The Scottish Farmer spoke to Stephen Sutherland, of Sibmister and Stainland Farms, Caithness, about this year's lambing.

So how has lambing been?

I am happy enough. Scanning wouldn’t have been as good as expected but we do however have a lot of lambs on the ground.

I think maybe some of the ewes were too fit at tupping time. It seems to have been common round here that there were more empty at scanning than expected.

But since then, the weather has been not too bad apart from a very bad four-day spell end of March/start of April, when quite a few lambs were lost. Grass growth has been very slow due to lack of warmth but this last week things have fairly moved on.

What is your lambing set up?

We lamb about 2000 ewes inside and a couple hundred hoggs, too.

We lamb over four batches from the last week in February to the end of April. Helping with the lambing we have three members of staff as well as my brother, Kenneth and dad, also Kenneth.

At the same time, we are also calving 400 cows so we employ someone who works nights to check up on the cows and sheep. All ewes are penned for the first 24 hours before going out into larger nursery pens with batches of 10-15 ewes and lambs for a further 24 hours, before heading out.

What breeds do you work?

The majority of the ewes are Texel cross Cheviot Mules and Cheviot Mules, Suffolk crosses and Cheviots, but we also have pure Suffolks and Texels for breeding replacement tups.

We put the crossing ewes to Texel or Suffolk terminal sires, Bluefaced Leicester for the Mules, Beltex on the late lambing ewes and unusually, the hoggs are tupped to the Jacob. We are pretty much a closed flock but have had to buy some in as we have doubled the number in the last five years.

How was preparation for lambing?

Approximately 800 ewes are housed on sheep slats just after scanning but the rest of the flock are kept outside and only brought in to lamb. We never have all 2200 inside but perhaps 1500 at our peak in the second batch.

The twin and triplet ewes get Harbro’s 18% ewe rolls and fed pit silage inside and bales of silage outside. Singles only get Harbro Energize Vitality buckets and no extra feed.

All the ewes are Heptavac jabbed and we vaccinate the gimmers with Enzovax and Toxovax. Twin lamb disease isn’t something which we have encountered much since we started feeding concentrates.

This year we didn’t have many prolapses either. Some years you get just a few and others we seem to get more – it is difficult to work out why. Some people say it is eating too much silage, but you can do the same thing ever year and some times you get it and other times you don't.

How will you market your sheep?

The vast majority of the prime lambs go to Woodhead Brothers, for Morrisons supermarket, with the first ones away at the end of May. We usually cull the ewes after four crops and they go to Quoybrae mart.

Any advice for new or young farmers thinking of making a start in the industry?

Sheep are as good a return per acre as anything and have been for a few years. The vast majority of folk don’t like sheep, but nothing can touch them for a return on investment.

They are easier to get into and out of for a growing business. Buy as good a ewe as you can afford, but equally do not scrimp on a tup!