EBLEX Workshop, West Harling, Norwich - 1st August 2012
1st August 2012
Breeding from Ewe Lambs and Making the best of your grazing and soil management
Stonehouse Farm, West Harling, Norwich, NR16 2SD
Courtesy of Richard and Sue Evans
Wednesday 1st August 2012 5.30pm for 6.00pm prompt start
Join EBLEX, with help from Catchment Sensitive Farming, at this intensive workshop on breeding from ewe lambs and making the best of your grazing and soils management. EBLEX’s Dr Liz Genever will discuss the benefits of breeding from ewe lambs. In addition she will consider soil nutrient management and grass production at Stonehouse Farm giving plenty of take home tips for improving the grazing season. Eric Popp, local Catchment Sensitive Farming Officer, will take delegates through the environmental schemes available.
Programme
5.30pm Registration with refreshments and tea
6.00pm Introduction to Stonehouse Farm – Liz Genever, EBLEX Scientist and Richard Evans
6.15pm Breeding from ewe lambs – Liz Genever
7.00pm Environmental schemes and nutrient management – Eric Popps, CSFO, Natural England
7.20pm Soil nutrient management and grass production – Liz Genever
8.00pm Farm Walk
9.00pm Closing questions and discussion
To register your FREE place please ring Hellen, Sandra or Vickie at EBLEX
on 0870 609 1840 / 01904 771214 or email brpevents@eblex.ahdb.org.uk
EBLEX is a division of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board
Farm Summary
Stonehouse Farm is continually developing to produce high value breeding animals. They run 1000 breeding sheep and 150 suckler cows, all put to Stabiliser bulls, across more than 2500 acres of organic land. The key to their business is maximising the value of the animals as they’re run on some of the poorest land in the country. Two Higher Level Stewardship agreements cover the majority of the land, with a third agreement in place on another block too. This means just 50 acres is not in some form of environmental agreement.
The sheep flock consists of 400 Lleyn mature ewes, a further 200 Lleyn ewe lambs which are all tupped and 300 other ewes made up of a range of crosses.
Lleyns were introduced 10 years ago and having previously run a flying flock of Mules the family enjoys the challenge of continuing to improve the flock. They’ve always been keen to identify sheep with high genetic merit and wanted to eliminate the issue of bought in disease which so often accompanies flying flocks. This is why Richard believes in tupping all the ewe lambs and using Signet recording to identify the best breeding sheep in the flock. This means they can get genetic improvement a year sooner. Signet recording allows them to identify those animals with superior EBVs which also speeds up the genetic progress. The Lleyn flock has made extremely high rates of genetic gain, in both maternal and carcase traits, in recent years. The average flock index has increased by over 50 index points per annum in recent years - five times faster than the national average.
