Naturally grown at Essie

The Essie flock, which was named after the family’s home farm, North Essie, is now a closed flock and numbers 120 ewes. It runs alongside the family’s suckler herd of 200 Aberdeen-Angus crosses, two finishing enterprises which include 1500 Aberdeen-Angus cattle and 1000 Suffolk cross lambs, and an organic egg producing unit which numbers 6000 hens run by daughter, Gillian. 
This large-scale mixed agriculture business is farmed across 2222 acres, over the three units close to Fraserburgh and Peterhead, and includes 672 acres of cereals purely grown for feed. 
Irene and Jim have been in the game for a good number of years, having established the flock in 1979 when they purchased six ewe lambs from neighbouring Suffolk breeders and Jim’s uncle and aunt, Sandy and Melita Lee, of the Fordafourie flock.
Those foundation females from Fordafourie certainly made their mark as they were daughters of the renowned sire in the country at that time, Lauderdale Sportsman. 
They also produced stock tups for the Fowlies’ original 1000-ewe early lambing commercial flock. 
Originally bought as a hobby and for the children, Gillian, and her brothers, Frank (a solicitor in Aberdeen), and Graeme (a vet at Meadow Vets in Oldmeldrum), it didn’t take long before Irene found her love for the breed.
“The Suffolk is just such an easy breed to work with and still remains popular in the market for its dual purpose characteristics – a good crossing sire for prime lambs and the production of Suffolk cross ewes. 
“We believe that naturally grown sheep on a grass-based system, combined with superior genetics, produces the quality product that today’s market requires, whether it be for a pedigree flock or a commercial flock that aims to produce store or fat lambs that can perform well and quickly off grass with good confirmation,” comments Irene, who retired from her full-time English teaching post just five years ago. 

Breeding ewes

It has been a steep learning curve over the last 38 years however, as Irene said her first trip to Kelso Ram Sales, some 33 years, ago sealed the decision to concentrate more on producing shearlings, rather than tup lambs. 
“We aim to produce shearlings which are reared naturally, are stronger and are able to serve more ewes and last longer. Increasingly, this is what many of our repeat buyers are looking for,” she said.
“We firstly aimed to cater for commercial flocks but have found that pedigree buyers can be just as keen if wanting to produce the same type of natural, grass-fed sheep.”
It was Drinkstone Heavyweight, a tup lamb purchased at Shrewsbury, in July 2009, which produced some real crackers for the flock, including stock tup, Essie Samson. On the day, Heavyweight was the top performance recorded lamb of the year and managed to produce an impressive 150 lambs in his first year. 

Three home-bred tup lambs which will be used at home

Such was the success of progeny from Heavyweight, Irene purchased semen from another two Drinkstone tups including Drinkstone Napoleon, which bred one of the best tups for the flock, Essie Warrior. He is the top UK stock sire for maternal traits, is the sire of some of this year’s shearlings at Kelso and sire of the top two UK performance recorded ram lambs in 2017. 
Fully focused on producing shearlings, Irene and Jim introduced in-flock performance recording in 1990, which allowed for better selection of ewe lamb replacements. That involved a technician coming in to weigh and muscle measure the lambs.
More recently, in 2007, the Essie flock joined the National Suffolk Breeding Evaluation Scheme which enabled the Essie flock to be compared with other flocks. The flock is also part of the Ram Compare Scheme which involves breed comparison trials within the UK. Winning the UK Sheep Innovator of the Year, Irene has certainly gained confidence to continue with her breeding programme.

Essie Warrior

All lambs are weighed at an average of eight weeks, with a further weighing nine weeks later to show just how well individual lambs have performed. Included in the recording is an ultrasound scan which measures the depth of chop and fat, calculating the breed value. 
For the past five years, the husband and wife team has taken 15 tup lambs for CT scanning at SRUC Edinburgh (a 350-mile round trip) which identifies the best lambs for breeding, giving a variety of statistics. Those chosen for scanning are usually from different breed lines, providing a cross sample of lambs by different sires. 
“CT scanning is a great tool and has helped to make great improvements in the choice of stock ram. It calculates every aspect of the lamb, including a meat to bone ratio calculation which gives us a percentage of the muscle in the lamb, and generates a photograph of the lamb’s gigot and loin which gives an overall breeding value score,” explained Irene.
Performance recording as a whole has massively helped the flock, especially when it comes to selling shearlings, at Kelso and at Dingwall. Last year’s 30 shearlings at Kelso cashed in to average £862 having sold to a top of £1600 (second top Suffolk shearling average), while their best year to date at Dingwall in 2014, saw 20 shearlings level at £769 with a top of £1100. 
“The bar chart evaluations from BASCO include the weights at each scan, and the muscle and fat depth, compared to the genetic trend, and are hung above the pens for customers to see and we find they are a good visual selling point,” comments Jim, with Irene very much in agreement. 
Another good selling point for the Essie flock is maintaining a High Health status, being RR scrapie resistant, and having tested clear for CLA for the past decade. They believe this has attracted buyers from overseas too, with tups and gimmers sold to Romania and Germany, and semen to Canada, Norway, Sweden and the Czech Republic. 
Through careful selection of females and the use of home-bred tups which are chosen for conformation, strength with plenty length and width, good on their legs and sound feet, and of course good figures, Irene added that they have deliberately taken the choice not to breed Suffolks with too much bone, purely for the ease of lambing. 
“Over the years we’ve managed to breed ewes that are easy lambed and produce vigorous lambs. It’s important that you breed sheep that can lamb naturally and produce plenty of milk.
“The ewes receive a mix of home-grown oats and beep pulp six weeks prior to lambing, and on their final week are given a concentrate, avoiding the likelihood of big lambs.”
Lambing is kept as tight as possible, beginning late January and hopefully finishing within four weeks. They go outside every day prior to lambing to maintain the fitness of the ewes and are only housed after lambing. Although there’s not a lot of grass at lambing, three-week-old lambs and their mothers go outside during the day to ensure their feet are kept in the best condition. 
Last year’s lot scanned in at an impressive 200% which included 39 sets of triplets and four quads. 
Although all lambs are offered creep feeding from four weeks of age, it’s the eight-week weighing which Irene finds valuable due to the lambs having mainly survived on their mother’s milk, showing the ewe’s mothering and milking ability. The lambs then finish up on creep feeding at their second weigh in at 16 weeks which helps gives an indicator of the lamb’s finishing quality. From them on in, they survive on grass and are supplemented with Lifeline Ram Care minerals. 
Running such a large pedigree flock, around 40 gimmers are brought in to the flock each year, with the remainder sold privately each year. Some have sold as far north as Orkney and down into England, and at the last three Highland Sheep events, have sold to a top of 750gns. 
“It’s such a waste of breeding potential to put my females away fat. They’re all in top 1% with good maternal traits. We are delighted to have sold to several new breeders,” said Irene.
To introduce new bloodlines, around 30 ewes are AI’d annually, while the best ewe in the flock is run in an ET programme alongside three others. In the past, anything that didn’t hold was sponged and put in lamb to a New Zealand Suffolk which proved a great success, selling as well as the native type, producing lambs with high vigour which are quick to suckle. 
With an impressive pen of 33 shearlings forward for Kelso next week, it just proves that having confidence in your own ideas and principles and sticking to them, can reap rewards – no matter what the fashion is.