the last sale – 2,000 in calf.

The Luing herd at Kildale is now up to 100 adults. They do not come inside until November and they go back out in February or March, as soon as their calves are two or three days old. They could be out more if the land was not so wet. Some of the original old girls are still calving and the herd is replenishing itself and producing spares for sale at the excellent prices indicated above.

"They are bred entirely for functionality," says Paul approvingly. "You will never see a Luing at a show."

One reason for their popularity is that they cross with Simmentals to make a good dam for beef calves, fathered by almost any of the common terminal sires. The Proudleys are expecting to sell 10-15 Sim-Luing heifers a year and have eight available right now, with calves at foot. Spares are fattened for beef but breeding stock is the main business.

All Luings in approved sales are certified under the Premium Cattle Health Scheme, run by the Scottish Agricultural College, or equivalent approved schemes – which amounts to a near-as-possible guarantee against BVD (infectious diarrhoea), Leptospirosis (kidney infection), IBR (a kind of flu) and Johne's Disease (a wasting illness).

Having improved their relationship with their cattle, they started to question the pattern they had got into with the sheep – Swaledales producing Mule ewes, which were then served by Texels, in the traditional pattern. The Mules needed to come inside to lamb and needed a surprising amount of help and Paul kept reading about new composite breeds which would lamb outside even where he is. He ran down the Mules but kept the Swaledales while he looked for another way to cross them.

He belongs to one of two North Yorkshire Red Meat Groups – 'knowledge transfer' clubs, descended from the former Red Meat Industry Forum and kept going by ex-MAFF man Len Cragg of Northallerton, with some funding from LandSkills, a regional subsidiary of the government training agency Lantra. One evening, they listened to a talk about Easycare sheep, a roughly-defined cross between Wiltshire Horns and various Welsh mountain breeds... a hardy medium-sized animal which grows an inch of winter wool but sheds it for a light hair covering in the summer.

No clipping and no dipping required? It sounds good but a lot of farmers are wary of a sheep that does not sound like any sheep they know. However, interest is beginning to snowball.

Len Cragg talked some travel expenses out of LandSkills and a couple of carloads of farmers took a trip to Scotland to meet Easycare converts. Paul and another moorlander, Richard Findlay of Westerdale, came back and took the plunge.

Paul says: "Inevitably, the price of wool is improving now, but it will have to improve a long way to become profitable. And there are other advantages to no wool – like not having to protect 800 sheep against flystrike twice a year.

"Also, the Easycare crosses give you hybrid vigour. Their lambs grow so fast, they are ready for market before you run out of grass. Leaving the wethers entire, you can get them to 17-19 kilos by October and away before you need to castrate them."

That's the theory, anyway. For tupping time at the end of last year, the farm bought in 65 Easycare ewe lambs, at 55 each, 10 matching rams, at 300, and 500 ageing Cheviot ewes from a clearance sale in Sutherland, in the north of Scotland, which were delivered to Yorkshire for 48 a head all-in. The idea is that the Easycare tups will make one new kind of Mule with the Swaledales and another with the Cheviots as well as starting another generation with their own kind. The Easycare Society might disagree, but Paul says the name defines not so much a settled breed as a set of characteristics, which he can usefully feed into any other hill flock.

He will pick out the moulters from this year's lambs and put them back into the general mix, while building up a self-sustaining flock of pure-as-possible Easycares.

"It's fingers crossed," he admits. "But on a tenancy like this, beef and sheep are my only options. It's all about getting the mix right."

Paul Proudley is on 07775 933367. Len Cragg runs a red meat group for Northallerton-Stokesley and one for Ryedale. Call 07718 528501. For similar services elsewhere, call LandSkills on 0845 278 8800 or see www.lantra. co.uk/landskills/

CW 24/4/10