Sophie Wernham 28 Hampshire
Working as an employed shepherd on a family farm in Berkshire, Sophie’s enthusiasm for implementing ideas to continually improve the flock has seen the system grow from 600 to 1,600 North Country Mules during her employment. This interest in learning more for her own and the sheep enterprise’s benefit is what led Sophie to apply for the Ambassador programme this year. In addition to the responsibility she has with the farm’s sheep flock, Sophie also runs her own small flock of pedigree Hampshire Down ewes that she aims to start showing in the near future. As an NSA Next Generation Ambassador Sophie says she is hoping to meet likeminded people who are keen to share experiences and ideas, while also sharing her own knowledge with the group. She adds: “I'm really looking forward to being part of the ambassador group this year. It will be a great experience meeting people who are as passionate about sheep farming as I am, as well as learning more about different aspects of the industry.”
Sophie kept a blog in 2022
March is scanning month for us and we are all pleased with this year's results, with an average of 188%, ranging from the older ewes being just over 200% to 173% in the shearlings. The shearlings this year are around 10% higher than on previous years. Having put our ewe lambs to a Beltex tup for quite a few years, we decided last year to run on our ewe lambs instead. In the past we have found lots of advantages to tupping our ewe lambs, not only a financial gain but also that it makes them better mothers. With lambing outdoors our ewes can be on the wild side but shearlings that have already had a lamb are a lot quieter, which makes the job easier. It’ll be interesting to see how the first time shearlings lamb this May! We did find the challenge for us was maintaining condition score, especially over the summer months. Hot dry summers really took their toll on grass growth and had a big impact on the weight gain on the lambs and condition of the ewes come tupping time, consequently having an effect on our lambing percentage. If our grazing situation was to change, I think we would go back to lambing ewe lambs, possibly weaning them earlier than the rest of the flock.
April. With this year’s crop of lambs starting to hit the ground, we are glad to see most of the hoggs off to market. We now have the last 140 finishing off on good spring grass, hopefully ready to go in the next couple of weeks. With the help of 70 acres of cover crops early in the autumn, from a neighbouring arable farm, we managed to see our first load of fit lambs away to market in early November, seven weeks before we would normally start selling. The majority of our hoggs are finished on stubble turnips with the slightly smaller lambs finishing on the grass later on. Although last year we did keep a small group of lambs on grass all winter, as turnips were limited due to the late harvest in 2021 and we were unable to get as many turnips planted as we would have liked. With that being said we have managed well over the winter with the help of some extra grass at a near dairy farm. The best part of our lambs are sold through Thame Market with just over 450 going off to Dunbia this year. All our hoggs that go to Thame are an average of 46kg with Dunbia taking the slightly smaller framed lambs. All in all we are very happy with how all the hoggs have finished and the overall price they have sold for this year.
May. We started lambing the third week in April, all outdoors in the hope the weather would be kind to us and the grass good. With only one wet day during the whole of lambing this year we were definitely grateful to finally see some rain! We keep all our ewes in their age groups, starting with the first 600 older ewes and the rest following on around a week later. It was great to spend a few days away from the farm on our second NSA Next Generation session in Welshpool. Lots of great ideas and knowledge were taken home from it. We had a fantastic talk from AHDB and were then taken to the Farmers Fresh abattoir and talked through the grading process, which I found very interesting. I’m looking forward to catching up with the rest of the group again in July at the NSA Sheep Event.
June has been a busy month on the farm, with the first lamb vaccinations done and all the lambs having blowfly treatment applied. We hope to have the ewes sheared in the next few weeks. We managed to have a good count of all the lambs and we are happy with the result, working out at 179%. I think this year's lambing went really well but we did have a problem with foxes in the field where the four tooths lambed and I would say that did have an impact on our percentage. I also found this year that the shearlings didn’t lamb as well as in previous years, because of mis-mothering and just leaving one lamb behind. I much prefer having lambed them as ewe lambs, as I believe it makes them better mothers, so that is definitely something to think about for next year. I spent two days this month at the NSA South East Region Field Days helping Chairman Yann Le Du. It was a fantastic couple of days, albeit very hot! With lots of interesting talks, including from Elenco and Bimeda, it was a great turn out and good to meet some new people.
July. I was really pleased to get my pedigree Hampshire Down lambs away to market in late June, averaging 42kg. I also entered them into the Three Counties Show butchers’ lamb competition. I came fourth, which I was delighted with! On the farm where I shepherd, we have been busy making hay and shearing and are starting to think of weaning, slightly earlier than normal but with the lack of rainfall we are beginning to get tight on grazing. Once weaned we can start to get the ewes and lambs further away from home.
