SHEEP

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Lamb is seasonal Oct–Feb –
buy in season and freeze it if you want a steady supply; use Hogget for Spring and Easter celebration

Serve more mutton – especially August and September; Cull Yaw is a particularly flavourful choice.

Source from: Mixed Farms, or farms using multi-species, mob grazing, and/or silvopasture.

Look for the Pasture for Life certification.

Look for suppliers that prioritise biodiversity and woodland regeneration.

SHEEP Deep Dive

The key issues with sheep farming are:

  • Seasonality

  • Land Use

  • Ecological degradation 

  • Methane emissions

Crucially, the negative impacts of sheep farming are all context-dependent. Each farm varies massively in the effects it has on the ecology and rural community it exists within. Below is more detail on how to help mitigate these environmental issues from your kitchen.

Seasonality

Know your sheep seasons:

  • Lamb (8/9-11 months old): Oct - Feb 

  • Hogget (12-18 months old):  Mar - July

  • Mutton (18 month old sheep): Year round

Lambing out of season requires extra feed, such as hay, silage, or grain, which increases inputs and carbon emissions. Ewes also need indoor housing for warmth, which increases the risk of poor manure management, as it is not absorbed by the ground, which leads to ammonia emissions and potential runoff.

As with chicken, source seasonally to avoid the worst farming practices – consider serving chicken when lamb is out of season, and vice versa. But remember, sourcing seasonally isn’t a guarantee – it’s a baseline! Be sure to still look out for the practices described below.

One good solution is serving more mutton which can be available all year around without requiring extra inputs.


The Cornwall Project -
Farm Highlight

Matt Chatfield supplies various restaurants with “Cull Yaw”. “Cull Yaw” is a Cornish way of saying “Cull Ewe”. These are breeding sheep who have been taken out of the flock at roughly 4 or 5 years old (or younger on intensive farms) because they aren’t fit to birth more lambs. 

It is a normal part of the lambing cycle to cull out ewes who have an udder or teeth failing, but traditionally these sheep aren’t worth much and go to the abattoir or market with little return for the farmer.  Matt Chatfield takes Cull Yaw from nearby farms and fattens them up on his pasture and in the past, in his woodland, to become a prime meat source. 

Sheep prefer to eat about 50% browse (broadleaf plants) and 50% grass. One of the challenges of sourcing regenerative sheep meat is how to get this combination without causing habitat destruction. At times when he has been grazing woodland, Matt attempts a careful conservation grazing approach to genuinely enhance the biodiversity of his land. On pasture, he is growing a diverse range of herbs, grasses and forbs.

This is something no one else in the agroecology movement is doing. It is very different to other sheep farming practices because the ewes are already grown, Matt is just fattening them up for market. Inputs at this stage are much lower, so Matt can fatten 20 sheep per acre per year, or 600 sheep on 30 acres of pasture. 

The flavour is in the meat before Matt gets them because they have done all their walking, he adds a layer of totally new fat. When the meat dry-ages, the fat permeates into the meat. What was once a wasteful link in the supply chain is now a delicacy (and a happy retirement).

Sourcing meat from small-scale projects like Matt’s also means supporting small-scale abattoirs and helping rural communities to keep their local infrastructure and work.  

Land Use

In terms of protein production per acre, sheep farming is an inefficient use of land where crops could be grown. However, mixed farming, where livestock and crop production systems are integrated, can help address this by maximising food produced on a piece of land. Bringing sheep into temporary pasture on arable farms, for example, during fallow phases of the crop rotation, frees up permanent pastures for either woodland or cropland. However, this transition must be done carefully to protect farmers' livelihoods and to prevent the sudden release of carbon stored in permanent pastures.

Building on this, grazing sheep alongside other animals (hyperlink to Farming Practices Deep Dive) on a mixed farm can maximise land use efficiency. In a combined sheep-cow paddock, for instance, cows ‘top’ the forage, whereas sheep browse down to the ground. This utilises sheep’s ability to gain weight on limited pasture, whilst giving cows excellent forage and allowing them to trample, all-in-all maximising meat production per acre.

