[Porterlauren]

Sounds like you have a good plan. Personally if I had to choose between keeping suffolks or lleyns i'd go for the latter. Maybe just my bad experience, but whilst making big thumping lambs, they have a habit of being dumb, slow, hard to lamb, little get up and go and mucky back ends. Still, they do look nice.

For a practical sheep, I think a lleyn is better. As ME says though, most times its more important where you get your sheep, then what breed of sheep, so source from a flock that operates similar to how you wish to. What I want is a ewe who is a good mother and milky, that gives me two lambs each year, off grass, that can be lambed outside, is hardy, got good feet, and whose lambs are tough, quick to get up and suck and stay alive till sold. Well, that's the dream and I don't think i'm a lone. LLeyn wouldn't be a bad place to start.

You should get a half dozen ewe lambs for your £500. But a decent ram of any type will blow your budget out of the water. Your friends advice on Easyrams is good, I assume rather than an 'easy care' ram, he means one from the company easy rams who sell imported newzealand genetics in the form of nz texels, suffolks and suftex's? Never seen one, but they are meant to be good rams, for easy lambing out side on a grass based system.

Sounds very good about getting both equipment and advice from your friend. What does he run ewe wise out of interest?

Maybe it'd be an idea to go to some ewe sales and just see what makes what price etc locally. Don't buy, just watch. This time of year is when the breeding and store sales / shows happen.

[georgielmgm]

Thanks for the fun facts, always useful  
Oohh they are impressive, veryyy impressive! Eek! I'm excited to get home now (I'm in London on work experience, I'm sure you can all imagine how I'm coping... ) but I'll be going straight to our farmer to lay out a business plan!

[Porterlauren]

For lleyn ewe lambs. . . . . one of 'ME's Charmoise tups would be a pretty good prospect.

[FiB]

Another vote for Lleyn. I bought 10 Beulah and 5 lleyn.  Both brilliantly hardy, solidly producing strong singles or twins with no intervention in 2 lambing years. (Beulah ram).  I bough both as ewe lambs £50.... And I'd go that rout again.... Gives you a year to learn, get them settled and used to your land and you.  Didn't have much equip to start.  Although I LOVE Beulah, I would say the Lleyn finish slightly better so I am going Lleyn tup this year.  They are docile, fab mothers and tasty. What more can you ask for?

[Foobar]

Check out the Lleyn Sheep Society website, there are lots of adverts and sheep for sale on there usually.  See if you can find some breeders that are near you, I'm sure they would let you go look at their flocks and bend their ears.  You are more likely to get what you want this way rather than via small ads like preloved (IMHO).

[Me]

Yes Foobar you are right... Though I tried to go on that site the other day and my computer wouldn't let me - my wife has set "mild parental controls" to stop me buying sheep presumably!

[georgielmgm]

Sorry Porterlauren, I didn't see your post last night, not ignoring you!
Yeh he's currently in the process of actually swapping his whole flock over to the EasyRam way, he wanted EasyRam bred ewes and this other guy wanted mules so I believe they are just sort of 'swapping' flocks  in a professional way obviously! I'm not really sure, thinks he's upping from about 500 to close to a 1000? At a guess? Mum has booked a day off so we are heading to our local mart which I've wanted to do allllll summer  but she says I'm not allowed a ferret (off topic)
Had a look on their website yesterday, doesn't seem to be a massive amount of breeders near me, but might just be that they aren't registered peds?
 
Anyone got any advice on what I would 100% need before they're even here, or will need pretty sharpish?

[SallyintNorth]

Another vote for Lleyn.  Can't fault them except that in our experience they were a little too prone to having triplets and quads, and on our ground that's not really a good plan.  However even if they did have multiples they mostly did make a good job of them.

You won't get market-topping double-muscled backside lambs out of a Lleyn, but you'll produce perfectly acceptable, saleable lambs which will sell finished or in the store without much need of cake or cosseting.  And if you can put her to a Texel, she'll produce a better lamb still.

I'm not a fan of Suffolks for a lot of reasons, but the main one is that heavy lambs is not what the market wants to buy.  So you spend more money - and effort too - getting these chunky great dopey things finished, and then get less per head than you would for a smaller but well-finished Llleyn x Texel

[georgielmgm]

Brilliant, I do also like texel crosses, I think texel peds are a bit ugly (sorry any texel fans!) but they make really nice crosses so definitely look at that as a possibility too! Thaaanks! 

[Womble]

I'm sure they would let you go look at their flocks and bend their ears.

I've always focussed on teeth, feet and udders up until now, but I'll add ear bendiness to the list too  . 
 

Lack of multiple births is fantastic too, quality over quantity, read an article in FW on a big time sheep farmer who was very very focused on quality of his ewes and repeat multiple births (3/4) were culled out as time and resource drainers...

Be careful then Georgie, my understanding is that one of the main selling points of the Lleyn is their tendency to produce lots of lambs and of course produce sufficient milk to raise them. (Edit - cross posted with Sally below.) Buy carefully if that's not what you want!
 

[Marches Farmer]

OK, so two of my 20 Lleyns (first-timers in perfact condition for lambing, according to the vet) prolapsed when they were nearly due.  Vet stitched them up (too big a prolapse for a harness).  One started lambing but then stopped.  Caesarean, twins - one died later - as the vet turned to leave the ewe jumped out of the pen, bled out internally and died 6 hours later.  Other one lambed, both lambs dead, she had had no milk. So out of a possible 6 Lleyns I'm left with one ewethat would go to cull, one bottle-fed lamb, trip to the Hunt kennels and charge for disposing of the carcases and a very large vet's bill.  No, I really don't like Lleyns!

[georgielmgm]

As long as they've got the milk, and I've got the land to deal with raising multiple births that's fine, I just don't want to end up with a)loads of caids (cute as they are) or b)lots of poor lambs because the ewe can't handle raising them, as long as they are profitable and can become just as good as twins, I'm fine 
Brilliant! Knew there would be someone to disagree! I don't think you'd ever ever find a breed that someone hadn't had a nightmare with, was waiting for someone to pop out the woodwork! Thanks 

[Foobar]

Don't flush them pre-tupping and that should avoid too many trips/quads etc.  They are prolific enough without needing to be flushed.

[waterbuffalofarmer]

I keep Lleyns myself and they're the best breed of sheep I have ever kept. The milk is lovely and so is the meat.
http://www.preloved.co.uk/adverts/list/3752/sheep.html?keyword=Lleyns
Here are some for sale
hope this helps

[georgielmgm]

Thanks for the advice foobar 
Thanks for the link, useful to see prices and things
What would people advise on ewe lambs or shearlings? Would ideally be looking to put them to a tup this year to lamb next spring and I know some people say that although ewe lambs would lamb, it isn't an ideal situation?