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www.beltex.co.uk
Beltex Sheep SocietyShepherds View,
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Decade of DedicationA decade of dedication to the Beltex breed paid off for Steve Gibbons when he had the honour of being the first Welshman to win the carcase championship at the Welsh Winter Fair.
With a keen eye for a quality sheep stemming from a family background in the butchery business, Steve first got his eye on the Beltex in 1990 but admits he could not afford them at the time. After several years of working with top flockmasters, it was in the late 1990s that he bought his first pedigrees several years after he and his wife Sascha took on the tenancy of a small hill farm in the Black Mountains just outside Hay on Wye. The family had a bitter blow in 2001 when they lost 286 pedigree ewes, along with 41 pedigree Limousin cows, to foot and mouth, but now they are re-building their flock with an eye on the future for their children, Mollie, aged eight, and Nicholas, six, who are both keen on stock and have their own small Blackmountain flock. Sheep mainly from breeders Julie Berry, in Oxfordshire and Sara Morris, in Shropshire, helped the Gibbons on the road to rapid recovery by winning the carcase championship at the Welsh Winter Fair in 2002 after re-stocking earlier that year – although fortunately, 26 of their own pedigree Beltex ewes were saved.
They now run 60 pedigree Beltex sheep alongside 120 registered Texels and 240 commercial Beltex crosses and a herd of pedigree Belgian Blue cattle. The farm will be the focus of an open day for the Beltex Sheep Society on October 16. Born in Hay on Wye just over the border into Wales from Hereford, Steve Gibbons worked on a local farm for just over 10 years before working in Cheshire and Scotland for pedigree breeders and specialising in trimming show sheep. When he and Sascha had the opportunity to take on the tenancy of the 31-acre Llwynbrain Farm near Hay they returned to Wales, with Steve also resuming the job he left up the road.
But the farm he worked on did not go back into sheep after foot and mouth and after taking stock during a month-long visit to Australia, the couple decided to take on more land and they now rent 250 acres in total. They have also run a contracting business for nine years renting out mini-diggers and dipping sheep although numbers post foot and mouth have dropped from a quarter of a million to up to about 60,000 sheep dipped a year with jetter and tank systems. A Welshman through and through, Steve shows his pedigree Beltex weekly at shows in the principality to fly the flag for the breed, encouraging many converts in the region. Now a member of the Beltex judging panel, he makes his UK judging debut in the pedigree Beltex lines at the Great Yorkshire Show in July 2004.However, Steve’s highest accolade is in the commercial show ring, winning the supreme carcase championship at the Welsh Winter Fair in 2002.
The winning pure-bred carcase lamb weighed 44.2kg live and had a carcase weight of 25kg – the equivalent of a 62 per cent killing out rate with a carcase classification of E3L. He sold for £54 a kg making a total of £1,350 to Langfords butchers in Welshpool – and the Gibbons gave the entire proceeds of the sale towards a water fountain for their local school. Later that year at the annual society Worcester sale Steve sold a pedigree ram for 3,000gns and then went on to win the championship at the Royal Welsh Show with their ram Whatmore Ely. The Gibbons have developed some good friends
in Belgium and Steve imports up to 20 top quality ewes each year to further
improve their Llwynbrain flock.
The commercial rams are by the full brother to Frankie and Steve is very
mindful that commercial buyers want a ram which will work. Beltex lambs not suitable for breeding are finished off the farm and most go through the butcher’s shop in Hay on Wye by Steve’s uncle Chris Gibbons who is prepared to pay good prices for the lambs – several years ago he paid £11,500 for a bullock. The lambs kill out at between 55 and 60 per cent. Last year 26 reject rams sold to St Merryn Meats and 25 of them classified E2 and E3L. Converts to the Beltex as a crossing sire are near neighbours Richard and Mark Eckley, of Fforddfawr Farm, Glasbury who now use tups from Steve on their Welsh Mules, Suffolk Mules and continental cross ewes to produce a higher conformation finished lamb which commands premium over other lambs sold through the market. Lambing begins in the third week in February and is finished usually by the end of April, lambing in two separate places for disease accreditation purposes. The 10 current stock rams include Whatmore tups as well as three home-bred sires. Llwynbrain Furbo is a scrapie genotype one ram and he sired a good batch of lambs in the 2004 crop. |
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