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Beltex for the Tudor's

Hugh and Ann Tudor farm 530 acres of owned and 150 acres of rented ground spread over 30 miles or so from the home base at Tynberllan, Llanilar, near Aberystwyth, in Ceredigion.

Hugh Tudor

Beef and sheep are the main enterprises, backed up by a partnership with Mr Tudor’s brother, Richard, on a hill farm in neighbouring Montgomeryshire.

The beef unit revolves around 100 July onwards calving Belgian Blue cross suckler cows going to a Limousin bull, with calves being taken through to finishing and marketed through the Celtic Pride premium beef producer co-operative.

All the lambs from the farm’s 1,650 Welsh Mule and Suffolk cross ewes are also sold deadweight through a producer-linked marketing scheme to Waitrose.

Tynberllan

As with the beef there are premiums to be had for hitting the ideal target specification – and why Mr Tudor has opted to use a Beltex tup on what he calls his “later” lambers.
“For years we had used only Texel tups right across the flock, which starts lambing from the beginning of February – but it meant we were having to creep feed all season long in order to get all the lambs away by the autumn,” says Mr Tudor.

“We are still using Texels on the early lambers and creep feeding them for a quick finish, but the 650 or so ewes that lamb from early March onwards are now going to Beltex rams – and hitting the target specification from grass alone.
“I was somewhat apprehensive when I first saw the Beltex. It did appear to be rather stumpy – but I thought nothing ventured, nothing gained.
“As it has turned out, the Beltex-sired lambs are ideal for our system. They do not need any supplementary feeding and do not go over weight.
“They are consistently killing out at between 19 and 19.5 kg and grading mostly as R and U, with some at E.

“The Waitrose scheme is a good one providing you can hit the right spec – and with the Beltex we are able to do that straight from grass.
“We were finding that the later lambing Texel crosses were killing out at more than 21.5 kg, meaning that we were losing out on the premium that was there for the taking.
“It was, in fact, costing us money to feed them and then getting no more for them.
“My first draw of the Beltex-sired lambs comes in mid July and follows on nicely from when the Texels have all but gone.”

All the ewes are winter shorn, indoor lambed and self fed on clamp silage. Around 350 ewes lambs are also reared each year for flock replacements, but not tupped until two years old.

“There are no more problems with lambing than with any other crossbreds and there is no question that I will be continuing to use the Beltex – but not across the entire flock.
“I could, however, increase the number of ewes going to Beltex tups, particularly in light of the rising cost of creep.

“By gaining the premium and not having to supplementary feed I must be at least £5 per lamb better off. To my mind the quality is better, too.”