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www.beltex.co.uk
Beltex Sheep SocietyShepherds View,
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Out on a limb with Beltex in the South WestMatthew Petherick has gone out on a limb to produce Beltex sheep in the far South West of England. Keeping a nucleus flock of 40 and using Beltex rams over his commercial flock of Welsh Mules, he is one of just a handful of farmers in the region who have started to realise the benefits of the breed. As such, he is ideally placed to supply both the top end of the prime lamb market as well as what he is certain will be a growing demand for pure breeding stock as the breed catches on and increases in popularity throughout Devon and Cornwall.
“Matthew loves his Beltex,” says his wife Victoria as she greets me at Slyddon Farm in North Petherwin, near Launceston in Cornwall, where he farms with his father and uncle. “He thinks he and the breed are going somewhere.”
And she is probably right. Already the breed has earned Matthew a coveted supermarket contract - earning him a constant minimum price of at £2.45 per kg for the Beltex-sired lambs he produces from his 900 Mules – as well as good prices for pure-bred rams which are gradually finding their way into other flocks in the region. “Our Welsh Mules are mostly Blue Faced Leicester cross Beulah, and because this ewe is fairly long and stretchy, it crosses particularly well with the shorter, double-muscled Beltex,” explains Matthew.
The result is a lamb which he says is ‘guaranteed’ to produce the R grade carcase required by his buyer, but often reaches U or E, adding a further 10p per kg to the price. “I have never had less than an R from a Beltex cross,” says Matthew, “and killing out has always been 60 per cent or better.” But Matthew is meticulous in rearing his lambs to meet his buyer’s high demands, paying great attention to detail - weighing them the evening before they leave the farm and often again the following morning. “We are trying our best to produce the product they need and will pay us for,” he says. “We need deadweights of between 15 and 21.5kg, a carcase grade of R or above and a fat class of 2 or 3L. Our lambs pretty much hit that spot on. “There’s a tendency for farmers to want big sheep here in the South West, but the buyer doesn’t want bone and fat,” he adds. “Some supermarkets only buy certain cuts but ours buys the whole carcase and the smaller Beltex carcase gives them far less waste.
“Whether we like it or not, the supermarkets will have an increasing influence on farming, and we have to produce what our market wants. It is no longer an option to produce a product without a specific market in mind and then expect to find one.” Indeed, it was the quality of the lambs passing through Jaspers – the local abattoir – that first alerted his supermarket buyer to the high standards coming from the Pethericks’ flock. “The abattoir contacted me to say that they were recommending to the supermarket that they got in touch with me,” says Matthew. And so it was that in August 2007 Matthew started producing lamb under contract on a scheme with which others are queuing to take part. Last year some 1,400 lambs went through the scheme from the 900 head commercial flock, of which 400 to 500 were sired by a Beltex. “I would breed more to Beltex if I had more rams,” says Matthew, “but because I can sell rams to other farmers for so much more than I can sell them to our own family farm, too many have to go.”
The ease of management of the Beltex has taken Matthew by surprise, and some two thirds of the lambs are usually finished on grass alone, although last summer’s wet weather held them back, and many remained on the farm until Christmas, finishing on forage rape. “I’ve found that the Beltex can live on not a lot,” he says. “You haven’t got to feed them lush green grass and lots of cake; in fact, if you just put them in a reasonable field and leave them they will do OK. They don’t need a lot to produce a lot and the pure-breds are not high maintenance pre-lambing, even when they’re carrying twins. “I was feeding too much to start with,” recognises Matthew, who says he has learnt through trial and error. “And I found I had to be there all the time during lambing. But now I’ve cut the feed right back and ewes just get minerals and some iodine to correct a farm deficiency, and in the four years we’ve been lambing the breed, we’ve only ever had two Caesareans. “The trick is to get more lambs into them in the first place and to make sure they don’t get too big,” says Matthew, who sponges to synchronise heat and judiciously uses PMSG to help increase twinning - last year achieving 160 per cent lambing from his pure-bred flock and lambs on the ground which he describes as ‘born fighters’. “And you’re dealing with muscle rather than bone which is important for lambing as muscle ‘moves’ whereas bone is rigid, so it’s far easier for the lambs to come out.” As for genetics and the direction in which he is taking his Slyddon Vale nucleus flock, Matthew has firm ideas of what the market will increasingly require. “They’ve got to be lighter and fine boned, with a high killing out per cent as that’s what the butcher wants,” he says. “I am trying to breed a terminal sire to show off what the breed is known for, and that’s its back end. I don’t want tall animals as in my experience, the bigger the animal gets, the more back end you lose. “I buy my sheep on what I see and if that includes big ears and a wide tail, I steer clear of it. I am looking for narrow tailed, small eared, light boned and stretchy animals with hard inner muscle. It might be meaningless, but the traditional Beltex first imported to the UK had small ears and I think that’s linked to those commercial traits we need.” His first choice of stock came from the Fearn flock, with his early foundation ewes giving a good lambing per cent, while rams from the same flock brought in different bloodlines. The best ram produced on the farm to date is Slyddon Vale Longman - out of a Fearn ewe and by Horseclose Juggernaut. The home-bred stock have already met with success in the west, taking the top price at the Exeter NSA Sale for a ewe lamb last August, while ram lambs are also sold each summer for breeding into numerous local flocks. Also having taken the continental championship at the nearby Holsworthy Show with a pure-bred Beltex ewe, Matthew hopes to make showing a more regular feature of his farming calendar. Commenting that it was the breed’s exceptional success in carcase competitions that alerted him to its potential in the first place he says: “Everyone who buys butchers’ lambs knows that the Beltex is up there and usually winning. “We are all in it to win,” he adds, “but with this breed they should do it for you.” |
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