Charles Sercombe - Sandlands Farm, Leicestershire
Charles Sercombe, Sandlands Farm, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire
Charles Sercombe farms with his family near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire. This family run farm includes pedigree Charollais, Lleyn and Blue Texel performance recorded flocks as well as being an Innovis breeding partner. Eight miles from their home farm, they have a large commercial flock, which will be used for their RamCompare sires.
- Pedigree flocks; 100 Charollais, 30 Blue Texel, 200 Lleyn ewes – which are all recorded, plus 300 Abermax ewes
- 1,600 commercial ewes; of which 700 Aberfield x Lleyn, around 60% used for RamCompare, the rest are Lleyn or Lleyn cross ewes, which are crossed to Aberfield, Abermax, Charollais and Texel rams
- 500 acres of grassland on this site, 10% is a three-year ley in the arable rotation, the remainder is permanent pasture and unimproved grassland
- Rams are turned out for 5-6 weeks, the flock is achieving a conception rate of around 1.7%
- Lambing in April, fully recorded at birth by wife Helen and daughters Victoria and Grace.
- Due to the poor quality pasture, lambs are supplemented with creep
- Weighed regularly from 6-8 weeks, they plan to start drawing RamCompare lambs for slaughter in July with the aim to finish the majority of them by the end of September
Charles explains, “The grassland is very poor quality so lambs are supplemented with creep, they are managed as one group with an aim to finish by the end of September aiming for 19-20kg carcase, currently around 70% are E/U grade.”
“I want to record more data from my Lleyn x Aberfield ewes to see which breeds and traits perform well for the overall economics of our commercial lamb enterprise.”