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Fresh, Nutritious, Gentle
Our Farm
We are a family run sheep farming business and love all things, sheep!
We have run a traditional commercial sheep flock for nearly 30 years and more recently, an Ile de France sheep stud. In 2019 we introduced a sheep milking enterprise.
Our new milking flock (River Braid and PaiWai Sheep) run alongside a small number of cattle which help create the right balance and diversity for animal and earth, health and wellbeing. The cattle have a valuable role in the farm’s regenerative system by managing grass growth and quality, as well as providing valuable diversity to assist with natural animal health outcomes.
The recent addition of our milking flocks has not intensified our farm system. We have maintained the same sheep numbers by replacing some of our commercial sheep for River Braid and PaiWai ewes. In the case of the RiverBraid ewes, these were plucked directly from the best mothers in our commercial flock, whilst the PaiWai Sheep are experienced hands, having been milked in Nelson, previously.
Our aim is to diversify our farming business, showcasing everything the honorable sheep can produce, whilst paying close attention to animal welfare and environmental sustainability throughout.
This season we milked 400 ewes and are looking at increasing this number.
Our River Braid and PaiWai sheep are treated with the greatest of care and their health is closely monitored on a daily basis.
The milking ewes are always keen to get to the milking shed every morning as they are creatures of habit.
We believe that it is their tame and relaxed nature which allows them to let down their milk with ease, thus producing such wholesome, delicious and creamy milk.
Animal Welfare
Above and Beyond
Our Lambs and Mothers:
Lambs are born in early spring and are kept with their mothers for two months, until they are big and strong enough to fend for themselves and no longer need milk. This gives them a great start to life.
Lambing in spring ensures there is an abundance of pasture available (if the weather behaves!) providing the ewes and lambs the additional nutirents they require. When the ewes are weaned from their lambs they are milked once a day.
We choose to milk our ewes once a day because, although the ewes may produce less milk, we feel it provides us, our workers and our sheep with a more gentle lifestyle.
What our Sheep Eat:
While the ewes are being milked in the parlour, they are given a treat of barley to nibble on. They then go back out to the paddock.
The paddocks contain a mix of either old or new pasture, both of which have a diverse mix and varied combination of grasses, clovers, herbs and lucerne. Here, the ewes can pick and choose what they want, providing them with a healthy and varied diet.
The paddocks are given longer breaks between grazings, to create larger pasture residuals and build up more soil organic matter.
During times of feed shortage, they will be supplemented with some home-grown silage.