THIS MONTH Star ting a flock
There’s never been a better time to go self-sufficient. In our ongoing series, Sally Coulthard shares tried-and-tested tips from her Yorkshire smallholding
Author and seasoned smallholder Sally shares her Yorkshire plot with sheep, horses, hens, ducks, geese, an orchard, a vegetable garden and a pond
Our motley flock of mixed sheep is like a history lesson on four legs. The Soays, an ancient breed descended from Bronze Age sheep, look and behave like wild goats. Small, twirly horned and flighty, they’re also wonderfully robust and self-sufficient. The Ryelands are enormous teddy bears – cuddly beyond words. Developed by medieval monks for the wool trade, the Ryeland is 99 per fleece and 1 per cent sheep. They’re also greedy, docile and make good bellwethers – tamer sheep you can train to follow you, so the rest of the flock follow, too. The North Country Mules – amore recent Swaledale-Leicester cross – have all the hardiness of a hill breed with a calm, tolerant temperament. And the Herdwicks are somewhere in between. With tough Viking ancestry and a long history of living on the fells in the Lake District, Herdwicks are slow to trust but once you’ve won them over, they’re charm personified.
Starting a flock is a daunting prospect for the uninitiated, but there are some basics to consider. Before you commit, ask yourself what you want them to do. Do you want them for wool, meat, milk or grazing? Frieslands are good milking sheep, for example, while Wensleydales have lovely fleeces, perfect for hand-spinning. Half of all UK sheep are crossbreeds, reliable all-rounders such as our North Country Mules. Flock size will be determined by how much land is available: most smallholders start with just two or three sheep per acre. You can keep more if you rotate the fields and provide extra feed in winter. Whether you buy an armful of lambs or a field’s worth of ewes, you’ll need to keep an accurate record of your flock and get permission to keep livestock. You’ll require a County Parish Holding number, telling the government where the animals are, and a movement licence, which keeps track of them. You’ll need to register your flock with Defra and maintain a holding register, which can be done online (gov.uk/guidance/register-land-you-use-to-keep-livestock). You must record the medicines you g
