Lambing is the best time of year for many sheep farmers, but how many would actually relish the thought of getting up every hour through the night or worse still, having to stay up all night in bitterly cold – freezing if not already frozen, sheds – to check ewes while the snow swirls and deepens further outside in this current bleak arctic spell of winter weather?

And, for those of you who are in the midst of lambing – layers upon layers of winter woolies, two pairs of skiing socks, long-johns, the thickest of jeans, rubber leggings a good woolly hat and a hot water bottle stuffed down your ‘breeks’, surely have to be the order of the day and night – along with copious ‘laced’ hot drinks for that all-important internal heat up.

But, spare a thought for the poor wee lambs being born in such polar conditions where water freezes solid within an hour of being thawed out and for the first time ever, heat lamps for the newly born and shelter breaks have had to be installed to reduce the impact of continuous icy blasts which regularly push temperatures below the -10 degree mark.

And yet, despite the continuous cold and consequential difficulties, Iain and Arabella Johnston are coping well, while their pedigree Berrichons and lambs at Kirkton Farm, Falkirk, are ultimately thriving.

“We have had to put up heat lamps for the first time ever and construct additional shelter from the wind for the sheep, but Berrichons are really hardy. The breed is a lot hardier than people give it credit for – they have to be when they survive in this weather,” said Arabella, who attends to the majority of sheep work here.

“I know they have pink noses but the pink gene is recessive. We’ve got tup hoggs and old tups outside in this weather and all they get is hay although the eight-year-old stock tup, Adonis, does get a few concentrates.

“Berrichons are a fantastic terminal sire breed – the lambs weigh like lead and they finish just as well as other early lambing breeds, but the real beauty of the Berrichon is the fact they’re wider through the loin and longer than most other breeds – and, they’re a lot easier lambed,” Arabella pointing out.

It’s for these reasons that the couple believe the Berrichon is ideally suited both as a terminal sire, and having an abundance of milk, as a commercial breeding female.

“We used to buy in lambs to fatten and we had a spell running Suffolk cross, Charollais cross and Mule ewes, but Berrichons are a lot milkier and so much easier to lamb – you can lamb hoggs to them no bother.

“They’re also more productive as they cycle all year round – it is possible to get three crops of lambs in two years – but you do have to make sure you spean the tup lambs promptly. Tupped naturally, they’ll produce scanned lambing percentages of 195% plus too.”

Admittedly, the couple have only had Berrichon sheep for five years, but such has been their success on this lowland 370-acre unit that what initially started out as a hobby has now become a viable business.

Furthermore, having initially purchased 16 females privately from Mrs Francis Barbour, who runs the noted Newark flock from Sanquhar, the couple now run 35 breeding females in their Kirkton flock with plans for further expansion if demand continues.

More importantly, this big, white scouthy sheep which is one of the most popular terminal sires in its homeland of France and one of the most common sires used in Wales, is proving particularly easy to manage whilst also attracting a good profit at the end of the day.

While they can be lambed at any time of the year, Iain and Arabella have been lambing their pedigree females at the end of December, beginning of January.

This year, they also AI’d a large proportion of the flock with frozen semen from Mark Crane’s well-known 1997-98 national show-winning ram, MHC 96011 – which proved 85% successful. Their overall lambing percentage was 200%.

Yet, the sheep require only minimal feeding, lthough they do have access to mineral buckets pre-tupping right through to lambing. Only the twin and triplet-bearing ewes receive concentrate feeding on the run-up to lambing, with the sheep coming inside a week prior to lambing. They are ‘shipped’ back out to grass with their lambs as soon as the weather permits and lambs have access to creep feeding from 11 days of age.

“Berrichons are really good at holding their condition – once they’ve got to a certain level, they don’t go back,” Arabella added stating that several of her ewes are already in double figures with a full set of teeth, while ewes sold in the cast ring at United Auctions, Stirling, have peaked at £120.

Not surprisingly, the lambs grow to big weights with lambs not kept for breeding sold directly off their mothers at 50kg through April/May. These are sold through Scotbeef with the majority producing U4L grades. A few have also been cashed through Caledonian Marts, Stirling, to top the sale.

Outwith the glowing commercial attributes of the breed, the Johnstons have also made their mark in pedigree circles with their Kirkton flock having produced shearling tups to a top of £600 at Kelso, while tup lambs have sold to 550gns for the reserve male champion at the breed show and sale at Carlisle, in 2006, purchased by the pre-sale judge, Norman Cruikshank, Cowford, Cleghorn, Lanark.

Two years later at the same event, the flock took the female championship, with Kirkton Heather.

Arabella has also triumphed to win several championship tickets with home-bred Berrichons at both local and national events.

Most notable was the big win two years ago, when she lifted the reserve breed championship at the Highland with the three-shear ram Sunnycroft Supreme, another ram bred in Norfolk by Mark Crane which also scooped the reserve male honours at Ingliston, in 2009.

Equally impressive was the fact that in 2007, the home-bred ewe lamb, Kirkton Helen, not only won the any other breed championship at West Fife, she also scooped the reserve supreme sheep in front of the overall sheep judge, Bob Adam, Newhouse of Glamis. She is by Keitle Adonis, the ram bred by William Fraser and Kristine McGlothlin, but bought privately as a stock ram from Francis Barbour, in 2006.

But while Arabella is looking forward to another busy show season, for now it’s all hands on deck for the end of lambing which hopefully in this weather won’t be too long.

Surely it can’t be as bad for the foaling of Iain’s four prize-winning Clydesdale mares!