Having evolved a management strategy to achieve the best prime lamb returns throughout the season from their 950-ewe flock, the Musgrave family, Dalston, Carlisle adhere to it from year to year.

The sheep share the 1030-acre Cardew Hall Farm with 350 commercial milkers which calve all year round, and some 300 acres of cereals, maize and fodder beet for home use. Being a dairy farm, the sheep are always on quality grass or, when they are inside for lambing, the same quality silage as the dairy cows get.

However, key to the profitability of the sheep enterprise as far as James Musgrave is concerned, is the use of Beltex rams and commercial ewes with a high percentage of Beltex genetics.

James and partner, Sarah Reay farm with his brother Mark and more recently, Mark’s son with the same name. James and Sarah also have three children, Jack, Edith and Zara with young Jack already keen to be involved.

When the previous family partnership was split up about nine or 10 years ago, and James remained at Cardew Hall, the current flock was established with mainly Texel cross Beltex ewes bought with lambs at foot.

“It has just been built up from there but with continuous use of Beltex tups in the main, and a good proportion of the ewes will be pretty much pure. I have used the odd cross-bred tup with the right conformation, and also a Blue Texel occasionally and so there a few black ewes and replacement gimmer lambs,” says Mr Musgrave.

Basically, it is a matter of spreading lambing from December onwards to first of all catch the Easter trade, and then maintain a steady output until November, while avoiding the normal July/early August dip in lamb values.

While the type of lamb they are producing will, more often than not, be grading E and U for whoever buys them, the Musgraves are adamant that the live ring can consistently beat the deadweight trade for these lambs and they are regular vendors at three auction marts where, says Mr Musgrave, there are returning buyers for their lambs.

“There have always been sheep on this farm since my grandfather’s day when he used to buy stores, but now we are breeding our own lambs for finishing and we also breed most of our own replacement females apart from the odd occasion when we maybe cull the ewes a bit harder and need to buy in some replacements.

“I tend to buy from Carlisle or Wigton. This year I went for hoggs with lambs at foot but of a type I like and that fit in with what we already have,” he says.

The annual cycle begins in July when around 500 ewes for December, January and early February lambing are synchronised and it is from the earlier lambing ewes that up to 200 gimmer lambs are retained as replacements.

The bigger ones are normally lambed as hoggs having been clipped in August to help maximise their growth potential. Because of the system they are operating, there is no attempt to sell prime hoggs but just a few of the gimmer lambs that do not come up to scratch as potential replacements will go that way.

Mr Musgrave says: “It is also only the smaller hoggs, but still of the right type, which will be run round to shearlings before tupping and I think there are perhaps 70 of those this time, but it does vary.

“It is only the early lambing ewes that are synchronised and from then on we rely on them cycling naturally. After the earlies there is a short break before the remainder begin lambing, mainly the shearlings and then the hoggs will follow on.

“It is important we catch the Easter trade and so the early lambs are turned out onto good quality fogg and have access to creep and their mothers are caked as well. It is only a very small number of these early lambs which might be sold deadweight to specific customers who request them but for everything else it is the auctions in Carlisle, Wigton and further afield in Kirkby Stephen.
“The earliest lambs will finish at about 12 weeks and we will have these regularly away at 37kg and up to 42kg. The bulk of our lambs however are just finished off grass which has been set aside for the sheep.”

Cardew Hall Beltex-sired lambs are often over the £200 mark and have been up to £220 or more in 2023 before the trade rose to new heights. In 2022, Mr Musgrave took the championship in Kirkby Stephen with 40kg lambs selling at 675p per kg to gross £270 bringing that day’s run to level at just under £200.

There are normally 16 to 20 rams on the farm and these are used on consecutive small batches of the synchronised ewes to maximise conception rates.

However, in order to evaluate all the rams, colour markings are co-ordinated with the group of ewes they are used on and plain coloured eartags might be used as identifiers on the lambs they produce whether destined for prime or replacements.

Mr Musgrave says: “We need to know which tups are producing the best lambs and trouble-free lambing, so the first time I use a new tup he just gets consecutive groups of seven. If he produces the goods then next season he can go with larger batches and often alongside another tup which has been similarly proven.”

He also points out that by running tups with smaller batches, and them having breaks in between to stagger lambing, he can often get 80 or more in lamb to any one tup in a year, so spreading its cost.

“I have always tried to buy replacement Beltex tups privately from flocks such as James Little’s Skiddaw View flock and Grant Anderson’s Topflite, to name two. I buy on what I see and feel in front of me. I like power and a good front and back-end and they must have hard muscle on the back-end.

“Length is also important but I don’t mind a slightly shorter tup provided it does have that hard muscle. It is just a matter of matching them onto ewes with good length. And of course, I don’t want wool so the less they have the better and the same goes for the ewes really.

“The other point about buying tups privately if I can, is that they tend not to have been fed too hard as some inevitably are for the breeding sales,” he says.

General management of the flock involves regular footbathing and dosing where necessary. Retained gimmer lambs are all on the Heptavac system. Ewes are housed about two weeks before lambing, having had an energy lick while at grass, but do not get hard feed until after lambing. After turnout, they are fed a mix of ewe nuts and home-grown barley. The early lambs which have creep get starter pellets for four to six weeks and then finisher pellets mixed with barley.

Mr Musgrave says: “For us it’s a system that works and we see no reason to change what we are doing or the breed we are using.”

Copy and photographs kindly supplied by Farmers Guardian