THOUSANDS of sheep farmers from Scotland and the North of England will attend NSA Scotsheep on June 4.

The event is at the Berwickshire farm of Quixwood, just off the A1 at Grantshouse, courtesy of father and son farmers John and Iain Macfarlane.

The farm is close to the A1 and recognised as a very wellmanaged upland sheep and beef farm producing highquality stock. Farm tours will include input from SRUC experts.

Quixwood, and the adjoining farms of Ferneylea and Drakemyre, covers 2,500 acres and rises to 850ft. There are 1,500 ewes, 700 suckler cows, and 600 acres of winter wheat, winter and spring barley, winter and spring oats and beans, most of which are fed to the stock. Trees provide shelter belts for stock over 300 acres.

The policy is high output from home grown feed and minimum bought-in concentrates.

A closed flock and herd policy is followed. All replacements are bred on the farm and all lambs and calves, except female replacements, finished through to slaughter and sold deadweight to Scotbeef.

The flock has 300 Blackface ewes crossed with the Bluefaced Leicester to produce replacement females for the 500-strong Mule ewe flock which is crossed with Texel tups. The Texel cross Mule ewes are then put to the Suffolk to produce the slaughter generation. Now the plan is to also breed their own replacement Blackface ewes.

Ewes are housed in a large open shed after New Year and start lambing towards the end of February, followed by the hoggs in mid-March. Blackface ewes are lambed outside from April 1.

They are fed a Total Mixed Ration (TMR) from a Keenan diet feeder of silage, beet pulp, wheat dark grains, turnip mix and minerals with access to Lifeline buckets.

The ewes this year scanned at 212 per cent and are penned individually just after lambing.

They then move to bigger pens in groups of ten for 24 to 48 hours before being turned out.

Lambs are creep fed with the aim of catching the early lamb market.

John Macfarlane said: “We push them hard to grow as quickly as possible. We start selling lambs at the end of May and draw for marketing every ten days or so through the summer.”

The suckler cows are a mixture of Aberdeen-Angus, Limousin, Beef Shorthorn and Simmental crosses. The Charolais bull, used as the terminal cross, is being phased out following the switch from selling stores to finishing everything on farm.

Grassland management is important to achieve high output.

Grass is kept young and undersown with barley as a cover.

Bespoke mixtures are designed specifically for the farm.

Regular dressings of slurry and bagged nitrogen are applied and, as far as possible, a clean grazing system is followed with the sheep.

Scotsheep also features a sheep dog trial with 30 top handlers, a sheep shearing competition, inter-regional sheepdog trial, and farmers’ market.

Trade stands are sold out with 200 exhibitors, including more than 30 breeds. The day ends with a multi-breed auction sale of pairs of breeding ewe hoggs.