News

23/8/18

What a year 2018 has been a real rollercoaster for all of those involved in farming from the long wet winter into a drought through the early summer. Lamb prices have also been a rollercoaster from some real highs in the late spring but then dropping off into summer. I hope that everyone has found something to give them hope through the year.

We were lucky in that the price rise coincided with us selling our prime lambs and we achieved our best every sale prices, with the lambs growing well and carrying plenty of meat.

Moving on the lambs we have kept have done very well and look very well, with some good ultrasound scanning results, our flock averages continue to increase as we look to provide our customers with rams that will deliver fast growing well fleshed prime lambs.

Due to the drought and lack of grass we have been feeding some of the ewes to flush them, but they all look well and are tupping well.

If you are looking for a ram please do look at our sales page.

James

09/3/17

As we approach Easter and the start of our selling period for our prime lambs, at last we seem to have some drier weather forecast.

We have had a very exciting time for the pedigree flock having purchased the “Godwick” flock from John Garner on its dispersal last summer as our tups were going in so it meant we needed a different ram so a quick trip to see Mr Blanchard saw me buy a fine figure of a ram, with performance figures to match of course. Due to time constraints he was straight in to work and work he did, with some good lambs born this January. We had scanned one of our larger Suffolk crops, sadly we were hit by schmallenberg losing around 10% of lambs, which took the gloss off what was otherwise an excellent lambing with strong vigorous lambs, who are now growing well.

Then at the end of January I seized the chance to purchase some 28 in lamb ewes from Hans Porksen’s renowned “Hans” flock, these ewes were scanned at over 200% expecting 58 lambs from 28 ewes, as ever sadly we are not going to tail over 200%, but we do have some strong looking lambs so far with lots of vigour and easy lambing. These ewes were all in lamb to Hans Fokker 95 or sired by him, which is why I was so keen to buy them due to his tremendous performance figures as shown below with already over 270 progeny on the ground across several pedigree flocks.

As you can see his figures are remarkable with him having the highest Muscle Depth EBV for a Suffolk stock ram in 2016.

We were hoping to push our performance figures this year due to our purchases and to our delight we have won the Most improved flock award for 2017, having been the most improved recorded Suffolk flock in 2016.

09/7/16

July once again, after what has been a very eventful end of June politically for the country, life on the farm is continuing and we are still waiting for the sun to allow us to make some hay, we must stop looking at the weather forecasts about as reliable as political polls!!!

We had a successful lambing season and as we had planned were able to sell 1/3 of the lamb crop before Easter and so hit the top of the market and I have to say the remaining 2/3 sold well after Easter with only one load being at a disappointing price below £5/ kilo.

Although lamb prices have held well this year, generally up from £5-£10 a lamb,we will be holding our prices for the fourth year with rams priced at their index times 100 plus 100 ( so a ram with an index of £3.50 would be £450).

We have 30 shearing rams on offer this year with the majority being in the top 25% and over half in the top 10% nationally, if you would like to see the figures they are shown on the sales list. We also have a handful of two shears available that will be priced competitively to sell.

Having bought three Suffolk rams in the last two years we will be trialling some home grown shearlings this year, but have been and bought two highlander rams to cross over some of our lower index Suffolk ewes to produce crossbred ewes for our commercial flock.

14/8/15

We have made a successful start to the ram sales season with several customers returning and picking out the higher figures rams in order to improve their own flock's margins.

Of the 25 rams left 20 of them are still in the top 10% for the breed, as they have revised the breed averages since they were published at the beginning of July, so we have still plenty of rams that will help you to improve your flock’s performance both physically and financially.

07/7/15

It hardly sees credible that we are already in July and it is time to start selling rams again.

We have had a fantastic start to the ram selling with one ram ( Y51:13:082 index 3.94) going to the EBLEX run ‘RAM COMPARE’ program and also some semen from one of our old stock rams, Kersey Nutcracker (C41:N22 index 4.31), for more information on the ram compare programme look at the signet website (www.signetfbc.co.uk/ramcompare/)

We have had a very successful lambing season having moved the majority of our lambing back into January as last year we were unable to supply all of our lamb customers at Easter, so as this market has grown it made sense to lamb the suffolks early and utilise the market for any lambs that we do not want to retain for breeding, and only lamb once in the year. This worked well for us with the poorer prices that lamb are now achieving.

Aware of the prices this year we will be holding our prices for the third year with rams priced at their index times 100 plus 100 ( so a ram with an index of £3.50 would be £450).

