IN-FOCUS! farmer Interview on Castlemilk Moorit, our rare sheep breed
April 2024 edition - written by Sam Dodd in conversation with Emma Harrison
Farm Worker Sam sat down with Farmyard Assistant Emma to find out more about the rare sheep breeding programme at the farm, the process of it, lambing and labour, the history of the breed, our own lovely flock, and the UK-wide effort to conserve them. This spring, just a few weeks ago, our ewes Lily and Lavender welcomed Siddle, Silver, Saffron and Samphire into the world - two boys to one mum and two girls to the other, four days apart. Click here for a great photoblog by our Education Intern, Arms.
History of the Castlemilk Moorit UK native breed
They were originally created as a decorative breed in the 1900s to adorn the parkland of Sir John Buchanan Jardine's large parkland estate in Ayrshire, Scotland. It is a mixture of several primitive types: Manx Loaghtan, Shetland, Soay and Wiltshire Horn. The area in Ayrshire was called Castlemilk, and Moorit means a specific shade of brown.He wanted sheep that looked deer-like when grazing his estate, had a nice colour wool so he could make tweed for his estate workers, and also have a delicate flavour: they don’t mature for meat till 18 months old at a minimum, rather than 6-8 months it usually takes for commercial lamb to mature and go to slaughter.
Jardine died in the 1970s, and as they did not exist outside his estate, no use was seen for them. They took too long to mature for meat, and their wool was too short to be commercially viable. So devastatingly, most were culled, although some were given away or sold. Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) bought five girls and two boys - and nowadays, most of the registered pedigree Castlemilks in the UK are from those seven.
The breed is considered rare and ‘at risk’ on the RBST list, meaning there are less than 1,000 females at breeding age in the whole country. To put this into context in the wider scale of farming in the UK: some commercial sheep farms will have 1,000 animals, just on one farm, and there are hundreds of thousands of those particular farms in the UK. So you could have all the adult Castlemilk Moorit females of breeding age in the whole country, on just one of those farms. It is important to conserve breeds that are native to this country - they adapt better to our changing climate over time, and they’re not pushed to become fatter for more meat or produce enormous amounts of lambs or wool.
History of the Castlemilk Moorit Programme at Spitalfields City Farm
Katriona was our original founding ewe, alongside Karen, who both came to us in 2008. We didn’t breed immediately (that began in 2009), but over the years we have had a lot of successful breeding out of them, with the first lamb we were blessed with named Evie. Prior to this we kept other breeds, but as this breed is smaller than most they are more suitable for a limited space such as city farms, which do not have the benefit of big rolling fields. They are also hardier, meaning they don’t get many of the conditions other breeds suffer with - like flystrike and more. And they are easy lambers, tending to birth without huge complications.
The Process of Breeding at Our Farm
Castlemilks are in season from the end of October onwards, so an old farming adage is “5th November ram, 1st April lamb.” The ram we used to impregnate our girls for the last two years is called Maldwyn. He belongs to Emma’s flock on her Surrey farm and is from a different bloodline as our ewes here, which avoids inbreeding. Due to our limited space we can’t keep a ram here all year, so we borrow them and ship them back once the job is done!
We strap chalk paint to the rams chest and change the colour every 17 days (which is the length of a sheep's cycle) so that when he mounts a ewe, in a process called tupping, she gets marked and we know how to timeline the pregnancy. If the ewe falls pregnant in the first colour, she will not be marked by the next colour when the chalk changes, because her hormones switch so rapidly that the ram is not attracted to her any more. If she does not fall pregnant, the ram will tup her again, and we will know from the colour change. Castlemilk pregnancy lengths can range from 140 to 152 days.
Lambing & Labour!
At SCF we have a special lambing stable, which has a split door where both halves lock, to protect from foxes at night. We split off the stable into individual birthing stations with hurdles, so each mum has her own space. Once the lambs are a few weeks old we remove the hurdles so they can all mix. Closer to the due date we begin bringing the ewes in at night from their outdoor area, so they get used to their environment before the day they give birth.
A few days before labour, their udders fill up and become visibly much bigger. Their vulva also becomes enlarged and pink. Then, Castlemilks tend to stop eating when labour begins. They might stand in the corner, stare off into the distance or at the wall, and seem as if they’re nesting by moving hay around and pawing at the ground. Strings of mucus will likely emerge from their vulva, and farmers will see other general character changes. When labour begins, a water bag comes out - much like when a pregnant human’s waters break - and contractions begin. It should not be more than an hour between the water bag appearing and the lambs coming out - if it is, then we know the lambs are in trouble. If born in natural positions they come out like divers: front legs first, followed by head, then the rest of the body. Sometimes, if an arm is stuck, the farmer will administer lubricant to her arm and go in to help reposition the lamb for an easier birth. If the lamb emerges headfirst, this can be quite dangerous and has a name: ‘hung lamb’. The farmer has to find the ewe fast and help pull her lamb out. Finally, if there is another lamb due, there will be another water bag - each lamb has their own, unlike human birth where there is only one instance of waters breaking.
