Best Baa Farm: British Milk Sheep

On moving to South Western Ontario in 1998, from Manitoba with our Columbia sheep and other livestock, we decided to buy some British Milk Sheep embryos which were available at that time. What drew us to the breed were the advantages of this breed over others, such as milk yield and prolificacy, to name but two. From the 67 purchased embryos, we obtained 27 lambs, all of which were male but for seven females. Of these seven, one was infertile and one only lambed once. The lack of females was the reason why it took us several years to establish a pure British Milk Sheep flock. To prevent inbreeding, we imported semen from three rams, unrelated either to each other or to our own sheep. We have been using this semen over the subsequent years, ensuring new blood every two or three years.

We started milking in 2001, at first in part with Columbia cross-breds, but within a short period of time all our ewes were purebred. We had been selling purebred rams for some time, but we only started selling purebred females in 2008. British Milk Sheep are now widely spread throughout South Western Ontario. At this the time we stared milking, the sheepmilk industry was experiencing an upheaval and sheepmilk prices fell precipitously. We were therefore obliged to process our milk ourselves. For this purpose, Ewenity Dairy was formed, later becoming Best Baa Dairy. The establishment of this processing plant resulted in our main emphasis being on the development of the Dairy.

Under the circumstances, we found it difficult to devote sufficient time to both the Dairy and the dairy aspect of the British Milk Sheep flock.

So in 2009 a proportion of the flock was sold and we stopped milking. However, we maintained a nucleus of some 50 breeding ewes and have been breeding British Milk Sheep ever since, selling breeding stock to the existing British Milk Sheep flocks and any other interested parties.

British Milk Sheep are a large sheep with a long broad back, bare legs and face. The tail is covered with short wool. Occasionally a black or black and white lamb will be born. They do often have round black patches of skin about the size of a looney, mainly on their faces and ears. The udders are high and wide, with well placed medium sized teats. Rams typically weigh 200 lbs and ewes 170lbs.

The British Milk Sheep is a composite breed developed by Lawrence Alderson in the UK during the nineteen sixties and seventies and released in the 1980s. It had gained considerable popularity throughout the UK in the following decades, but was decimated by the Foot and Mouth epidemic which swept through Britain in 2005. The breed is made up of East Friesian, LLeyn, Dorset, and blue faced Leicester.

The breeding season for British Milk Sheep is quite long, starting in late July and continuing into late January. We have had ewes lamb in every month of the year.

British Milk Sheep are prolific, producing mainly triplets and twins. The lambs tend to be even in size, large(10-12 lbs) and lively. As the ewes of this breed have very large pelvises, there are rarely difficult births. The ewes are very good mothers and often accept orphan lambs.

British Milk Sheep will milk for over 200 days(meat sheep will milk for about three months.) Maximum daily yields will be four -five liters per day. The total solids for British Milk Sheep tends to be higher than that of other dairy breeds, commencing with about 16% at the beginning of the lactation and ending with over 20% at the end.

The temperament of the British Milk Sheep is very docile making it an easy animal to handle and thus suitable for milking.

Lambs grow quickly and to a good size (50 kgs.) without putting on fat.

The sheep are healthy and vigorous, with few feet or lung problems. They are long lived (six or seven lambings)