At last enough rain to get the grass moving. Let’s just hope that its arrival, roughly the same as last years does not imply an exact replay of last year’s weather!

We have certainly suffered from no grass since lambing, resulting in extensive grazing across all fields and not being able to shut up any fields for cutting until the 3rd week of June. What has surprised me has been our 8 week weights, with a spring drought similar to last years. The median date adjusted 8 week weights +c15% on last year, and we still have not had to worm.

Our shearlings which saw poor growth through the very wet autumn and winter, have romped away this spring. At shearing 2 weeks ago, we had some of the best grown shearlings that I have had at this stage of the year. We were really impressed. Come and have a look. We have about 200 to sell this year. Although we are, at time of writing unclear as to how Ram Certification will be carried out this year, we already know it is much later than other years. In the meantime have a look at the attached ram EBV data on the above tab “Stock for Sale” link. Here are the available shearling rams with their key EBVs, updated to last weeks run from Signet. I was pleased to see that most of them saw their key index edge higher. 10 animals: 5 Top 5% Index EBV, 2 Top 10%, 1 Top 25%. 2 commercials. We have also made short videos of each which please ask to see. Not easy as its important that the video includes the ear tag and no break to see the animal move around. Apologies for lack of filming skills and for shearlings who can appear to suffer from a little “stage fright”! Still I hope it enables you get a reasonably good picture of their quality. Once again, they are purely grass fed. Give me a ring and come and have a look.

We will continue with our worm resistance heritability testing later this summer. As you will remember we have started to concentrate on blood and saliva, with blood expected again to have the greatest correlations. 

NB. COVID -19 social distancing. Not a problem. I will bring the sheep into the collection yard. You screen them through the race. I drink my coffee from the other side of the yard and watch you do your selection.