For a sheep farmer, your choice of breed is key. That’s true for any farmer. But it’s especially true for the smallscale farmer or smallholder like me.
When we started farming, we wanted something that would fit with us, with our farm, with our abilites (none, zero, nada), and with our ambitions and needs. We are smallscale. We have rich wildflower meadows, with dragonflies and pine martens, pygmy shrews and butterflies. We wanted to conserve and enhance this. We wanted sustainability. We were newbie farmers. So we needed something that had few problems in lambing and was smart and hardy enough to take good care of it’s lambs. We wanted something tough, with good resilience and disease resistance. We wanted a breed that could live outdoors all year round (we have barns for the worst of the weather of course), and we wanted a breed that would give us a superior quality meat and a great quality fibre to spin into yarn.
We chose Shetland Sheep.
Shetlands come from the Shetland Islands. They overwinter outdoors there. They are tough, resilient, healthy and smart. They are a landrace, rare breed, or primitive breed – they haven’t gone through the breeding process that created modern commercial breed sheep.
They are disease resistant, built for outdoors, thrive on the wildflower grassland we want to maintain and extend. They are great mothers, with lambs bursting with life. And they have few problems lambing. Commercial breeds have been developed to have large lambs, and commercial ewes usually get a large grain input over winter. They have lambs so big they often have problems birthing them. That requires work, time, expertise and intervention from the farmer. A lot of intervention. And their lambs make for blander tasting meat, fast growing, fed on monocultural grass and grain. Farmers often plough up their fields, and reseed them with rye grass and clover to fuel the fast growth of commercial lamb. Great for fast growing fat lambs. Terrible for biodiversity.
We wanted another option. A different breed. A different way of farming. So we chose Shetland.
Shetlands grow slow. They evolved to thrive on the wild shores and hills of the Shetlands. So they thrive on wildflower meadows, on wild grasslands. They can handle snow and storms, sifting through the drifts for food and smart enough to shelter. They are often used as a conservation grazing breed. Which matches perfectly with our aims. I farm lambs, goats and pigs. I also farm wildflowers. Butterflies. Insects.
They have great mothering instincts, they are tough, and they have small lambs. And, on good quality wildflower grassland, they’ll often have two. Which makes for easy lambing, with few problems, and they have no problems feeding them.
Shetlands are friendly, curious and long lived. Which means you can manage your flock in a different way. You’ll work with the same ewes for over a decade. Lamb them. Care for them, feed them, lead them to shelter in torrential rain, haul hay for them in the snow. Your breeding flock can become something that come when you call them. They know you mean good things. You can manage them so they want to go where you put them, rather than having to go where you force them. A flock has a culture. A way of being and living on land. It really does. And that culture comes from the old ewes. They remember where the first bramble bushes to come into leaf are. They remember you have lambed with them, fed them, they remember the sound of treehay as you haul it up the field, the call of your voice, the shape of your cap and your profile as you climb the hill. It is the old ewes who teach the flock to follow you. Who teach them to eat hay, treehay, who bring them to the fresh green growth. Spending a decade with your old ewes makes you part of their remembered culture.
Shetlands being slow grown, give excellent quality meat. The lambs are small, they take two seasons to come to commercial size. But when they do, we think the meat has a complex, deeper flavour profile. Especially if they are foraging on wildflower meadow. Our flock munch on wild mint, on ragged robin, devils bit and brambles, on ash and willow leaves, on clover, on grass, on birdfoot trefoil and tens of other species. And they grow slow. Slow grown, naturally fed, with time to mature into a deep tasting flavourful meat. Being small means it’s a great beginners sheep too. They are easily handled, and even a two year old ram is not that big a challenge once you have your eye in.
How quickly you grow your lamb, what it eats, and it’s breed are three major factors in how what you harvest will taste. Slow grown lamb, from a good quality rare breed, fed primarily on diverse wildflower meadow has the best shot at being a really superior product. We invest the time and money because we think it’s worth it. And raising Shetlands gave us the best shot we could find at doing that. They allow us to farm the way we want – managing and maintaining our biodiversity. They repay that work with great quality meat and fibre. And they do it while being tough, thrifty and great mothers. Which means our flock get to live as natural, and as long a life as we could want for them. If you want fast growing commercial lambs, Shetlands are not for you, though many farmers prize the ewes as a way to breed hardiness, good mothering, and common sense into commercial flocks that can be short on all three.
We’ll be posting more on the flavour quality of the meat we produce. Recipes, taste tests, ideas about different cuts, and how to cook them. Roasting, slow cooking, braising, sauces, seasoning and stews.
But there’s nothing quite like cooking a double thick loin chop rare on a hot pan, seasoned with salt, pepper and some garlic, and tasting the profile of your meadow, the wild mint and the birds foot percolating through onto your tastebuds.
On the negative side, they are slow growing. Having to wait two seasons is far more work than running a texel flock that can be done in three months. They are smart. So, sometimes, they might outsmart you. They will rarely yield triplets, which can be a plus if you are working with natural meadows. And commercial processors will not pay as well for them as they will for conventional breeds. But, if you are raising Shetlands, you are likely looking at niche markets – people who want to pay a premium for high quality, great tasting, sustainably raised meat. The disadvantages can be summarised as this: if you are looking at mass producing meat for commercial factories, Shetlands are best for breeding in mothering and resilience to a commerical flock.
And, finally, the quality of their fibre. Shetlands yield an excellent fleece which becomes a really wonderful yarn. The wool we harvest is beautiful, a soft wool, strong, that comes naturally in a variety of beautiful colours. The excess from our shearing, that we can’t use for yarn, we will be using as insulation for beehives and for the garden. But our wool is something we look forward to each year. Balls of Black, White or Shaela gray yarn, or the Emsket (Blueish Grey) or the Musket Greyish Brown. The Moorit Pale Red. It’s a wonderful thing to unbox the fibre from your flock and fields in Spring. Something we might share next year if we sell our excess.
I love my flock. It’s a remnant of the dear departed friend who gifted me their beginning as a moment in my change of life, from office worker to farmer. From city to country. From indoor world to outdoor world. They are smart, curious, friendly creatures. My work and life with them is tied up with the birth of my family. My children help with lambing. Haul hay and feed. Live and breathe in the world of trees and wild things as part and parcel of their work with the sheep. And they’ve made of me, slowly, carefully, gradually, a calmer, more patient, more accepting man.
Every year we have lambs for sale, whole or butchered. We have ewe lambs for sale for breeding, and Shetland Rams too. We offer advice and support on cooking, raising, breeding and lambing to any and all customers. If you are interested use our contact us page or find us on twitter.
Resources
From the Fine Fleece Shetland Sheep Society, an explanation of yarn and fleece colour and terminology, and a History of the Breed.
There’s a Shetland Sheep Association in the US too
And for advice, insight, a Shepherds Calendar and the UK Shetland Sheep Society is a good place to visit
Very interesting,I have had a interest in Sheep from a young age.