THE U.K. SHEEP INDUSTRY WILL LITTERS OF LAMBS BOOST BRITAIN’S FLOCKS?

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31006, 11 March 1966, Page 10

THE U.K. SHEEP INDUSTRY WILL LITTERS OF LAMBS BOOST BRITAIN’S FLOCKS?

(Reprinted from the ••Financial Times” by arrangement 1

Sheep have long been thought the Cinderella among livestock enterprises and in considerable measure methods have changed little since Bakewell’s dav. Certainly it seems harder to make a worthwhile prom out of a flock than out of just about any other farm anima or crop. At least, that is th'e case if the many reports produced by the university agricultural economists are anything to go by. Tor they the gios* margin with lowland sheep to be very rarely indeed over £lO an acre—hardly half that obtained with a quite ordinary level of husbandry irom barley or cows.

And yet. contrary to what one might expect, sheep numbers have been steadily creeping up. In slightly more than a decade they have increased a third, to 30 million, which means there are now three times as many sheep as cattle on British farms. The U.K. sheep industry is in fact approaching that of New Zealand in importance—the two islands have 52 million head —though still far behind Australia’s 160 million. What is more, though consumption of lamb has dropped quite a bit since before the war, from 25.21bs per head in 1938 to 23.21bs last year, a higher proportion of total consumption is home-killed. Why The Expansion? Just why farmers have expanded their flocks when on paper it would have seemed more profitable to do almost anything else is at first sight something of a mystery. Certainly the trend has been quite the other way on the eastern side of the country, where most arable farmers seem to have decided the gilt has worn off the golden hoof. The major expansion has been with grassland flocks, especially in the hills, where the headage subsidy payments provide most of the profit. On grassland farms sheep have been seen as one means of meeting the pressure of rising costs—either by expanding a flock through stocking more intensively where sheep are already kept—or else through adding a sheep enterprise to beef rearing or dairying. The availability of effective anthelmintics have to some extent removed the fears of worm infestation which in the past have always hindered any attempts at intensification. In spite of this, sheep have remained a fairly low-cost, low-margin enterprise and rising land prices and rents (though increases on this front seem to have eased off these last nine months or so) are paring profits even closet to the bone. Yet stocking rates remain very low. To make sheep pay on a comparable basis to cows kept for milk production, or to barley growing, one needs to keep at least six ewes to the acre all the year round, producing an average of at least one and a half fat lambs apiece. This is a level only a handful of the most competent sheep farmers have managed to maintain regularly, and is about twice the average intensity as is yet achieved. Fortunately, in the last couple of years the traditional methods have suddenly been challenged on a wide scale, and

one can report quite soberly that virtually every aspect of the sheep job is likely to be revolutionised, with the prospect of a much healthier mar: gin per acre. Dramatic Breeding Most dramatic of the many related developments taking place is on the breeding side. Much of the industry has long been based on a pattern of cross-breeding without the results being dubbed hybrids. What happens is that ewes bred on the hills are crossed with a larger type of ram—a Border Leicester of a Swaledale, for instance. The resultant half-bred ewes are then taken to lowland farms and crossed with a Downland type of ram—a Suffolk or a Dorset, for instance—to produce fat lambs.

Most of the breeding programmes at present under way accept that this will remain the basic pattern of the industry but are aiming greatly to improve the actual level of performance. This is the case with the largest selection at present under way—the Colbred programme now being carried out by Thornbers of Calder Valley, the country’s leading producer of day-old chicks. Thornbers have been at work since 1961, and they linked up with a private breeder, Mr Oscar Colburn, who has been active with the new types since 1954. The idea here is first of all to produce a better sort of halfbred ewe—more prolific, a better milker, and able to produce a faster growing lamb. In addition, to mate these ewes a much better type of Downland ram is needed. The selection programme. working largely from the crossbred types produced originally by Mr Colburn from a mixture of British and imported breeds, has made very encouraging progress.

Recently, Dr. John Broadbent the geneticist in charge reported that with the ewe lambs a lambing percentage of over 100 had been recorded, which is very good. This year some 12,000 of the half-bred ewes will be reared —half for sale, half for further selection work. In

addition, some 200 Downland rams are being progeny tested.

The Finnish Landrace

Nor are Thornbers being left unchallenged. Another organisation, Cobb, which has a major stake in the production of day-old broilers and which is well equipped with extensive genetical know-how, is also moving into sheep. Cobb have a breeding farm in Suffolk where they are currently testing a number of different breeds and strains to measure their potential for hybrid production. The aim is to make full use of imported Finnish Landrace sheep, and if the interest other breeders are showing in this remarkable breed is anything to go by it is going to play a big part in the production of the high performance hybrid of the future.

The most remarkable thing about the breed is the fecundity of the ewes. They generally have litters of lambs rather than the singles or twins and occasional triplets which is the most ewes of our traditional breeds manage. As many as six or seven lambs a year is by no means exceptional from a Landrace ewe—as many as nine have been recorded—though the average is about four or five. The Animal Breeding Research Organisation at Edinburgh has been carrying out trials with pure and crossbred Finnish Landrace for several years now and is convinced of their usefulness.

However, if ewes producing more than two lambs at a time become common, then artificial rearing methods may well be necessary. Experiments at the Grassland Research Station at Hurley in Berks have shown that it is perfectly feasible to rear lambs from an earlyage on cold milk, fairly rapidly switching ' them over to a cereal diet. The prospect is then that artificially reared lambs will be produced in large numbers either for fattening on grass, or else in feedlots. On grass, without competition from the ewe, very intensive rotational grazing will become much simpler.