Tim and Louise Cooke readily admit they are on a steep learning curve – sheep farming in south of Scotland compared to their previous home in Hampshire. However, both are excited by the challenge in front of them.

At the end of 2021, the couple and their young family moved 400 miles north, leaving a 2500-acre tenant farm in Hampshire to allow Tim to take up a new role as farm manager on the Barwhillanty Estate in the Galloway Hills of Kirkcudbrightshire.

As well as being a traditional 5000-acre sporting estate owned by the Yerburgh family since 1884, Barwhillanty comprises commercial forestry and farming interests, plus holiday lets.

Tim Cooke and his wife Louise, who is also a vet, are now responsible for Barwhillanty’s 900-acre Home Farm – a mix of upland and hill ground – on which they run 900 EasyCare ewes plus 250 home-bred replacement ewe lambs, as well as 120 red deer.

“Fortunately, we are not novices to sheep farming, having built up our Hampshire flock from scratch, but we are both new to the EasyCare breed – and the ewes here are smaller and certainly flightier than the Mules and Lleyns we had down south,” says Tim.

The EasyCare ewes started lambing outside in the middle of March with the Cookes unsure how the six-week lambing period will go.

“Having inherited the flock after tupping we’re just keeping our fingers crossed. We understand that the ewes have only been vaccinated previously against clostridial diseases and pasteurellosis,” says Tim.

“We did have a short handover period with the previous shepherd, but scanning did not go as well as I had hoped (160%). We also know that the soils here are low in selenium, cobalt and potentially copper too, so I’ve been focusing on making sure late pregnancy ewe nutrition is as good as it can be.”

However, as a vet, Louise’s key concern currently is the fact that they have inherited 40 barren females from 220 gimmers.

“I think we are just going to have to ride out lambing in this our first season – recording the timing and reason for any lamb losses as meticulously as we can. Then we’ll have a sound starting point for any necessary flock health management interventions,” she says.

Fortunately, the Cookes have not experienced any early abortions, so are optimistic, but say they will certainly be asking local vets at Ark Veterinary Centre to blood test the barren gimmers to check for any underlying diseases such as enzootic abortion (EAE) and toxoplasmosis.

“The subsidised MSD Animal Health FlockCheck scheme runs until the end of June, so it’s well worth any sheep flock availing itself of this blood testing opportunity if lamb losses or ewe barrenness is a concern,” says Louise.

Tim and Louise, who are ambassadors for the MSD Animal Health Disease? Not on My Farm! initiative, have always taken a proactive approach to flock health.

“In Hampshire, we were vaccinating our sheep against clostridial diseases, pasteurellosis, footrot, EAE and toxoplasmosis. In our view these vaccines are essential. And we want to be running a similarly high health status flock here in Scotland, so will be working closely with Ark Veterinary Clinic on a new flock health plan as soon as lambing is over,” says Tim.

Louise is already concerned about lameness too.

“When we arrived, we reckoned that about 2% of the ewes were lame, but in early March we noticed the problem – mainly foootrot and scald – getting worse. It may be that all the gathering around the ring feeders to get at the supplementary silage has led to spread of footrot bacteria, but we’ll certainly look to implement the Five-Point sheep lameness reduction plan from the summer and will probably vaccinate the ewes against footrot.

“With flighty ewes roaming all over the hill, we certainly don’t want to be spending time continually catching and treating sheep,” she says.

Either way, it looks like the Cookes will have their hands full for the rest of 2022. Look out for periodic updates in The Scottish Farmer as they tackle the challenge of taking on this new farm management opportunity.