TE Williams & Sons Red House

Red House Farm’s Welsh Mules on target 

TE Williams & Sons of Red House, Trefeglwys, Caersws have been producing prime finished lambs for Waitrose from Welsh Mule ewes for nearly 15 years via Livestock Marketing Ltd in Aberystwyth.

The family’s flock of Welsh Mule ewes are crossed with Texel rams to produce lambs from the third week of February and through March to enable them to start supplying the Waitrose scheme from May and to continue to do so regularly afterwards.

“We’ve always found the Welsh Mule to be an ideal ewe for us” said Russell Williams of Red House Farm. “She will regularly achieve a good lambing percentage and the Welsh Mule really is an excellent mother. In fact ,she performed better this year under harsh conditions than any of our other breeds or cross breeds. She is very milky and is able to rear lambs that grow well and quickly, lambs that have good carcases that consistently hit the exacting specification that our customers expect”

Even though the 2013 lambing season was especially demanding for everyone, with very challenging weather conditions making lambing difficult, Red House Farm still managed to get lambs away at the same time as normal, admittedly at slightly lower weight than the usual 19kg plus due to the season but more will be on the way in the next few weeks.

In three draws starting on 23rd May, the Williams family supplied two hundred and seventeen lambs to Waitrose and two hundred and five, or ninety five per cent, were bang on target with carcases coming to an average weight of 18.1kg.

	23rd May	6th June	14th June	Total
Number Entered	44	112	61	217
No hitting specification	41	107	57	205
% Hitting Spec	93.2%	95.5%	93.4%	94.5%
Average Weight	18.0	18.1	18.3	18.1