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Scottish lambs on the Lennox Farm
Bobby and Anne Lennox have a farm near Loch Lomond where they raise lambs to sell as food. Here’s how they look after their lambs, so they raise better meat for you.
Tagging
The law is that each lamb is tagged in the left ear any time before it leaves the farm. If the lamb is bought by another farmer, he puts his farm tag in the lamb’s right ear. If the lamb has any other owners, they also put their tag in the lamb’s right ear. So if you want to know where a lamb has been during its life, you just have to look at the tag numbers – you can tell which farms it has been on. It’s just like a name and address label!
What lambs eat
Scottish sheep and lambs eat a lot of grass. Lambs that have been weaned or taken away from their mum in August/September and are being sold later in the year eat grass until October or November. So do smaller lambs that have been weaned from their mum, but are being sold from January to March.
Sometimes there isn’t enough grass from December because it’s too cold for it to grow, so the farmer helps all these lambs to find food, and brings them hay and conserved grass called silage.
Most farmers who have upland or hill farms have to sell their lambs to lowground farmers, because there isn’t enough grass to feed and grow the lambs properly. These lambs are called store lambs.
Lambs can grow up to 35kg-45kg – that’s roughly the same as forty-five 1kg bags of sugar!
Where lambs sleep
Most lambs are kept outside all the time.
Looking after the health of the animals
Even though the farmer looks after his lambs carefully, they can still get sick – just like humans.
Pneumonia and tetanus type infections can kill lambs, and the farmer prevents this from happening by giving them a vaccination.
Sheep and lambs can also get footrot – and it can make them lame. The farmer treats this by giving the sheep and lambs a special footbath that kills the bacteria. And did you know that sheep have to have their feet trimmed regularly? It’s just like when you have to get your toenails cut!
Sheep can also be hurt and upset by dogs who are running through fields without a lead. So if you have a dog and you’re walking in the country, don’t go near fields with animals in them!
Nearly all the lamb producers in Scotland (including Bobby and Anne) are in the Quality Meat Scotland farm assurance scheme. This scheme sets out strict rules that farmers have to follow.
There are inspectors who go round each farm at least once every year to make sure that the farmers are following the rules. Sometimes an inspector from the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA) comes with them.
To be called Scotch Lamb, animals must be born, reared for all their lives in Scotland on an approved farm, and slaughtered in Scotland in an approved meat plant.
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