TEXELS RULE IN HIGHLAND PERTHSHIRE.
Perhaps The Guinness Book of Records should be consulted!
Category - The Longest Run of Consecutive Wins of
the Prime Lamb Championship at an Agricultural Show.
The achievements of David and Elizabeth Stewart
of Glenshee, Perthshire at the annual Strathardle
Show, held in their heavily sheep populated county,
would surely be worthy of consideration.
The Stewarts run a closed flock totalling 800 ewes,
of which half are Texel-sired, ranging from first
cross to pure, un-registered. For the last 23 years
their Texel-blooded sheep have proved unbeatable
at Strathardle, which attracts up to 80 pens of two
prime lambs from many of the numerous large sheep
enterprises in the area. To put the size of this
entry into perspective – at the 2004 Royal
Highland Show there were 16 pens of prime lambs catalogued.
As the 2005 Strathardle
show date (August 27th)
draws closer, one of the main topics of conversation
in the public bars of the glen hostelries will be
just how can the Stewart sheep be beaten.
For the Stewarts themselves, the pressure to defend
and hopefully retain their record in 2005 started
the moment they won in 2004, long before the 2005
entries were even conceived!
There are plenty of good Texel tups available and
many of them are used in flocks which compete against
the Stewarts. So what is it about David and Elizabeth’s
sheep which has made them so unbeatable?
Obviously the Stewarts have a flair for selecting
and preparing show sheep, but these talents are not
scarce in this area, where the fullness of a sheep’s
gigot is often more ardently admired than a bonny
lassie’s rear end.
There has to be some other reason. What about the
sheep themselves, there must be something special
about them? Let us explore their background.
Some buyers of North Country Cheviot lambs at Europe’s
largest one day sheep sale, held in the Sutherland
town of Lairg, are trying to encourage the Northie
breeders to use Texel tups over some of their ewes – to
produce easier and quicker finishing Texel cross
lambs with improved, premium-earning conformation.
The good ewe lambs would be worthy of a breeding
premium.
Sceptical North Country Cheviot breeders, and there
is bound to be a few, could do worse than pay a visit
to David and Elizabeth Stewart’s sheep enterprise,
based around David’s family home – Mains
of Dalrulzion at Glenshee, north of Blairgowrie.
The Stewarts have been blending Texel and North
Country Cheviot blood for almost 30 years and this
blend has been the basis of their 23-year un-beaten
run at Strathardle.
Show rosettes however do not pay the bills and it
is either a very wealthy or very, very clever commercial
stock producer who can afford to breed animals with
just the show ring in mind. Livestock farming bills
are paid by money earned in the market place and
David Stewart maintains that each and every Texel-sired
sheep he sells, whether it is a store or prime lamb,
a ewe or tup lamb for commercial breeding or even
a cast ewe, earns a market premium.
It is 30 years since David Stewart took over the
running of Mains of Dalrulzion. Between then and
now he and Elizabeth have taken on additional blocks
of land, bringing their current acreage to 1,200,
spread over a several mile radius and running up
to a high point of 1,500 feet. In addition to the
sheep they run a 25-cow suckler herd, romanced by
polled Simmental bull Dirnanean Marcus.
When David took over the Mains, he inherited the
resident flock of Scottish Blackfaces. “I had
been working throughout Scotland as a shearing contractor,
often shearing up to 30,000 sheep a year. Shearing
this number meant shearing a big variety, including
some Texel cross Blackies and Texel cross North Country
Cheviots. Compared to the pure Blackfaces and Cheviots,
the crosses were great sheep to shear – no
sticking out bones!”
Those Texel cross ewes made a lasting impression.
In the early 1970’s David Stewart laid the
foundation for his 21st Century breeding flock with
14 Texel cross North Country Cheviot gimmers and
40 pure North Country Cheviot gimmers from Lairg.
The first Texel tup, along with the 14 foundation
Texel cross North Country Cheviot gimmers, was purchased
from Ian Smith of Glen Moy, Kirriemuir, Angus.
The 800 ewes currently run by the Stewarts can all
trace their ancestry back to those 54 foundation
females.
