Cuckoo Farm Easycare Sheep

Organic lamb and hogget

Easycare ewes
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About EasyCare Sheep

EasyCare sheep have been developed as a low maintenance sheep, producing lambs which are lively at birth and produce a good carcase on a low input system. Shedding wool, doing away with the expense and hassle of shearing is one of their main attractions. Developed from the Wiltshire Horn "hair sheep", crossing with other breeds has resulted in no horns, hardiness, easy lambing, good mothering ability and low veterinary requirements. The breed is EasyCare and well-suited to our organic system.

Sheep Management

Our organic flock of EasyCare sheep lamb in the spring. The ewes are brought in for lambing and fed on our home-produced organic forage - silage, haylage or hay, supplemented with oats and a concentrate pellet or an organic sheep ration. After they lamb, we make sure they "mother-up", tag the lambs, mark the lambs (and ewe) and put them out to grass.

They usually have a hay bell with hay or silage until the grass starts to grow. Lambs usually start to graze from about 2 weeks old.

Lambs suckle and stay with the ewes until they are at least 3 months old. They are weaned and moved to fresh pasture to grow on. The ewes dry off (stop producing milk) and have a quiet few months grazing before the autumn.

ewe with lamb
Ewe turned out with lamb
hay bell for forage
Forage in hay bell
weaned lambs
Weaned lambs on fresh pasture

In the autumn, the ewes are checked to make sure they are in tip-top condition and we choose the best to go to our best tup (ram) for breeding replacements.

We only buy in new tups to minimise disease risk.

sheep on the move
Sheep moving

The ewes get to know the farm and our system which makes handling easier.

Easycare ram
Easycare tup

We use Easycare tups on the ewes. Vasectomised rams go to the ewes about 2 weeks before the "proper" tups to help keep lambing short.

One of the advantages of Easycare sheep is that they do not need shearing. The birds at Cuckoo Farm have the cosiest nests around when the sheep shed their wool in the spring!

Lamb/Hogget

We may sell half or whole lamb boxes fresh between July and probably November. Hogget which is last year's lamb, flavoursome but still tender, is usually available in the first half of the year. We may have both lamb and hogget frozen at other times.

The farm and our sheep are managed to Soil Association (SA) organic standards, but we are unable to sell lamb as organic because our local abattoir is no longer SA licensed.

For more information about our lamb, hogget and mutton, please see the lamb,hogget and mutton page.

We sell whole or half lamb boxes and may have joints, we also do lamb packs if you cannot manage half a lamb.

Weights are around 18kg for a whole lamb and 9kg for a half (approx)

Sign up for Rutland Organics and/or campsite newsletter to be contacted when we have fresh meat available (takes you to cuckoofarm website).

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