Members of PRLB made the journey from across the country to Incheoch, Blairgorie, farmed by the Mcgowan’s who provided fantastic hospitality for the trip and had organised some fantastic farm tours.

We started with a tour of the McGowan’s farm. We loaded into a trailer and made our way onto the farm set in some fantastic scenery. The first stop were the cattle, where we stopped at the bulling heifers (ready to calve at 24 months), and then onto the cows and calves. There are 3 cow herds that are used to maximise performance, the main herd is Luing, with the best cows going beck to Luing bulls to breed replacement heifers and breeding bulls. An Angus herd is used to breed bulls, the bulls are sold and also used on the heifers for their first calving. The third is a Simmental herd, the bulls from this herd are used as a terminal sire on cows that aren’t good enough to go back to the Luing.

The next stop was the first sheep flock. Like the cows, they were several sub-flocks. There are two breeds used, the main flock is a flock of 1000 performance recorded lleyns and there is a flock of pedigree performance recorded texels. The lleyns are all lambed outside and the flock is split into three. The ewes with the highest genetic merit and best performance are single sire mated to pedigree lleyn rams to produce replacements and rams for the on farm ‘Great from grass sale’. The next tranche go back to lleyn rams, where their performance is monitored before they are shifted up into the top tranche, or downgraded, where they will be mated to texel rams to produce finished lambs. The texel flock only uses natural service with emphasis on functional performance from grass.

The farm tour was followed by a productive PRLB meeting in the evening before a delicious BBQ of meat sourced from Incheoch. The group are pleased to be part of the Breed for Ch4nge industry collaboration, with 11 of the group taking part in the project. The group is looking forward to being part of this exiting project and see it furthering the work that has already been completed on parasite resistance and IgA.

The next day we headed Glenisla through some fantasctic scenery, which became more dramatic as we headed up. We arrived at Balnabrioch owned by Lord and Lady Nairn which have an active role in managing the estate with the manager Daniel Rowbottom. Daniel is 18 months into the role managing 1200 ewes (a mixture of Scottich Blackface, Cheviots and the more recent edition of Lleyns), 150 cows across 6,000 acres. The cows are made up of three herds, 25 pedigree Highlands, 25 pedigree Beef Short Horn and 100 hill cows made from a cross between the two.

The Lleyns, lambed for the first time this spring, the aim is to build up the Lleyn flock to replace the Cheviot mule initially. The Lleyn ewes and rams were purchased at the society sale at Carlisle. Daniel is looking at ways to improve his grazing and improve his grass usage to reduce costs. This year he has been using a leader follower system, with a group cows and calves following the ewes and lambs round on their rotation, which was working well.

For the next stop we headed further up the glen, passing through more productive in-bye land being cut for silage, up into dramatic scenery, which looked a lot more challenging to farm. Here we meet Andrew, where we entered his 70 arce deer farm.

The farm also ran 200 angus sucklers and 1000 Scottish Balckface that were being crossed to Aberfields on the land we had passed over on the journey up the Glen. The family had made the decision to move from breeding the Scottish Blackface pure, to crossing them with Aberfields, as the Aberfields fitted the management and breeding objectives better.

The deer were added once Andrew returned from New Zealand. where he had worked with them where he saw the potential for them on his farm back home.  Since then the numbers have grown, and recently reached capacity for the farm at around 70 hinds and the followers. It was towards the end of the calving season and we were all amazed how quiet the hinds were and how confident the calves were.

When the only deer abattoir in Scotland closed Andrew and his wife made the decision to sell their venison direct and as park venison. All the deer are now marketed direct from the farm through the farms shop, pop up shops, to local hotels and direct to their customers. They also use the shop to market a proportion of their own lambs and beef.