Farmer Focus: Sticking with low-stress teaser tup strategy

The year has come full circle. The teasers have come out and the tups are going in.

Last year, we took some advice from Jamie Wild at Red Hill Charollais, who supplies our terminal sire tups. We asked him about teaser strategy.

Previously, we put the teasers in for 17 days, then pulled them out and put the tups straight in.

See also: How to make best use of teaser tups to tighten lambing

About the author

Louise Elkington

Louise Elkington runs 500 breeding ewes in Lincolnshire with husband Chris for their Gelston lamb brand, supplying restaurants, 13 Co-op stores and their online shop. They have 54ha of grass on a farm business tenancy and agreements for stubble turnips and hay aftermaths.

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We did this for several years, but always found we had a peak of lambs all coming at once, which is far from ideal on an indoor system with limited pen space.

Now, we put our one teaser in with two-thirds of the indoor flock, then add the remaining ewes five days later.

The teaser remains with the group for 15 days in total. We then take him out and the tups go in five days later.

This made such a big difference this spring, with a manageable amount lambing each day, and we didn’t get a big spike in lambs over a few days, resulting in a less stressful lambing.

Some years we were having to fashion makeshift pens out of anything we could find. I’m sure many a shepherd has been in the same situation.

We have sheared 160 of the best ewe lambs to potentially keep back for breeding. These are on old rough grazing and are growing well.

They will run as a flock until early next year, when we will go through them again and pull out the slow growers.

We only want to retain the very best lambs, and the rest will then go through the butchery.

We’ve had a busy September with the catering trailer, doing the last few country shows of the year and some private parties too.

The catering side of the business runs well alongside our fresh meat sales, although it’s hard work and long hours.

On the other hand, it’s extremely rewarding as a producer to sell direct and have customers come back to buy lamb on a regular basis.

We are also supplying a few local restaurants, which is great as most of them have a weekly order.

This means the lamb is cooked and served beautifully and gets our name out into the area.