Nov 2, 2026 · 41 min · 12 segments
Host Ben Eagle talks to Will Roobottom, a Staffordshire farmer who runs 700 breeding ewes and hogs across two farms and won Sheep Farmer of the Year at the British Farming Awards. Will explains how he…
Ben EagleHost
In terms of your overall business model, I know that when you were in the family farm, you had an A block, which is your sort of pedigree breeding flock, and a B block, which is the commercial flock where you're producing your lambs.
Obviously, we bought the sheep here at this new farm because we've got to stock the farm.
And then the best performing sheep, so any ewe lambs that are twins doing, there's a bit more to it using Signet recording like, performance figures but roughly if they do 250 grams a day day live weight gain off grass alone and there's a twin at 8 weeks 16 weeks and 21 week weeks they get kept as a Ulam so at 8 week weights it shows that they're producing well off their mum's milk And then the tradition 16-week means that they do well off a mixed milk and forage diet.
We wean lambs once they're over 25 kilos, or the group has pretty much got above that, which is roughly around 12 weeks old.
And using those figures, it makes us know, are you and the lamb performing at all those key points? And then they should become a good mum too.
We want to produce a carcass which is a free RL that is what 85, 90% of the market wants, which a purebred clean will do.
And we believe if you can do that with as little intervention as possible, that's the best way
Yes, so the UROP grid, basically down one side, you've got 1, 2, 3, well, 1, 2, 3L, 3H, 4L, 4H, 5, L and H mean light and heavy.
The peachy of the bum is, And the more muscle they've got, the higher they go down one side and the fatter they get from one to five, the higher the number gets.
But you want to kind of sit in the middle of that grid because that's what most buyers want.

Great so you've sort of described in a roundabout way I suppose the traits that you are looking at but in terms of that weight gain as well you've also described your pasture management in terms of those paddocks but if you're really sort of getting into it from what you've what you've sort of seen so far mostly at home and what how you're going to practice on this farm as well how do does your grass and your pasture management directly relate to that weight gain? How can you actually take action on one and then see the results on the other?
We were, when I started off, my pasture management probably wasn't the best.

In terms of your overall business model, I know that when you were in the family farm, you had an A block, which is your sort of pedigree breeding flock, and a B block, which is the commercial flock where you're producing your lambs.
Obviously, we bought the sheep here at this new farm because we've got to stock the farm.
And then the best performing sheep, so any ewe lambs that are twins doing, there's a bit more to it using Signet recording like, performance figures but roughly if they do 250 grams a day day live weight gain off grass alone and there's a twin at 8 weeks 16 weeks and 21 week weeks they get kept as a Ulam so at 8 week weights it shows that they're producing well off their mum's milk And then the tradition 16-week means that they do well off a mixed milk and forage diet.
We wean lambs once they're over 25 kilos, or the group has pretty much got above that, which is roughly around 12 weeks old.
And using those figures, it makes us know, are you and the lamb performing at all those key points? And then they should become a good mum too.
We want to produce a carcass which is a free RL that is what 85, 90% of the market wants, which a purebred clean will do.
And we believe if you can do that with as little intervention as possible, that's the best way
Yes, so the UROP grid, basically down one side, you've got 1, 2, 3, well, 1, 2, 3L, 3H, 4L, 4H, 5, L and H mean light and heavy.
The peachy of the bum is, And the more muscle they've got, the higher they go down one side and the fatter they get from one to five, the higher the number gets.
But you want to kind of sit in the middle of that grid because that's what most buyers want.

Great so you've sort of described in a roundabout way I suppose the traits that you are looking at but in terms of that weight gain as well you've also described your pasture management in terms of those paddocks but if you're really sort of getting into it from what you've what you've sort of seen so far mostly at home and what how you're going to practice on this farm as well how do does your grass and your pasture management directly relate to that weight gain? How can you actually take action on one and then see the results on the other?
We were, when I started off, my pasture management probably wasn't the best.
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