August. In Berkshire we haven’t had a drop of rain for roughly 10 weeks and so are now really beginning to struggle. With not a blade of green grass anywhere to be seen, we are feeding all the sheep and cattle, not only using up winter feed but also spending days driving around putting hay out and not getting much more achieved. We made a start on weaning and then decided to hold off as the little milk the ewes were still producing was enough to keep the lambs going forward. We are lucky in one way we don’t put our rams in until end of November / start of December so have a little longer to get the condition back on the ewes. But with only one short rain shower in the past week things don’t look like they are improving much and we’ve made the decision to continue weaning again in the next few days.
September. We’ve been grateful to see some rainfall in the past few weeks. The grass has really started to come back and is growing nicely. We have been lucky to have some stewardship leys we are now able to graze on a neighbouring arable farm, which has been a huge help in getting lambs away onto better feed. The crop is predominantly red clover and ryegrass, and the lambs were very happy to see something green after an extremely hard summer! With that being said, it hasn’t been all great as a handful of lambs came down with photosensitisation, something I even hadn’t heard of before! Our vet believes it was caused by going from a mainly hay based diet to lush green pasture, meaning the liver couldn’t break down the sudden increase in chlorophyll. Luckily no lambs have been lost and we haven’t had any further cases.
October. The end of September meant our last session on the NSA Next Generation Ambassador programme, this one being the furthest from home. We spent three days in Northumberland with the main topic focusing on personal development. We had a fantastic few days and were lucky enough to visit two great sheep enterprises. At home we are busy moving sheep around the county. We work roughly within a 45-minute radius, which keeps us on the road a great deal of the time. We weighed a group of lambs recently that had been on the cover crops at the neighbouring arable farm and are happy to find the bigger lambs of the group are nearing the 50kg mark already. We will be looking to draw the first load to go to Thame Market by the end of October, which is earlier than normal, another reason we are thankful to be able to have these cover crops to graze.
End of the year comment. Being part of the NSA Next Generation programme 2022 has been such a great experience. Being able to travel to different parts of the country with a fantastic group of likeminded people has been so beneficial. I’ve not only taken away ideas and inspiration but it has also had a positive impact on my own personal development and confidence. I have already started to implement small changes within my flock after a fascinating few days spent with sheep vet Phillipa Page. Learning about marginal gains and the big impact you can have by making small changes was a great place to start with improving the health of the flock. We have also increased how often we do faecal egg counts than in previous years - another small change with a positive influence seen already.
Working as an employed shepherd on a family farm in Berkshire, Sophie’s enthusiasm for implementing ideas to continually improve the flock has seen the system grow from 600 to 1,600 North Country Mules during her employment. This interest in learning more for her own and the sheep enterprise’s benefit is what led Sophie to apply for the Ambassador programme this year. In addition to the responsibility she has with the farm’s sheep flock, Sophie also runs her own small flock of pedigree Hampshire Down ewes that she aims to start showing in the near future. As an NSA Next Generation Ambassador Sophie says she is hoping to meet likeminded people who are keen to share experiences and ideas, while also sharing her own knowledge with the group. She adds: “I'm really looking forward to being part of the ambassador group this year. It will be a great experience meeting people who are as passionate about sheep farming as I am, as well as learning more about different aspects of the industry.”
Sophie kept a blog in 2022
March is scanning month for us and we are all pleased with this year's results, with an average of 188%, ranging from the older ewes being just over 200% to 173% in the shearlings. The shearlings this year are around 10% higher than on previous years. Having put our ewe lambs to a Beltex tup for quite a few years, we decided last year to run on our ewe lambs instead. In the past we have found lots of advantages to tupping our ewe lambs, not only a financial gain but also that it makes them better mothers. With lambing outdoors our ewes can be on the wild side but shearlings that have already had a lamb are a lot quieter, which makes the job easier. It’ll be interesting to see how the first time shearlings lamb this May! We did find the challenge for us was maintaining condition score, especially over the summer months. Hot dry summers really took their toll on grass growth and had a big impact on the weight gain on the lambs and condition of the ewes come tupping time, consequently having an effect on our lambing percentage. If our grazing situation was to change, I think we would go back to lambing ewe lambs, possibly weaning them earlier than the rest of the flock.
April. With this year’s crop of lambs starting to hit the ground, we are glad to see most of the hoggs off to market. We now have the last 140 finishing off on good spring grass, hopefully ready to go in the next couple of weeks. With the help of 70 acres of cover crops early in the autumn, from a neighbouring arable farm, we managed to see our first load of fit lambs away to market in early November, seven weeks before we would normally start selling. The majority of our hoggs are finished on stubble turnips with the slightly smaller lambs finishing on the grass later on. Although last year we did keep a small group of lambs on grass all winter, as turnips were limited due to the late harvest in 2021 and we were unable to get as many turnips planted as we would have liked. With that being said we have managed well over the winter with the help of some extra grass at a near dairy farm. The best part of our lambs are sold through Thame Market with just over 450 going off to Dunbia this year. All our hoggs that go to Thame are an average of 46kg with Dunbia taking the slightly smaller framed lambs. All in all we are very happy with how all the hoggs have finished and the overall price they have sold for this year.
