Since 2005 our sheep enterprise has been based on a relatively low input flock, lambing outdoors from mid-April, with the majority of the lambs held back until after Christmas and fattened outside on homegrown cereal-based rations in the hope of catching the rising seasonal market. This has worked well for us until this year when the high cereal prices and depressed lamb trade have combined to make the figures look rather sad. It has however convinced me even more of the merits of low maintenance, easy-care breed like the Berrichon.

It was almost by accident that I stumbled across Berrichon sheep. I had been retaining my Texel x ewe lambs into the flock as replacements for a number of years but as the percentage of Texel blood in the ewes increased so we were running into more and more problems with prolificy and lambing difficulties. Realising that we needed an out-cross that wouldn’t be compromising on lamb quality we returned to the Suffolk, but soon remembered why we had left them, the lambs were far too big and slow at birth for our system with the ewes going off and leaving them, also too many dirty tails in the summer with all the problems and extra work that brings. We then tried Charollais but found the newborn lambs much too bare-skinned and weakly for lambing outdoors in Northumberland. I then read an article in the Farmers Guardian by a chap from Dorset, and he talked about Berrichon being the best-kept secret in sheep farming. All the qualities he talked about were exactly what I was looking for – easy lambing, hardy, vigorous lambs that get up and suck then grow on quickly and will kill out at 21-22kg deadweight and grade at 2 and 3L.

The following September I went to Kelso and bought my first Berrichon ram from Arabella Johnston and put him over 60 gimmer shearlings. They were so easily lambed, and I have never known such sharp lambs, even in a blizzard they are up and sucking in no time. The rest is history, all of our ewes are now tupped with the Berrichon. The lambs are just as popular as the texel x lambs with the buyers and the gimmers we have retained as replacements have grown into nice breedy looking sheep. The first ones will lamb this year and I’m confident that they will make good ewes. In fact, I’ve been so impressed with them that for the first time in my life I’ve been tempted to venture into pedigree sheep breeding.

In November 2011 I bought eight gimmer shearlings from the Strathallan and Woodston flocks and again I couldn’t believe how easily they lambed and what good mothers they are. Last year’s lambs are growing on nicely and our ewes have just finished lambing again.

Sadly Berrichon sheep are still pretty much a secret in our area. I would like to change that by trying to produce good shearling rams and then convincing local sheep farmers to try them because I really believe that once people have tried a Berrichon ram they’ll be converted for life.