Sheep in Modern Britain: the Stratification Technique

The breeding of sheep for meat in modern Britain aims to produce lamb carcasses with a minimum of fat and bone. It is a complex business which maximizes land use in the wet, cold uplands of the west and the north. It depends on a system of ‘stratification’, a close interplay between the hill and lowland farms, which developed in the second half of the 19th century. The ‘improved’ breeds from the 19th century and a handful of imported exotic breeds are used.

The process starts on mountain farms. First, flocks of pure mountain breeds—Swaledale and Dales bred in the Pennines, Herdwicks in the Lake District, Cheviots on the Scottish Borders, and Blackfaces in the Highlands—are maintained on moorland. A proportion of ewes (females) produced by these flocks are mated with rams from lowland breeds such as Leicester, Wensleydale, or Teeswater to produce a generation of cross-bred lambs. These combine the hardiness and good mothering qualities of their dams and the rapid growth of their sires. The female lambs are sold to lowland farms, where they are mated with rams from breeds bred especially for meat, such as Suffolk, Downland breeds, Texels, and French breeds. The progeny of this crossing form the bulk of the lamb sold in butchers' shops up and down the country. At all levels, flocks of pure-bred animals must be maintained to provide breeding stock for the future, and the excess lambs from these, plus all the cross-bred males, also enter the market as meat animals.