I don’t want any other breeds to spoil the look of my mostly lovely Southdowns, but I have, for a long time, wondered about the potential of a Southdown on a Lleyn. I suspected it could it be a useful commercial cross for me, especially as the local market prefers clean faces, longer legs, and a heavier carcase. I also thought it would be a good idea to “walk the talk” and show local farmers what a Southdown cross can do.
New-born Southdown x Lleyn lambs all legs and ears
Luckily last summer I had an opportunity to buy some very economical Lleyns, so I thought I would give them a try and bought six full mouth ewes of the thinner type. The Lleyns – to me are not the best-looking sheep and more-flighty than a Southdown but so far, they have done reasonably well.
The ewes ran with two large performance recorded tups and scanned and lambed at 200%. One ewe lost both lambs due to ring womb, and another had a twin that was never quite right and died at six weeks (Lleyns are sheep!). So, the reared percentage was 150%, but better than my Southdowns. Lambing, apart from the ewe with ring womb was blissfully easy: the lambs almost flew out and they weren’t small weighing 4-5kg but looked a bit odd: all legs, ears and bright yellow. The ewes were excellent mothers and had buckets of milk.
As they’ve grown on the lambs have performed as well as the pure Southdowns and were going to make a greater weight 44-48kg when finished. As I was short of grass and the store price was good, I have sold most of them as stores rather than finish them myself, but and here’s the test, I thought they were useful enough to buy another six, this time a slightly sturdier type of Lleyn with a touch of Texel way back in the breeding. And as a change I will be using a smaller more traditional type of ram on them to see if I can get them to finish at 40-44 kg.
The nearly finished product at 40kg long legs and clean faces
One interesting observation is that the “experts” at AHDB are suggesting that future lowland commercial sheep farmers should be aiming for a smaller ewe (to minimise feed costs and carbon footprint) rather than the ginormous Suffolk/Texel x Half-bred, so I am wondering if the Southdown x Lleyn could feel this niche… we shall see.
Patrick Goldsworthy.