May. We started lambing the third week in April, all outdoors in the hope the weather would be kind to us and the grass good. With only one wet day during the whole of lambing this year we were definitely grateful to finally see some rain! We keep all our ewes in their age groups, starting with the first 600 older ewes and the rest following on around a week later. It was great to spend a few days away from the farm on our second NSA Next Generation session in Welshpool. Lots of great ideas and knowledge were taken home from it. We had a fantastic talk from AHDB and were then taken to the Farmers Fresh abattoir and talked through the grading process, which I found very interesting. I’m looking forward to catching up with the rest of the group again in July at the NSA Sheep Event.
June has been a busy month on the farm, with the first lamb vaccinations done and all the lambs having blowfly treatment applied. We hope to have the ewes sheared in the next few weeks. We managed to have a good count of all the lambs and we are happy with the result, working out at 179%. I think this year's lambing went really well but we did have a problem with foxes in the field where the four tooths lambed and I would say that did have an impact on our percentage. I also found this year that the shearlings didn’t lamb as well as in previous years, because of mis-mothering and just leaving one lamb behind. I much prefer having lambed them as ewe lambs, as I believe it makes them better mothers, so that is definitely something to think about for next year. I spent two days this month at the NSA South East Region Field Days helping Chairman Yann Le Du. It was a fantastic couple of days, albeit very hot! With lots of interesting talks, including from Elenco and Bimeda, it was a great turn out and good to meet some new people.
July. I was really pleased to get my pedigree Hampshire Down lambs away to market in late June, averaging 42kg. I also entered them into the Three Counties Show butchers’ lamb competition. I came fourth, which I was delighted with! On the farm where I shepherd, we have been busy making hay and shearing and are starting to think of weaning, slightly earlier than normal but with the lack of rainfall we are beginning to get tight on grazing. Once weaned we can start to get the ewes and lambs further away from home.
August. In Berkshire we haven’t had a drop of rain for roughly 10 weeks and so are now really beginning to struggle. With not a blade of green grass anywhere to be seen, we are feeding all the sheep and cattle, not only using up winter feed but also spending days driving around putting hay out and not getting much more achieved. We made a start on weaning and then decided to hold off as the little milk the ewes were still producing was enough to keep the lambs going forward. We are lucky in one way we don’t put our rams in until end of November / start of December so have a little longer to get the condition back on the ewes. But with only one short rain shower in the past week things don’t look like they are improving much and we’ve made the decision to continue weaning again in the next few days.
September. We’ve been grateful to see some rainfall in the past few weeks. The grass has really started to come back and is growing nicely. We have been lucky to have some stewardship leys we are now able to graze on a neighbouring arable farm, which has been a huge help in getting lambs away onto better feed. The crop is predominantly red clover and ryegrass, and the lambs were very happy to see something green after an extremely hard summer! With that being said, it hasn’t been all great as a handful of lambs came down with photosensitisation, something I even hadn’t heard of before! Our vet believes it was caused by going from a mainly hay based diet to lush green pasture, meaning the liver couldn’t break down the sudden increase in chlorophyll. Luckily no lambs have been lost and we haven’t had any further cases.
October. The end of September meant our last session on the NSA Next Generation Ambassador programme, this one being the furthest from home. We spent three days in Northumberland with the main topic focusing on personal development. We had a fantastic few days and were lucky enough to visit two great sheep enterprises. At home we are busy moving sheep around the county. We work roughly within a 45-minute radius, which keeps us on the road a great deal of the time. We weighed a group of lambs recently that had been on the cover crops at the neighbouring arable farm and are happy to find the bigger lambs of the group are nearing the 50kg mark already. We will be looking to draw the first load to go to Thame Market by the end of October, which is earlier than normal, another reason we are thankful to be able to have these cover crops to graze.
End of the year comment. Being part of the NSA Next Generation programme 2022 has been such a great experience. Being able to travel to different parts of the country with a fantastic group of likeminded people has been so beneficial. I’ve not only taken away ideas and inspiration but it has also had a positive impact on my own personal development and confidence. I have already started to implement small changes within my flock after a fascinating few days spent with sheep vet Phillipa Page. Learning about marginal gains and the big impact you can have by making small changes was a great place to start with improving the health of the flock. We have also increased how often we do faecal egg counts than in previous years - another small change with a positive influence seen already.
