42 GRANGE HEAD FARM APR / MAY 2022 • farmers-mart . co . uk
since losing the farm payment . He ’ s back on his digger as soon as we ’ ve finished lambing .’
‘ Cheviots , like most hill sheep , are not known for having a lot of lambs and ours have a prolificacy of around 155-160 %. We don ’ t want a lot of twins otherwise we can ’ t get them out on the moor where we usually have around 1000 of the ewes .’
‘ We usually gather them up on the moor about the middle of August and get 500 wether lambs weaned and away straight as soon as we can for our cash flow and to keep the numbers down on the moor .’
‘ The ewe lambs don ’ t go just as early . They usually start going at the end of September when we start taking around 30-40 at a time .
‘ We try to keep back around 400 ewe lambs a year as replacements as we now sell our ewes at 4-crop . When we first started building up the flock we were selling them as 6-crop . There ’ s nothing much wrong with them at 6-crop and they ’ ve largely still got all their teeth , it ’ s just us aiming at producing better and better lambs .’
‘ Good lambs is all I ’ m after , as I want to produce the best possible breeding sheep I can . That ’ s where I want most of my income to come from .’
Stephen sells most of his stock privately . He only sells around 20 per cent through livestock markets , usually using Darlington .
‘ Where we are isn ’ t the best for getting to any market that has Cheviots , they are all miles away . We ’ re stuck in a corner and it takes three hours to get from here to Dumfries for Lockerbie Mart , so we sell as much as we can privately including draft ewes . Most buyers come here .
‘ We breed extra females to sell and wether lambs either leave as fat or stores . I sold some of last year ’ s crop as stores because they were a good trade . They go on to turnips to fatten and those going fat around Christmas time will go at around the mid-50kgs and are a very heavy , solid-bodied lamb .’
‘ We keep around 15-20 of our own homebred tups but we will only use 4 or 5 of them ourselves . We usually sell ram lambs purely privately but we will be taking some up to Lockerbie this year .’
Stephen says the worst problem he has to deal with is ticks .
‘ It ’ s nowhere near as bad as it used to be because we ’ ve got on top of it and every 8 weeks we gather for treatment . In years gone by when we used to gather in for shearing their legs were full of ticks .’
‘ The one thing you do have to have with Cheviots is a dog ! They are wild creatures .’
Stephen is one of nine siblings from Glossop .
‘ I was the youngest of 4 boys and 5 girls . The farm in Derbyshire was never going to be big enough for us all . My brother Paul shows sheep and is now also in Yorkshire at Horton in Ribblesdale ; my brother John , the eldest , lives in Australia where he is a stonemason ; and my other brother David runs the farm now . Dad , John Edgar Hallam – known to everybody as Edgar - died in 1998 .’
‘ One of my sisters Barbara is farming and the rest are gamekeepers . I met Karen via one of my sisters , Anne .’
‘ I always wanted to go off to college but never got the time . I was never going to do anything but farm , it ’ s all I ’ ve ever wanted .’