Shimpling Park Farm - Farm Highlight

At Shimpling Park Farm, New Zealand Romney sheep are 100% grass fed on temporary pasture as part of the crop rotation’s fertility building phase. They were brought in 10 years ago in order to extend the farm’s fertility-building period. This extension would not have been possible without additional income from lamb meat.

In this system, sheep are occupying land that needs a rest from arable farming. The main arable crops are wheat, barley, oats, spelt, for milling, and small amounts of chia, lentils, peas and vetches. 

This is an example of a farm putting organic and regenerative principles into effect at a large scale (it is a 649 ha farm which was converted to organic 20 years ago). The two-year fertility building leys feed 1000 sheep and are followed by four years of cereal and bean crop, which makes a six-year rotation, in total. The manure from the sheep on the leys takes away the need for fertilisers on the farm.

The lamb meat is seasonal, only available from September through to January. This is for environmental, animal and human wellbeing reasons: no feed is imported to extend the season, and the farm relies entirely on grass. The model also gives the shepherd some rest before lambing begins again in April, prioritising social factors as well as environmental. 

Wildlife surveys have been conducted on the farm showing increased numbers of birds, pollinators, butterflies and rare arable weeds, since organic conversion. 75 ha of land is kept for environmental conservation areas and woodland and 20 hectares is for agroforestry in the arable system. 

For the farmer, John Pawsey, building soil organic matter has been a priority and levels have risen from 2.9% to 5.5%. This means that currently the farm is building more carbon than it is releasing (having also lost the footprint from pesticides, fertilisers and other chemical inputs). 

The challenge is, of course, that drawing down carbon into soil organic matter, while incredibly positive and the fundamental basis of soil health, is a process limited to a few decades. Once these high levels have been reached, another method of sequestering carbon must be found to offset the use of fossil fuels with farm machinery, not to mention methane emissions from ruminants like sheep. 

Farmers like John are making moves towards agroforestry, woodland conservation and shifts in hedgerow maintenance and energy-use strategy. These are all positive steps towards farming for climate resilience. A complex and diverse system is needed to balance the benefits of having animals on the farm (reducing chemical fertiliser inputs, maximising land use and gaining financial stability) with the impacts (methane emissions).

The farm is prioritising social engagement with school visits, nature walks, writing workshops and other events. It supports six full-time employees and a family for two months in the summer. 

Biodiversity Gains

Many farmers point to the fact that they only graze sheep on land unsuitable for conventional crop growing. Putting to one side the debate about whether innovative farming techniques could produce arable crops on such land (there is evidence of highland clans producing diverse diets on land classified as ‘marginal’) unmanaged grazing can still halt biodiversity gains and cause forestry loss. 

Many farmers argue that appropriate grazing benefits the ecosystem, but opponents suggest that there are much more effective ways of doing conservation, generating biodiversity and rural land-based jobs. One of the main issues is that sheep (like deer) selectively eat young tree seedlings, keeping grass and low scrub from succeeding into woodland. Overgrazed pastures can also lead to soil erosion and the leaching and runoff of nutrients.

Importantly, this issue varies based on the context: testimonies from farmers suggest that sheep can be grazed in a way that ensures woodland generation and increases biodiversity, but only if specific techniques are used. Mob grazing, for instance, can support a functional ecological succession in woodlands and enhance biodiversity by allowing rest periods, whilst other forms of rotational grazing can produce biodiverse grasslands where complex ecosystems flourish and species diversification occurs.

How did sheep get here?

Sheep farming in the UK is a particularly poignant example of how complex social and environmental dynamics in farming can be. 

Historically, the expansion of sheep farming in Britain came with the Clearances (in Scotland) and the Enclosures (in England and Wales). During this time, common land that had been for local communities to grow food on was taken and privatised so individual landowners could profit by supplying the wool industry. Many people were forced off common land to make way for sheep farms or to sheep farms elsewhere.

Sheep are still extensively farmed in the UK today, but mostly for lamb meat, although also still for smaller amounts of wool, mutton and milk.