Page 12 - Commercial Suffolks 2019

Suffolk sired lambs

tick all the boxes

Farmer Alan Smellie of Kailzie Mains Farm and butcher Mike Forsyth
of award winning Forsyth’s butchers Peebles in the Scottish Borders
recently featured in the 3 video ‘shorts’ used to highlight the bene-
fits of using Suffolk sired lamb.

Alan Smellie

Alan runs 2,200 ewes and finishes over 3,500 lambs every year with a flock of Suffolk’s
to produce rams to run with Scotch Mules and Texel cross ewes to produce prime
lambs. Cost of production is always important for the sheep enterprise and it is the
Suffolk sired lambs that meet the criteria of a grass-based system perfectly with high
growth rates and natural fleshing. Lambing starts at the beginning of April with both
Suffolk and Texel sired lambs – the Suffolk sired lambs easily finish at twelve weeks of
age but it is always three weeks later before the Texel sired lambs are ready to market.

The Suffolk lambs weigh twenty kilos plus with predominantly U grade carcasses and
are marketed at a time of year when the market price is at its peak. In 2016 Alan Smellie
had a meeting with Mike Forsyth of Forsyth’s butchers Peebles at SAC Colleges Edin-
burgh.

10 Commercial SUFFOLKS – AUTUMN 2019