Innovative Sheep Breeding
Home of Performancelleyns and ProlleyNZ
Call us on 07970 773840 an 07780 687416
About Innovative Sheep Breeding
Innovative sheep breeding is located near the south coast of Devon. If you are looking at a map, we would be between Kingsbridge and Dartmouth reasonably close to the coastline and the sea. It may be relatively mild when looking at the winter mercury levels. However, with wind associated chill factors coupled with the high winter rainfall, the weather can feel anything but benign. The rain mostly tends to travel sideways. As a result, the sheep have not “softened” within the breeding programme.
We have been farming in the area since the mid-1980s and have been wholly focused on sheep for the last 15 years. We manage around 375 acres, and the majority is permanent pasture as it is too steep to cultivate. However, the better fields are in a crop to grass ley rotation with the produce used to feed the sheep in the winter, as we do not off-winter any livestock.
We run about 750 breeding ewes and retain over 300 ewe lambs to add to the flock with around two-thirds of them being tupped.
We are a family run business and I; Peregrine Aubrey control the breeding process. If you ring 07970 773840, you will get me the person in control. I will do my best to answer any questions you may have accurately and honestly, and I promise I won’t be overly persistent or use strong-arm sales tactics. (If you are tired of speaking to a salesperson who doesn’t breed the sheep, they are selling and keeps pestering you, might a change be worth considering? I think you know who we are talking about!)
We take biosecurity very seriously. As we sell livestock to other farmers, it is our moral responsibility and an economic necessity to secure our stock’s health. We have been a closed flock for over 15 years apart from a selection of carefully chosen and controlled ram purchases, which were quarantined appropriately on arrival.
We don’t even take on any winter keep, which is the cheapest way to carry sheep over the winter months, because we consider it to be a biosecurity risk. So, the stock is managed at home in a more expensive but fully controlled way.
We also test or do full autopsies where appropriate to monitor flock disease status. The cost of whole flock accreditation schemes such as that for Maedi Visna would be prohibitive on a flock of our size. We know we don’t have it. It would just be too expensive to prove it.
However, we can rest assured that if we thought we might have contracted any serious transmissible disease, we would immediately suspend sales until our sheep were safe to move onto other farms.
Are you keen to purchase but don’t think you can get to us to choose your stock?
Well, help is at hand. For 2020 onwards we are looking at delivery being more of an option. So, though we do not encourage purchase without on-farm selection, we do realise that in some instances this may be the only practical route. In this case, we will endeavour to supply accurate and representative photographs and video to aid in the selection process, in addition to the standard performance figures.
