Last month, on the 30th anniversary of my becoming a low ground farmer, I wrote about the changeover and gave a brief history of our tenure at Roxburgh Mains since 1993.

As I was a novice arable farmer and reliant on the advice of others more experienced in specialist cropping, I am even now reluctant to pontificate on that part of the farming enterprise. My experience was in commercial and pedigree livestock production in the hills and uplands.

Prior to our move, sheep had been by far our biggest enterprise. We bred Blackies on the hill and North Country Cheviots in the fields at Rawburn. As the Northies were becoming less popular, we replaced some of them with Mules.

To breed tups to use on them, I started a flock of Suffolks. We started selling a few rams at Kelso in 1984.

The cows were Angus cross Shorthorn. Many were put to a Charolais bull. The best of the calves made enhanced prices at Reston Market for showing.

The model then was quite different to the extreme kind winning today. Succumbing to temptation to use the Charolais more and more because of the premium their calves made, the quality of my cow herd dropped – so I bought a few pedigree Aberdeen-Angus cows to cross with the Shorthorn to breed replacement heifers.

Occasionally, a cow which bred well was put to the Angus. The British native breeds were very poor at the time, so finding bulls, particularly with my limited budget, was difficult.

Bulls in the AI studs which were run by various the milk boards, were little better than my own and results were disappointing.

In 1978, together with some friends, I visited the world-famous Wye Plantation Angus herd in the US. My eyes were opened.

For the first time in my life, I saw an Angus bull that weighed a tonne, a weight which bulls today reach before their second birthday.

I followed that trip with a Nuffield Scholarship to the US and Canada in 1982. I visited 51 herds, most of them Angus, and many research operations and returned with two heifers, a bull and a clearer vision of where I wanted to go.

The US Angus Association had started a progeny testing programme in 1977. By 1982, 34,000 bulls had been progeny tested.

At that time weaning and yearling weights were the primary focus. Birth weights, calving ease, milking ability and with the advent of ultrasonic scanning, carcase data was added over time to the traits recorded.

To this day our experience is that the US bull progeny testing programme is our best guide to finding genetics that will improve the performance of our cattle. Like everyone else, we bred for growth initially and, as the data improved and the programme became more sophisticated, we selected for additional traits to the point now where out easiest calving bulls have higher performance than our top growth bulls at the turn of the century.

Much of what we do in the future will be influenced by our increasing knowledge of the bovine genome. At present, this is mostly limited to traits controlled by a single gene such as horns, coat colour and myostatin.

We can, but at present aren’t allowed to, insert or delete genetic material artificially. Nevertheless, whereas at present we can only guess from the appearance of an animal and its close relatives its genetic make-up, in future we will be able to tell whether it carries or not, a desired or undesired gene from a blood test and design our matings with greater precision.

The potential for preventing disease, improving eating quality and reducing feed and labour costs, while at the same time reducing greenhouse gases, is exciting.

In 1993, we took our Suffolk flock with us from Rawburn. The breed was at that time the most popular terminal cross.

The fashionable type at society sales and in the show ring had powerful heads and heavy bone and were shorter coupled than I liked, so I based my foundation genetics on the bigger and longer kind popular in the unregistered ring at Kelso Ram Sale.

The best of these came from Longyester and Alnwick Castle. A later introduction of New Zealand blood into the flock had a marked effect on the vigour of our Suffolks.

It reduced lambing problems, particularly the lethargy and reluctance to suck in newborn lambs, bad feet and dirty tails. The NZ introduction came at a cost in conformation, so we keep the percentage at about 25%.

Without doubt the performance and vigour in our Suffolks today is far ahead of where it was 30 years ago.

In 1999, we bought some Texel ewes from Jim Warnock’s noted Watchknowe flock. Due to their outstanding conformation, the breed was becoming increasingly popular at the expense of the Suffolk.

Since then, it has evolved into two distinct types. Some are bred for the ram lamb market and others, such as ours, for the shearling trade.

Since its introduction 50 years ago, the Texel has evolved into a much longer sheep and the advantage the Suffolk has of getting prime offspring into the early market has reduced. Our experience is that the hardiness, resistance to dags and superior conformation of the breed has been compromised by dystocia and susceptibility to mastitis.

My own opinion is that excessive use of embryo transfer by leading breeders to circumvent these problems is making them worse. A possible solution is that donor ewes should be subject to inspection.

The first requirement is that she should have two crops of lambs naturally without a Caesar and her udder remains fully functional.

Breeders of not only Texels, but all breeds, must recognise that commercial sheep production is being increasingly challenged by a shortage of skilled labour.

At Northsheep last month new breeds, some from New Zealand, that base selection on objective measurement, were a feature. They will mount a formidable challenge to any of our native breeds which fail to adopt to commercial circumstances.