Breeding Sheep

Jim Campbell – Aberdale – Appeared in the Farmers Guardian – July 2012

If you farm sheep in a marginal area and would like to improve output from the unit’s scarce resources, then Cumbrian flock manager, Jim Campbell has a solution. Grasping the current buzz phrase, sustainable intensification or his preferred interpretation - making more from less, Jim is developing a breeding programme featuring the Aberdale, designed to improve his 1,000 ewe Swaledale flock’s productivity.

At Thornthwaite Hall, a 550 acre hill unit at Bampton, Penrith, Mr Campbell is phasing out a traditional Swaledale flock producing Mule lambs, for homebred Aberdale cross Swaledale ewes for crossing to a selected native breed terminal sire and rearing the progeny to target finishing weight.

“So far so good during the first lambing season in which the new damline has more than met with expectations,” he explains. “The Aberdale cross Swaledale shearlings produced 13% more lambs scanned than the traditional Mule ewes and 28% more than the Texel cross Swaledale shearlings we experimented with,” he explains. “In fact the Aberdale cross Swaledale ewes have proved to be very robust, they have lambed easily outdoors throughout early April and are proving to be very good mothers with plenty of milk to rear twins off grass.”

Table 1: Thornthwaite Hall lambing performance 2012

	Aberdale x Swaledale	Texel x Swaledale	Mule
Scanning %	187	135	166

Source: Thornthwaite Hall

The Aberdale was introduced to Thornthwaite Hall by its owner, Michael Wentworth Waites and Mr Campbell back in 2009 as part of a radical change to the unit’s sheep farming strategy. “We were seeking to improve the hill unit’s output and efficiency and had very few options,” he explains. “We farm very marginal land rising to 1,000 feet above Shap comprising old ley and containing hardly any rye grass. It has a very short grass growing window - they say there are only two seasons, June and winter.

“Initially we introduced an Aberdale ram to our Swaledale ewes and envisaged producing crossbred ewes on contract, however we were so impressed with the genetics and their performance, that we agreed to retain them to provide the framework for our own in-bye flock. We needed a ewe that could lamb outdoors, rear two lambs to 39kg off grass and scan at 200% without flushing.

“In 2011 we introduced a portion of Aberdale cross Swaledale shearling ewes to a native SRS performance recorded terminal sire, selected for high growth rate and muscle depth EBVs. We were very surprised how just fast these ewes tupped - over 50% in the first week and over 90% in the first cycle. 

“Overall, the Aberdale seems suited to crossing to the Swaledale to produce better lambs and more of them without any extra inputs. It’s ticking all the boxes, and as its influence expands, we look forward to a very compact if very busy lambing.”   

He adds: “While we have retained 200 pure Swaledales for Mule production, they’ll be phased out over the next three years. We have decided that integrating a new framework featuring the Aberdale with a traditional hill breeding system has the real potential to offer a sheep unit like ours with such limited resources, a genuine sustainable future.”

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