NCC success at Brackside

The North Country Cheviot has certainly made its presence felt in both the show and sale ring in recent years, with the breed regularly securing inter-breed championship wins at shows up and down the country, as well as attracting top prices for both store lambs and draft ewes. 

Caithness breeder Will Sutherland who runs his well-known Brackside flock at Reay, near Thurso, has had a connection with the breed since a young age and has always had the ambition of breeding his own pure Cheviots. On leaving school he trained as an electrician and then ran a business with up to 12 staff, then at the age of 27 took on a job as a shepherd and looked after a flock of 635 ewes which at one point increased to 1280 ewes.

“As an electrician, I sat myself down one day and looked at my figures. I worked out that the staff were making more money than I was, so I knew I had to change something,” began Will, who took on the tenancy of Brackside in 1986 with his wife Catherine, before buying the unit a few years later. Together they have two children Liam and Elaine, and five grandchildren to include Emma, twins Sophie and Lauryn and Ellie and Jake.

Freshly clipped and ready to head back to the hill

“It wasn’t until 1994 that I really got going with the Lairg-type ewes and began establishing my own flock. At that time, I was manager for the nearby Sandside Estate and when the Sandside flock dispersed, I bought 350 of the better pure-bred ewes. They really set me up,” he added.

It’s not just Will who has a strong connection with the breed though, as one of Catherine’s ancestors, Walter Little, was the man who brought the very first North Country Cheviots from the Borders to Caithness in 1792. He was shepherd for Sir John Sinclair and walked 500 ewes from the Cheviot hills to Sir John Sincair’s Langwell farm in Caithness.

“You can’t beat the Northie for its versatility,” said Will, who has achieved numerous top prices with his rams at sales over the years and runs a 25-suckler herd to produce Charolais cross calves which are sold straight off their mothers at Aberdeen and Northern Marts’ Quoybrae centre. “In previous years, I worked with Mules, Suffolks and Blackfaces but the Northie takes a bit of beating. They have the potential to suit any system as a dairy farmer in the south of England can make a profit from a draft ewe and a man on a hill clan on the toughest of ground can get at least six crops of lambs from ewes.

“My feed bill for Mules was double than the Cheviots and when I ran the Mule flock, I had to buy in replacements which were hard to get and expensive. Although the Mules could produce plenty lambs, I always had to cover my costs to buy in whereas with the Cheviots, you can breed your own replacements, sell them on at five-years-old and the customer can get another two crops of lambs out of them.”

Will continued: “The Northie is really good for weed control as back in 1989 I distinctively remember putting ewes onto inland ground at the place I managed to help improve the land. At that point, the Cheviots were scanning at 120% but once grazing on the better ground, the scanning percentage jumped to 166% with Mules at 212%. It really just showed what the Cheviot could do on better ground.”

While Will has reduced the flock to 155 pure ewes due to various health reasons and for easier management, the ewes are still grazed on the traditional hill ground. They come into in bye parks for tupping and lambing and are all housed inside at night during lambing, but that’s only so they can be monitored on cameras for ease of management. They’re tupped on November 15 and given a selenium cobalt bolus but Will points out that the quality of his grass comes before medicines.

“Without good grass, you can’t farm so I like to make improvements in the grass quality rather than relying on medicines. I don’t see the point in trying to produce lots of lambs – there’s no point getting surplus lambs if a ewe is only fit to carry a single lamb rather than struggling to rear twins,” commented Will, who has already reseeded 20 acres of grassland this year.

After tupping, the ewes are put back to the hill and if there’s snow or hard frost around scanning time they receive ad-lib hay. Brackside ewes regularly scan between 155% and 160% and they’re fed eight weeks prior to lambing with home-grown oats, beep bulp, dark grains and a Masterfeeds mineralised soya been mix. Nearer lambing they’re fed slightly more of the mix (about 0.5 pound/head).

“The ewes are well looked after before lambing but once they have lambed, they’re turned out to parks with no feed. That can prove difficult when your battling against the weather though, and if there’s a grass shortage,” said Will, who added that singles are virtually marked and go straight out, with any special tup lambs marked for a later date, while twins are kept in that bit longer and re-join the rest of the flock for clipping.

