Farmers Weekly Awards 2024: Sheep Farmer of the Year

Annie Carr of The Brays, Herefordshire, is Farmers Weekly’s Awards 2024 Sheep Farmer of the Year.

Annie Carr’s clear business objectives, meticulous husbandry, and sound grassland management make her thoroughly deserving of the title Sheep Farmer of the Year.

Annie also has thorough knowledge of the technical and financial data needed to measure and monitor performance.

See also: Farmers Weekly Awards 2024: Sheep Farmer of the Year finalists

The focus for her flock of 420 crossbred ewes, which graze herbal leys on rented land, is kilos of lambs reared a ewe (73.55kg) and weight of lambs produced/forage ha (853kg).

Average daily liveweight gain is 390g/day, with singles achieving close to 500g.

Scanning rates this year were 201% for ewes, 164% for shearlings and 105% for ewe lambs.

Lambing losses from scanning to finishing were just 2.14%, with 399 lambs turned out from 410 lambs born.

Attention to detail

A thorough approach to ewe and lamb nutrition, as well as “hard” culling protocols, help achieve this performance.

Annie says housing the flock for four months from December ensures she can get nutrition “spot on”, as well as giving the land time to rest and recover.

She sought advice from independent sheep consultant Kate Phillips to help her formulate rations for pregnant ewes.

At housing, diets are restricted for a month to limit placental development. This controls lamb size and keeps lambing intervention rates low.

Twin- and triplet-bearing ewes are then supplemented with concentrate three to five weeks pre-lambing and silage is fed ad-lib.

All silage cuts are analysed to ensure the correct level of nutrition is maintained throughout the housed period, with different qualities made to ensure this can be achieved.

And all ewes receive a bolus containing selenium, cobalt and iodine before lambing.

At lambing, every ewe is turned over and lambs are suckled. Colostrum is checked for quality and supplemented when needed.

“It’s my responsibility to make sure the lambs get the best start in life, and colostrum is the most important thing,” she says. “It saves so much time in the long run.”

At turnout, ewes and lambs are set-stocked for six weeks before switching to rotational grazing to improve utilisation and increase longevity of the herbal leys.

The swards’ anthelmintic properties lower worm burdens, reducing reliance on drenches. Chemical dependency is also reduced by shearing ewes in January and August to avoid use of fly cover.

Future plans

Succession issues on the family farm that led to Annie “going it alone” have made her determined, aged 30, to have a clear succession plan.

Her winning mix of practical, business and financial skills stands her in good stead: “I’d love to have more land and more sheep.

“I’ve been offered land, but it needs to be the right land. I could be a busy fool, but chasing numbers and acres isn’t what I want to do.”

She is confident the right opportunity will come along.