Once a lamb is born, the mothers will lick and clean it - unless she is rejecting it. The lamb needs to feed once cleaned, on colostrum, which is rich milk produced by mum in the first few days after birth that replaces the very little fat they’re born with and are already burning off immediately after entering the world. Lambs are born with no gut bacteria, into an environment that is full of bacteria - if they do not get colostrum, they can die fairly fast or get hypothermia if born wild and not under monitored conditions like we have on the farm. Lambs are susceptible to a whole host of health issues if not looked after properly.
We then spray their umbilical cord with iodine to stop bacteria getting up it and into their bodies. This cord will naturally dry up and fall off after a few days to weeks.
Challenges & Rewards of Lambing at SCF
At SCF the farmers who look after the ewes and their babies often camp overnight so that we can be on hand immediately. Sometimes after birth, mums can experience conditions called milk fever or twin lamb disease, which are deficiencies in glucose and calcium caused by mama giving everything she has to get the lambs out and keep them alive. The ewes body begins to shut down, and to save her we have to force feed glucose and calcium.
Then we have the emotional attachment. Our farm is a non slaughter, rare breed, and rescue farm. This means most of us, even farmers who are used to animal deaths, find it difficult to lose any of our residents. Members of the public, regular visitors, and many volunteers, are not used to that sort of thing occurring - so it can be very upsetting and triggering. We are not a commercial farm, and all our animals have names and personalities.
Occasionally, members of the public can be challenging if ewes lamb during opening hours and there are complications; privacy is difficult to achieve. However, most Moorits lamb in the evening or early morning, so this is not often an issue. Lambs are not here for public entertainment, but as part of a conservation breeding program, and people will often, very understandably, want to touch them (they are incredibly cute, after all). Rejected (therefore hand-reared and tame) lambs do get more attention - this is because they’re handled several times a day, as bottle feeding is the only way to keep them alive. But a mother ewe can become incredibly protective and panicked if strangers that are not known to her try to touch her babies.
However, seeing children witnessing their first newborn is always amazing. Adults also reminisce about their first visit to a farm when they were small. It opens up conversations about rare breeds and the importance of conservation and breeding programmes. And as part of our mobile farms programme we take them to schools and care homes, which is beautiful. Often, due to how unusual the breed looks, people think they are deer or goats.
Lambs Future - What Happens To Them?
Girl lambs stay with us, and we continue the breeding process with them once they reach two years old. Last year's lamb will be put to lamb herself, next year. We cannot use the same ram to tup lambs he has fathered, as inbreeding causes all sorts of health complications and weakens the strength of the breed overall, which means last year's lambs cannot be tupped by Maldwyn next year. We will find another ram in this instance, or we will lamb only the older girls with Maldwyn, as they were fathered by another ram.
Boys get castrated 90% of the time so they cannot mate with their direct female relatives and cause inbreeding. Castrated males are called ‘wethers’. A mum can only feed two at a time, as she only has two teats, so in the rare event you do get three healthy triplets, one usually ends up having to be bottle fed, unless the mum is really very good. But it is a drain on her body. Lavender has now aged out of breeding, as her body will no longer handle it well.
Lily and Lavender lambed this year, and the staff team and volunteers are all head over heels in love. Lavender had two boys, Silver and Siddle, but sadly a girl triplet was born dead in her sac over a day after she birthed the boys. She also fell ill with milk fever and twin lamb disease, and rejected Siddle, who we are hand rearing - so it was tough for a few days there. Lily had two girls, both healthy, called Saffron and Samphire.
We will probably sell last year's hand-reared lamb Rolo, and this year's two lads, together, next summer. Usually we’d look for someone who has a large lawn and needs a lawnmower, or used to keep horses but now doesn't, and needs grazers. We will be advertising them at the London Sheep Drive on Sunday 29th September 2024, if any readers want to pop along and experience that. You can make £50-£100 for wethers, and £100-£200 for breeding rams. We last had a breeding ram in 2019, called Noah - by now he will have fathered several more lambs somewhere else in the UK.
We are extremely proud to be part of the RBST breeding programme and Castlemilk Moorit conservation effort. Please come and say hi to our lambs and mamas.
Image credit: Aminah Shabir @aminah_shabir_photography - featuring Siddle & Emma