Published: 26 March 2019
Clayhidon farming family have won national recognition
for the quality of their sheep.
Graham and Anne Langford farm 110 Polled Dorset sheep at Great Garlandhayes with their son Joss and his family. Every year around half of their lambs are sold to Waitrose supermarkets and the rest are used as breeding rams and ewes.
Graham, a former management consultant who switched to farming less than 20 years ago, applies an old principle from his former career: “If you don’t measure it you can’t manage it.”
Their meticulously cared-for flock have been measured, weighed and tested for the past 15 years and have shown dramatic improvements in size and quality. This has now been verified by EBLEX, a national body dedicated to improving the English lamb and beef industries, which has voted the Langfords’ Blackdown Flock as “the Most Improved Flock of Dorset Sheep in England for 2015”.
for the quality of their sheep.
Graham and Anne Langford farm 110 Polled Dorset sheep at Great Garlandhayes with their son Joss and his family. Every year around half of their lambs are sold to Waitrose supermarkets and the rest are used as breeding rams and ewes.
Graham, a former management consultant who switched to farming less than 20 years ago, applies an old principle from his former career: “If you don’t measure it you can’t manage it.”
Their meticulously cared-for flock have been measured, weighed and tested for the past 15 years and have shown dramatic improvements in size and quality. This has now been verified by EBLEX, a national body dedicated to improving the English lamb and beef industries, which has voted the Langfords’ Blackdown Flock as “the Most Improved Flock of Dorset Sheep in England for 2015”.
Poll Dorsets are a hornless version of the old Dorset Horn breed. Unusually they naturally produce lambs at any time of year, which is why the Langfords time their lambs to reach maturity between Christmas and Easter, before other English sheep farmers can get their produce into the shops.