Farmer Focus: Teaser used in outdoor and indoor flocks

Our Charollais, Abermax and Aberblack tups are in with our indoor lambing flock and boy, have they been busy! Half the 220-ewe flock was covered over the first two days.

They have been in for 10 days now and all but a few are tupped.

We need the weather to be kinder to us for lambing in 2025 than it was this year, so they can go straight outside.

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 (133 acres) of grass on a farm business tenancy and agreements for stubble turnips and hay aftermaths.

Read more articles by Louise Elkington

Otherwise, it’s going to be stressful starting lambing while putting up makeshift pens and clearing out other sheds.

For the first time in several years, we will use a teaser on the outdoor flock to try and tighten up the lambing period outside.

Lambing into May is hard work as by then we are starting to get busy with the catering trailer at events, and you can’t be in two places at once!

With outdoor lambing, it doesn’t matter if you have lots lambing at once, as you’re not having to find them all pens.

Hopefully, the teaser works as well on this group as he did on the indoor sheep.

Weather seems to be a repeat of last year.

A delayed harvest meant we were a bit later getting the turnips in. They are there, but aren’t great.

We are very fortunate to have been able to rent some extra grassland, which means we should have enough keep to see us through until spring.

Scald in one group of lambs seems to have reared its head again.

They are on fairly wet land, which isn’t helping, and it seems to be a constant battle to keep them sound.

Luckily, it’s the terminal sired lambs that seem to be suffering, rather than any potential ewe lambs, which haven’t had any issues.

On a more positive note, we have just been running our October pop-up shop.

Despite the atrocious wet weather, it was a fabulous turnout – our second busiest day to date.

It’s fantastic to see so many people really enjoying coming to the farm to buy both our produce and other locally sourced items.

We are now full steam ahead with getting ready for the run-up to – dare I say it – Christmas.