Dutch Spotted sheep success for Metcalfe family near Masham

A chance meeting with Ewan Metcalfe from Leighton, near Masham, at the 2023 Masham Sheep Fair was as a consequence of me being quite taken by the conformation and natural presentation of his Dutch Spotted aged ram, which was to go on to become male breed champion.

This pedigree ram, called Eden Dynamite Jack, had all the characteristics I would personally look for in a breeding sire and with the ability to produce much more than just a top quality butchers' lamb.

So, as the dust settled after the Masham Sheep Fair and we found a dry weekend, I popped up to Leighton Hall Farm to meet up with the Metcalf family and get a feel of their farming enterprise of sheep and cattle, and the more recent addition of the Dutch Spotted.

On my arrival, it transpired that I already knew Chris Metcalfe, Ewan's father, and not just from his role as chief cattle steward at the Nidderdale Show.

It was no surprise as I walked through the cattle sheds housing their powerful Limousin cross cows, which are put back to pure Limousin bulls, that the family take pride in their stock.

Incidentally, the farm backs on to Sourmire Moor and includes a 50-hectare walled allotment, all running up to a thousand feet.

I was equally interested that, partly due to Ewan's vision for the future, they no longer run Swaledales but instead now buy in strong shearling mules from Leyburn and Northallerton to cross with the Texel to produce smart, strong store lambs with shape.

Their flock is further complemented by keeping back 150 of their own best mule cross Texel gimmer lambs, which are put to the Beltex as shearlings.

So, where does the Dutch Spotted fit into all this? Ewan's mother Deb, who recently retired from her career as a midwife, was looking for a small enterprise of her own that complement the daily routine.

Ewan was quick to pick up on this idea and they started off with three in-lamb ewes three years ago, and the Daynes Folly flock was born. They have currently put 14 pedigree ewes to Jack, who looked just as well two months after I had seen him at the sheep fair. They are also keeping back a further five pedigree gimmer lambs as replacements for next year.

When I visited the Metcalfes, Jack was currently running with a small group of first cross Dutch Spotted from mule cross Texels, and as seems to be the case, the first cross comes black rather than coloured.

As Ewan said, it will be interesting to see which route this takes them, thought in his opinion performance is far more important that colouration.

When researching the Dutch Spotted breed, I discovered that this breed in the Netherlands is known as the Bonte Schaap (which means coloured sheep) and was developed from a thrifty type of sheep, recorded as far back as the early 1800s, when they were used to graze and thus stabilise the embankments of the newly formed dykes, created as part of the land reclamation.

They then became quietly unnoticed until the 1950s when farmers started crossing them with the Texels of that era, which themselves had undergone a similar improvement some 50 years before by using a couple of British breeds to increase their scale and size, with many of these rams comfortably weighing in at 130/140 kilos. Ironically, the Texel breed did not arrive in the UK until the 1970s.

It was also decided to include some Zwartbles blood in the Dutch Spotted where this dual purpose dairy breed was to fix their female traits whilst being slightly lighter boned than many of their Texel counterparts, yet having scale and colour.

After some 30 years, this crossing eventually came to an end and they were bred to type thereafter to produce what I saw up at Leighton, sheep with scale and conformation, and because they are not too heavily boned, having a high killing out percentage

They should be narrower at the shoulders than at the rear end, not too strong in the head and relatively tight fleeced, making them easy to lamb. They are also good on their feet and are able to walk correctly, a major advantage on any hill farm.

Obviously having only been in this country since 2016, the breed is still finding its way, though in the hands of the Metcalf family, and other commercial farmers like them, the breed has the potential to become a recognised terminal sire while still able to indulge those who wish to cross them with the Jacob – or any other breed for that matter – to produce a paddock sheep just for the pleasure of looking at.

Having included other family members, we should also mention to the two girls in Ewan's life, his wife Hannah, who is a nurse, and their two-year-old daughter Bonnie, who is already in the habit of stealing the show.