“I wanted a closed flock, using as few breeds
as possible, which could withstand our harsh winters
while producing plenty of quality, premium-earning
prime lambs. I particularly did not want to use any
sires which may leave a good breeding female, but
a wether lamb which was un-appealing to the meat
trade”, explained David.
“We now run the two flocks, closed except
to tups – one of 400 North Country Cheviots,
half of which are bred pure for replacements into
that flock, with the other half crossed with Texels
to produce Texel cross ewe lambs for our Texel blooded
flock”.
Since the relaxation of subsidy rules which stipulated
that only native hill breeds could graze the higher
ground, the Stewarts have been able to run their
first cross Texel ewes on the land which runs up
to 1,500 feet, where little more than heather grows.
“Of the 400 ewes in the Texel flock, all of
them have a North Country Cheviot somewhere in their
ancestry, but for a large number of them, that blood
is so many generations back, that had their ancestors
been registered in the grading up register, they
would now be pure”.
All the work is done by Team Stewart, with Elizabeth
dealing with the never ending every day tasks on
a livestock farm whenever David is away working as
a shearing instructor, (a past Scottish shearing
champion, he was one of the Golden Shears judges
at this fabulous event held at the Royal Highland
Show in 2003), contract shooting deer or fulfilling
his duties as one of the local firemen, which explains
why, if his bleeper goes, so does he, at speed!
The Stewarts farm amidst stunning scenery, but there
is often a price for breathtaking views and winter-time
the Stewarts pay it. Much of their land is only a
few miles from Scotland’s ski fields and deep
snow is not un-common, making the feeding of sheep
much more crucial, yet also much more difficult.
“Sometimes the snow is so deep the only way
we can get to the sheep is on the four wheel drive
tractor, but then we still need to find a way of
feeding them”, explained David. “So I
put a big bale on the spike on the front of the tractor
and use that to clear a channel. Elizabeth then follows
with the quad bike and snacker, dropping feed for
the in-lamb ewes in the bale-width channel.
Winter comes early and stays late in this part of
the world. In the hope of grass for ewes with lambs,
lambing starts early April, with the ewes tupped
to lamb in three distinct batches, helping make life
easier for the Stewart duo.
“The ewes are easily hardy enough to lamb
outside, but we’re so heavily stocked, and
to be good to ourselves, we lamb the first group
inside, turning ewes and lambs out as soon as possible.
If the weather is really rough, like many of the
local farmers, we put plastic jackets on the lambs – you
really appreciate the value of these when you put
your hand between the plastic and a lamb on a bitterly
cold day – it’s as warm as toast in there”,
said Elizabeth.
When selecting their replacement ewe lambs, the
Stewarts used to be influenced towards twins, but
by 1999 this policy had helped to create problems. “We
had too many lambs”, said David. “Over
70 sets of triplets and a lambing percentage of 202
per cent, we were knee deep in lambs. Thankfully
these days we’re back to just over 180 per
cent.”
The quality reputation the Stewart sheep have established
in this sheepy area has enabled David and Elizabeth
to develop a range of markets.
Maintaining that his policy of selecting thin tailed
tups helps to ensure their progeny do not go overfat,
David takes the finished lambs to higher weights
than the 21kg (dw) payment cut-off limit many abattoirs
impose.
“We try to average 50 kgs liveweight, and
are determined to get paid for every kilo. So we
sell almost all our prime lambs at Lawrie and Symington’s
Forfar mart, where local butchers are frequent customers”.
Blairgowrie is a terrific town for carnivores – there
are two excellent butchers – D & A (Alan)
Kennedy and H W (Ronnie) Irvine. Both regularly buy
lambs from the Stewarts.
At the 2004 Forfar Christmas Primestock Show Alan
Kennedy paid £155 a head for the Stewart’s
reserve champion pen of five Texel lambs. “Mains
of Dalrulzion” is regularly one of the farm
names on the board outside D & A Kennedy’s
butcher’s shop which is proud to sell locally
produced meat.
At the same Forfar sale Ronnie Irvine bought two
pens of Stewart Texels – first and second prizewinners
for his shop which in a normal week trades approximately
a dozen lambs, sold over the shop counter, to local
hotels plus delivery customers in a 40 mile radius
of Blairgowrie.
