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The largest part of their farming business has always been sheep and they currently have around 600 breeding ewes with a further 160 replacements running around. It’ s a mixture of Lleyn, Texel and Suffolk pedigrees then crossed between the three. It’ s a closed flock with everything sold fat.
“ Mum was the first to bring Lleyn sheep into Yorkshire back in 1981. It’ s quite a hard farm for sheep being next to the sea
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and predominantly north facing so it pays us to breed our own tups too. We go for hardiness and sheep that are used to the light intensity you get by being at the coast. Sheep can also suffer sunburnt ears if they are not homebred. We have two lambings starting at the end of January running into the early part of February and followed by the main lambing time in early April. Most of our lamb goes to Dawn Meats in Carnaby as part |
of the Marks & Spencer scheme and we also send fat ewes to Ruswarp Mart.”
The latest addition to Stoupe Brow Cottage Farm is suckler cattle with a small, fledgling herd of Shorthorns and black Galloways purchased last year.“ We’ re in the process of buying a white Shorthorn bull and we’ re looking to breed Blue Greys for the meat industry with Shorthorns kept as female replacements. We’ ve set off as a
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high health status herd and want to keep it that way producing a product that hopefully guarantees potential customers excellent breeding stock. The white Shorthorn bull will give the Blue Grey when crossed on the Galloway. The Blue Grey is coming back into fashion, as are many native breeds. It’ s a long term project for us and it will be two years before we see any results meat wise, but we’ ve set things under way. We’ d like |