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Beltex-sired lambs make the grade to ensure a big bonus when sold deadweight for Anglesey producer Will Evans.

He and his wife Olwen run a flock of cross-bred ewes which are all put to the Beltex and the lambs earn a premium for conformation and carcase weight when sold direct.

Olwen and Will Evans with, from left to right front, Alun, Gwenno and Iwan and pedigree Beltex lambs.

The Evans set out with 160 acres when they bought Bodwrdin farm, Bodorgan, in 1987. Now they rent a further 510 acres locally and run 300 suckler cows alongside the sheep, which includes a flock of pedigree Beltex ewes, and a small pedigree flock run by their eldest son Iwan, who at 15 is already a breed enthusiast. The couple also have a daughter Gwenno, aged 13 and son Alun, 10.

The commercial flock consists of 200 pure Texels and 200 Beltex cross Texels with the rest Suffolk crosses or Mules.

There is a ready market for the best cross-bred ram lambs which are sold for breeding privately as shearlings – and proof that they are doing a good job is that the buyers return year after year.
“ We used to sell 80 per cent of our prime lambs through the live auction and every week we were in the top three prices at the market in Gaerwen,” said Will Evans.
“ Last year I was offered a job as fieldsman for Welsh County Foods and now most of the lambs are sold deadweight. We finish all our lambs and they earn a 15p premium for E grade and 8p premium for Us. Out of a batch of 30 sold at the end of April this year - lambs from the crossbred flock born at the beginning of February - 25 graded E. They sold up to £76 a head.” E, U and R grades at fat class 1, 2, or 3L earn an extra £1 bonus.

Alun and Iwan with prize-winning ram lambs.

The 30 lambs sold on April 30 averaged 18.11kg and £65.81 a head. Although the lambs are not weighed live, they are sold at between 35 and 40kg with their width and good solid gigots producing a deceptively heavy carcase.

To ensure a supply of home-bred lamb from April to July and then through the autumn to December, the cross-bred ewes and Mules are lambed in January with the other sheep lambing in March. Replacement ewes are bought in at three to four years old to produce a good-sized lamb. For the first time last year, the Evans synchronised 80 of their Suffolk crosses which lambed on December 23. The ewes were sold with lambs at foot through Gaerwen market in January with ewes with single lambs making between £85 and £90 and those with twins averaging £125. This year 150 of the ewes have been synchronised.

The first early lambs were sold in the first week in April to a local butcher with the remainder going deadweight by the end of June.

Most of the later-born lambs are sold in November and December to catch the seasonal price rise. All the home-bred lambs are finished off grass. The farm is all grass with the exception of 20 acres of barley grown for wholecrop for the first time this year for the cattle and the early lambers carrying twins.

There have been many successes with their Beltex-sired lambs in live prime lamb and carcase shows. Store lambs are bought in during October and November for finishing early the next year.

“ We like the Beltex because they are more versatile when it comes to finishing. With other breeds we have found that if you hold them as stores they take months to get going again,” said Will Evans. “The Beltex cross lambs are easier to keep and they don’t get too fat.”

The Evans first began to use the Beltex as a terminal sire in the mid 1990s, having previously used Texel rams.
“ We had started showing some of our prime lambs and carcases with success but we decided to try the Beltex to get an even better carcase which would also earn us a premium in the market.
“ Now all our rams are Beltex – there is no other breed I know to compete,” said Mr Evans. “The conformation of the lambs – and the bonus we get when we sell them –makes me happy!”

pedigree lambs

The resulting lambs convinced them that the Beltex was the way to go and as well as buying pedigree rams for their commercial flock they decided to buy some pedigree females to found their Myna flock.

Their first ram for the pedigree flock, bought in 1999 from Scottish breeder John Barclay, of Maybole, Aryshire, as a lamb cost 1,200gns but Beachy Bachelor was worth it, having left his mark on the flock’s current 32 ewes during two years’ service, many of the females having his bloodlines.

Two scrapie genotype group one rams were bought last year with another bought at Carlisle this August for the Maedi Visna accredited flock.

Last year’s stock rams from the Pentland and Headlind flocks have produced good lamb crops this year and the Evans hope to be able to sell their first home-bred pedigree shearlings at Carlisle next year.
“ The pedigrees are easy to manage. We hardly have to feed them. We flush them to try to get as many twins as we can as the ewes with singles can put on condition. This year, of the 28 that lambed, only five had singles and the rest were carrying twins.
“ The ewes are good doers being fed only on silage up to lambing in mid-March and the lambs get no feed at all. Weather permitting, the ewes and lambs sere turned out two days after lambing. We never feed any of the lambs and with the tups we find they do better when we sell them as shearlings.
“ When the lambs are born they are lively and straight up on their feet which makes them a lot less work than other breeds.”

crossbred lambs

Currently pedigree rams are sold privately and no females have been sold with the intention of breeding flock numbers up to around 50 ewes. Some of the original ewes which are still breeding at eight to nine years old, along with other females can then be selectively sold or culled. This year’s shearling ram for the pedigree flock – one of seven shearlings and lambs bought at Carlisle by the Evans – was bred by James McGarva in his Horseclose flock at Annan, Dumfriesshire.

The Evans paid 1,600gns for the scrapie genotype group one ram Horseclose Glen, having made bids up to 2,600gns for a ram for the pedigree flock and 1,900gns for one to use on the cross-breds. These days Will Evans has competition from Iwan’s Bodwrdin Beltex flock which numbers five ewes with the addition of five ewe lambs this year.

Iwan started the flock in 1999 and is already becoming an expert on his pedigrees. At Carlisle in August he and his friend Ifan Ellis jointly bought two ram lambs bred by Tudor Wyn Jones, of Ruthin and Kevin Buckle, of Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria. The lambs are likely to be sold as shearlings next year.

At this year’s Anglesey Show Iwan won not only the young farmers’ section but the overall prime lamb championship with a pair of pure-bred Beltex lambs out of the same ewe. In the pedigree classes both father and son picked up ticket at the show.

Calves from the suckler herd are usually sold through Gaerwen market at between 13 and 17 months old, with replacement cross-bred cows being bought in.

September 2004.