We're excited to welcome our new ram Ted (Teddy Bear) to Mucko Family Farm. Ted is a pure breed Hampshire Downs ram and has been brought onto the team to produce a higher quality prime lamb. We call lambs raised for meat production as prime lamb and are most often a cross between a wool breed such as Merino and a meat breed, in this case Hampshire Down
Hampshire Downs, or Hampy's for short, are an old English breed of sheep with a "springy, medium staple wool"(1) that are recognised as fantastic terminal sires, meaning that rams sire high quality lambs. Hampy cross lamb meat has topped a number of eating quality trials (2), and lambs show one of the highest eye muscle scores of any breed (3) and have high carcass yields. This means more meat, higher quality and better value.
Important for us also is the cross bred lambs have shown a number of qualities which make them hardy and easy-caring which, combined with our Dohne merino ewes excellent mothering nature, will result in increased lambing rates and healthier, more vigorous lambs. Ted is also pretty damn cute so we can't wait to see what the lambs turn out like.
We brought Ted in to join with our 2 year old maiden ewes to produce the prime lambs. We still have our Dohne merino ram, Jeff, who will be joined with out older ewes to continue the replacement process as we move on the oldest ewes.
We can't wait to see, and taste, the results of the lambing this year and believe we will be able to offer higher quality product you our customers.