We have over 30 shearing rams on offer this year with the majority being in the top 25% despite the breed average jumping by 50 points from 1.84 to 2.39, and the top 25% going from 2.52 to 3.36.

We have been out this year and bought two stock rams from the Godwick flock, who will be seeing action shortly, their numbers are C93:14:0256 index 4.96 this rams has an excellent growth rate being in the top 1% for scan weight EBV and C93:14:0269 index 5.20, this ram has an excellent muscle depth EBV being in the top 1%, we will be using these alongside our home bred ram 12:069 index 4.49 who has worked very well for us for two years now and possibly a couple of young ram lambs, as you can see we are looking to keep providing you with the rams to keep you making money with fast growing, well muscled lambs.

07/7/14

Of the 40 shearlings on offer this year 17 are in the top 5%, with 18 in the top 10% of the breed, and the last 5 in the top 25%. Please look at the Stock for Sales page for more details.

Our average index for this years lambs has taken us into the top 5% of the breed for the first time, with our average being 3.67 and the top 5% is 3.49.

As well as our overall average breaking the 5% barrier we have also broken the 10 kilo EBV for scan weight.

So if you are buying from us you are guaranteed to be buying proven genetics with 17 years of recorded breeding behind these figures.

Equally pleasing are the figures for one of our home bred rams, Lavendon Hawkes Bay who has a terminal index of 4.66 and a maternal index of 267 both scores in the top 1% for the breed.

26/4/14

The early signet report makes good reading although this year with this years lamb crop showing a large improvement from last year, we hope that this is backed up by a good scanning at 20 weeks in July.

Lambing went well with losses at a minimum and lambs turned out well, although the grass was not as abundant early on as I would have liked. The lambs are now growing on well and taking creep, the commercial lambs grew very well and we had to market them a week earlier than intended, but our customers were happy to have some new season lamb before easter.

The shearlings have now been sheared in between the showers, had to keep them in for the night their first night under cover this winter.

29/10/13

Ram sales are finished for another year with just one of the shearlings left, which we will use on our commercial ewes next year.

Speaking of commercial ewes we have had a disappointing pregnancy scanning with only 2/3^rds being in lamb, I fear we will be tight on lamb numbers for our butcher customers next spring, lets hope for a good lambing.

29/7/13

Ram sales have got off to a flying start with three regular customers coming to have the pick of the rams available and taking thirteen home between them.

Preparations have started on next years lamb crop with all of the ewes sorted to their rams, although we will be lambing the suffolks later next year so we can turn them out onto grass at a younger age.

Due to the delayed harvest this year we will be attending the Blakesley show this Saturday with some of our stock and would be happy to see old or potential customers.

7/6/13

We scanned the January born lambs yesterday with our best results ever with three ram lambs scanning at over 40mm muscle and all on scan weights of around 60kg, the highest muscle depth was 42.9 on 62kg, a future star of the Lavendon flock maybe.

We have also undertaken an 8week weight for the March/April born lambs and found some excellent lambs especially in the lambs form last years ewe lambs, with one lamb coming in at 40kg.

Next year we will lamb the pedigree ewes later so they can be turned out onto grass sooner as nearly all of our ram sales are shearlings.

24/4/13

We have now finished lambing for 2013 with the late lambers having to contend with bad weather and poor grass growth, lets hope it soon warms up. Although the lamb numbers were not high the march born lambs have all been good lambs especially from the Suffolk ewe lambs.

The January born lambs 8 week weights bode well for a good scanning and report.

25/1/13

This week has seen the end of the first batch of lambing, which has gone very well, we have been lucky and have seen no schmallenberg unlike many other early lambers who are thoughts are with.

We have numbered up over 180 pedigree suffolks and over 100 crossbred lambs, lets hope the weather improves for the March lambers.

25/10/12

This week has seen the sale of the last of the Shearling rams, selling the last ones to a new customer having seen many of our regular customers return. It has been another successful sale season although it was sluggish through September after a good start to sales in the summer.

The ram lambs have been growing on well over the summer, despite the weather and we will have in excess of 50 shearlings to offer for sale next year with all of them in the top 25% of the breed and many in the top 10%.

We scanned the pregnant ewes last week and are looking forward to another good crop of suffolks in the new year.

04/9/12

Our new web site is now live. We would really like to hear what you think.

19/7/12

We are hosting the eblex open evening on 'Improving breeding and fertility'.

14/5/12

We will be taking some ram lambs to be CT scanned this week, hopefully this will give some good results.

9/5/12

We did our 20wk scanning today and had our best ever results with one ram lamb having 41.4mm of muscle.