LOVE them or loathe them, sheep remain one of the easiest professions on the hip pocket if you’re looking to get a foothold in the industry, but it’s needs hard work, expertise and attention to detail to determine the difference between success and failure.
While the sector requires significantly less capital than others, it’s the long days and nights that are essential to make ends meet with these woolly four-legged 'creatures' , with seemingly suicidal tendencies. There are, nevertheless, rewards to be had for those with the drive, expertise and work ethic.
Aberdeenshire producer, George Simpson, Kirkland of Forgue, is a case in point, who from humble beginnings as a freelance shepherd, went on to build up a successful sheep shearing run and also his own farm business. 
His unit is based on a 150-acre tenancy on the Bognie, Mountblairy and Frendraught Estate, but with the addition of winter and summer grazings on no fewer than 30 different farms, George has slowly but surely built up a productive farming enterprise. 
This now comprises of 1560 breeding ewes, with a further 2500 lambs bought in every year for finishing or selling the following year as breeding gimmers. 
Add to that a canny knack for training young Border Collie sheepdogs, and George, who has won many sheepdog nursery trials in the area culminating in the Scottish nursery finals in 2014, is now not only one of the most respected farmers in the area, but a real character into the bargain.
“Sheepdogs are a crucial part of the business and the best thing about them is they are always there for you. They never complain and they don’t need wages – all they want is a bowl of feed and a nice dry bed,” said George, who gets most of his young dogs from Welshman, John Roberts, to train up.
But while George has a real passion and knack for bringing out the best in working dogs, having sold his first at public auction at 4500gns, it’s the sheep that come first on his exposed upland unit.
“I always wanted to work with sheep when I was younger,” said George, who left home at a young age to set up his own business as a freelance shepherd. 
From there he progressed to sheep dressing and sheep shearing, building up his own shearing run which, when he gave it up five years ago, saw him and an Australian take the 'jackets' off more than 20,000 sheep a year.
By working all hours and renting small packages of ground on an annual basis to finish store lambs, George was able to build up sufficient capital to take on the tenancy of the 60-acre unit at Yonder Bognie in 1987, where his son, Gordon, a draughtsman to trade, now lives and helps out on the farm at weekends.
It was at this stage that George bought his first breeding ewes, which, with the addition of the 150-acre tenancy at Kirkland of Forgue, in 1998, enabled him to build up a commercial ewe flock which now numbers 1560. With additional acres rented on various monthly/annual leases, the business has been able to slowly but surely grow at a manageable rate.
“I always like to make it before I spend it and in that respect sheep farming is great in that the inputs are minimal compared to cereals or beef cattle. I have also been very lucky over the years in that people have come to me offering ground to rent. 
"I don’t think young farmers would find it as easy now, as there is just not the ground available.”
The other problem, George admitted, is that scale and time are needed to make a unit viable now.
“It used to be you could get by finishing a few hundred lambs, but the sheep trade is now a numbers game – you need to finish thousands, rather than hundreds,” he said, adding that at the end of the summer he can have up to 6500 head of sheep to his name.
It’s for this reason that only average rated stock rams are bought, all Texels.
“Texels produce the carcases demanded by the processors, so by buying in average to bottom end tups, it keep my costs down and what I lose in quality, I gain in numbers,” he said pointing out that three Texel rams are run per 100 ewes, at an average cost of £450 per tup.
Health has always been key to productivity and profit margins here too though, so all sheep to include lambs for fattening or breeding are treated as if ‘naked’ when bought. All are dozed for fluke and worms, dipped for scab, and receive double Ovivac P and Footvax vaccinations, and put onto ‘clean grazings’, when they return home.
Breeding ewes also get the full health treatment, which means regular dozing for fluke and worms, dipping and full clostridial and abortion vaccines pre lambing. 
They are also flushed on some of the best dairy farms in Morayshire, with mineral tubs available at all times. This good, often clean grass, ensures scanned lambing percentages of 200+% most years amongst the 660 Scotch Mules which are bought in as lambs either at Castle Douglas or Caledonian Marts, Stirling. 
Most years, George buys in excess of 800 Mule ewe lambs, gimmering the best of them, which last year, saw top prices of £175 per head at Thainstone, to average £145. The remainder, however, are kept for stock and tupped to a Texel to lamb in April inside polytunnels.
“You need to get the high scanning percentages because we can lose quite a few lambs when they go on to summer grazings to foxes and badgers. Our gamekeeper shot 135 foxes last year and, of course, there is nothing that can be done about badgers.
“Our Mule ewes always get such a good flush and with several Texel tups in each field, we regularly get scanned lambing percentages of 200% plus. We’re pretty lucky too as they don’t generally need concentrate feeding until six weeks before lambs,” said George.
With in door space being the limiting factor, tups’ chests are coloured coded at tupping time and changed every 10 days, thereby the first lambing batch is easily identified to come in the shed, followed by the second and third lots.

Once lambed, ewes and their lambs are put into individual pens, with the lambs given a watery mouth drench and their navels dipped in iodine. 
With 100 individual pens to cater for them, they are put out to neighbouring fields as soon as possible and each pen is then thoroughly mucked out and disinfected before another ewe and lambs come into it, thereby reducing the risk of disease.
With George and his partner, Mandy Flett and neighbour, Gail Dickson, on stand-bye at any one time during lambing, there are few losses. The only problem arises once they have been marked, tagged and jagged and are moved onto their summer grazings, roughly three weeks after lambing. 
It’s at this stage that lambs just seem to mysteriously disappear, which according to George, can only be as a result of vermin.
“We always have a pretty good scan and lambing, but when you look at the numbers sold, it’s a pretty average lambing we seem to end up with every year,” said George.
In saying that, the business is fortunate in that its Texel cross lambs can be finished solely off grass, with the first cashed at the end of July through Woodhead Bros, Turriff, with regular batches sold right through until Christmas, again, purely off grass.
It’s a similar situation amongst the 900 hill ewes which are the resultant female from a Texel crossed to a Cheviot cross Shetland ewe, tupped to a Suffolk, which, put back to a Texel, regularly produce scanned figures of 170-175%. 
Bought privately from a neighbouring farmer as ewe lambs, these lamb outside at the end of April/May having come through the spring on turnips and minerals only, compared to the Mule ewes which are have to be fed ewe rolls before lambing and often well after lambing depending on grass availability.
The majority of the lambs, including bought stores, are finished off grass.
“It costs £15-£20 per head to keep a store lamb healthy and get it home once you’ve bought it and that’s before you give it any pellets,” said George, who buys most of his through Welsh livestock agent, John Roberts, and looks to finish as many as possible before Christmas.
He does finish some store lambs in January, February and March, on pellets if only for a regular cash flow, with these lambs producing good carcases selling either through Aberdeen and Northern Marts, Thainstone, or Woodhead Brothers.
“What you lack in quality at this time, you need to make up for on quantity,” said George, who finishes more Blackface, Cheviot and Mule lambs then.
There are few quiet times for George, who at 60 years young, still shears the vast majority of his sheep, but he and Mandy, who works for the Forestry Commission, took advantage of being asked to judge a sheepdog trial in America, last October, to get a couple of weeks away.
There are also the nursery finals in March, where George is likely to have two dogs on show, having won the 14 nurseries he attended in the area in the back-end, and, with five different dogs! After that, of course, it's back to the start of real hard graft – lambing.