On the progeny side, tup lambs that don’t make the cut for breeding are sold as wethers through Quoybrae, as well as gimmers which are sold in mid-September to regular buyers who usually cross them on to Texels. Last year’s batch sold for £135 per head and on the same day, Brackside five-year-old ewes made £100 per head.

Brackside shearlings in their working clothes

What’s more impressive though, is that Will knows the breeding behind every single sheep on the farm, whether it be a tup lamb, shearling, two-shear, ewe lamb, gimmer or a five-year-old ewe. Will’s recording system works around tag colours, as each year ewes are tagged with a different colour of tag and then their lambs’ tags carry the name of the sire.

“The parentage recording is a massive help to me when it comes to selecting females for breeding. I know their parentage for generations upon generations,” spoke Will.

“I select firstly on the quality of the tups and females – they must be well built, have good tight skins and hair and have correct legs and feet. If that’s all ok, then I look at their parentage. There is no point on selecting a sheep if they have decent breeding behind them but look awful. If there are any ewe lambs with twisted legs or dirty lugs they are sold with the wethers.”

He continued: “I generally pick stock for breeding once they’re born and then confirm my decision at marking time. If there is any tup lamb which is struggling to suckle or is born with difficulty, I put a rubber band on it straight away. I do believe that any animal which is a caesar should be castrated.”

It’s not just the females that have to work for their money at Brackside though, as the home-bred rams also have to pay their way with many used initially as shearlings at home and sold the following year at Lairg and Dingwall as two-shears, with some sold privately. Will also hires out around 20 shearlings per year to customers as far as Aberdeenshire and even into Wales.

“I used to sell the tups as shearlings, but it was a struggle – you need to be a very good stockman and have a good strong place to sell shearlings,” said Will. “I like selling them as two-shears because they’re not pushed at a young age. I do often wonder how long a tup would last if it was pushed too hard.”

Stock tups at Brackside

The first two-shear from the Brackside flock made £2200 in 2005 but have since reached a top of £16,000 for Brackside Northern Light, a son of Inkstack Top Shot which sold to Billy Elliot, Heathpool, at Lairg in 2013. That year, the 10 Brackside rams averaged £2715 and in 2012, Will’s pen of eight cashed in at £2043. Other top prices for Will include the £10,000 Brackside Special Blend which sold in 2016 to the Armadale flock and the £9000 Brackside Reiver to North-house in 2015, with many others selling between the £4000 and £5000 bracket.

Admittedly, it’s tups from Tina Robertson’s Inkstack flock which have really bred well for the flock and they haven’t been expensive tups either. Inkstack Top Shot was bought originally as a two-shear for £600 and shared with Sandside Estate and later sold for £6000 as a four-shear. The other, Inkstack Hot Shot, was purchased for £220 and he bred 20 of Will’s best females in the flock known as his ‘Golden Girls’.

“The Golden Girls are very special. One was champion at Caithness Show as a gimmer ten years ago and her twin sister stood second to her. Out of that two ewes, I made more than £40,000 from them both - you can’t get much better that,” said Will, who added that their prolificacy is second to none, with many of them having produced ten crops of lambs and several sets of twins.

The Golden Girls have scooped many a show wins for Will

Other stock rams that have stamped their mark include Ousdale Star, Attonburn Crackshot, Suisgill Showstopper and Achentoul Playboy.

“I like to buy tups slightly bigger than most breeders as I can handle slightly bigger sheep here. Their skin has to be tight and they’ve got to be good on their legs as I don’t want stock with feet problems. The Borders breeders can handle bigger sheep, so I like to buy bigger stock tups in hope that they’ll purchase the off spring.

Despite the Brackside flock having scooped several tickets in the show ring at the Caithness, Sutherland and Black Isle shows, and Will having ventured to the Highland in 2015 to judge the Northies, it’s the annual sale at Lairg which goes down as the highlight of the year, with this coming sale being Will’s 43rd year in attendance.