“I always buy Texel, I don’t look at
anything else!” explained Ronnie Irvine, the
third generation of this family business which was
founded over eighty years ago and employs 22 staff.
“Texel carcases, with their better shape,
really suit my trade. I like a 24 to 25 kg carcase
and the Texel can go to that weight, putting on flesh
not fat. Having said that, we do like more finish
on our lambs than supermarkets. But best of all is
the size of the eye muscle – it’s excellent,
so much bigger than the other breeds. Many of my
customers travel from quite a distance and they tell
me that the lamb is one of the reasons they make
the journey.”
Both Blairgowrie butchers recognise the promotional
value of “Bred Local, Bought Local, Sold Local,
Consumed Local (or as far afield as possible!)”.
As Ronnie Irvine added - “Another thing the
customers like is the name of the farm on the pieces
of meat in the display. An identity for the beef
and lamb means a lot to the type of customer who
takes the trouble to make a special trip to buy meat,
especially if they recognise a name as either a farm
they know or they’ve had a piece of meat from
the same farm before”.
Worthy of mention is the value of the Stewart’s
Texel cast ewes, though obviously not to the likes
of Messrs Irvine and Kennedy! In December 2004 the
Stewarts sold meaty cast Texel ewes for £64
a head, putting many prime lamb prices in the shade.
All lambs from the Texel flock, other than those
either retained or sold for breeding, are finished.
Some of the local sheep farmers work on the assumption
that if the Stewart’s home-bred ewe lambs are
good enough for themselves, then they are good enough
for them too, resulting in a good private trade for
some of the Stewart’s Texel-sired ewe lambs.
“With the Texel cross North Country Cheviots,
lambs of both sexes earn a premium”, explained
David. And with ewe lambs, we have the option of
either hanging them up or selling them for breeding.
Even if you have a good skinned Northie, the Texel
will tighten the skin on her lambs, and that’s
really important on our hills”.
Twenty of some of the best tup lambs from the Texel
flock are kept for taking onto shearlings. A further
70 meaty, muscley Texel tups lambs are sold, again
to local commercial producers, mainly for use over
Scottish Blackface ewes.
“We don’t charge a lot for them,” said
David, “usually about twice the prime lamb
price. We use this bit of extra money to buy our
stock tups”.
The 2004 Stewart tup lamb-selling season must have
been good. On September 10th, amidst the thrills
and spills of the Kelso Ram Sales, David Stewart
saw something he really, really wanted – there
in Ring 9, amongst an entry of 42 Texels from Peter
and Lynn Gray of the Scrogtonhead flock at Douglas
in Lanarkshire was Scrogton J.R., a son of Loosebeare
Hero and out of a Baltier Duke daughter.
David was not the only one who had spotted this
handsome sheep and the bidding soon sailed by his
intended limit. “By the time I had bid £2,000,
I thought to myself, well I’m already in over
my wellies, I might as well get my backside wet as
well”. And so it came to pass that J.R. was
knocked down at £2,500 to David Stewart who
by now, probably really did have wet panties!
At his new home in Perthshire J.R. soon showed that
he was determined to repay David’s confidence.
As at Christmas 2004, he had 80 notches on his gun
belt and no returns, which he found rather disappointing,
as he was obviously enthusiastic to carry on the
good work!
The CAP Reforms, introduced on January 1st 2005,
will throw up new challenges and opportunities for
farmers throughout the land.
David and Elizabeth Stewart are totally dedicated,
heart and soul to their farming. So how do they view
their long-term future as modulation gnaws away at
their Single Farm Payment?
“We would be tempted to sell the cows and
concentrate even more on the sheep. As for changing
the type of sheep – we’ve seen nothing
which would suit us any better. Over the last 30
years, thanks to the Texel, we’ve built up
a flock which survives, thrives and produces in sometimes
truly challenging conditions. But not only do they
survive, every Texel-sired lamb earns a market premium.
If this type of sheep enterprise is not viable in
the future, what type of enterprise will be?”
By Claire Powell |
