Andrew Arbuckle: Following the herd is not always the best way forward for the industry

In A week or two, the Suffolk Sheep Society will hold its annual ram sale in Edinburgh, thus kicking off the annual season of such events. For me, the sale will be the first anniversary of getting a great deal of verbal kicking for my report.

My crime was to report the comments of a former breed society president who spoke adversely on the type of animal now being presented for sale.

Equally, he spoke in favour of "easy care" sheep, which he claimed were the future.

My accusers claimed that, in reporting these controversial words, I had detracted from the sale, which is their premier event. I took several abusive phone calls from pedigree breeders echoing that sentiment - one told me straight out that "there are parts of Aberdeenshire I should not go".

For those who are not involved in sheep politics, one of the strongholds of Suffolk sheep breeding is in the North East of Scotland.

Being something of a big feardie, I immediately added Maud, Oldmeldrum and Turriff to Helmand Province and the Ardoyne as my personal "no go" areas.

This memory was brought back to me this past week at a conference organised by the Scottish Agricultural College where the big message was "easy care" sheep management.

Sheep guru John Vipond laid into the modern trend of over-feeding ram lambs prior to sale. This, he maintained, made them lazy, prone to disease and generally reduced their active life.

He instead suggested that a less-intensive upbringing might double the length of active service they could provide and also double the number of ewes they could cover.

It struck me then that those pedigree breeders pushing their ram lambs on prior to sale are actually very good business people. Using the figures above, they have created a market four times the size it actually needs to be. That is very smart - unless you are a commercial producer who may see the issue from the other end of the equation.

Another advocate of "easy care" production speaking at the conference was Murray Rohloff, who has seen how the sheep industry in New Zealand has been transformed by this system.

But whether there is the will to convert UK sheep production is another matter. I noted that Rohloff gave the late Dan Buglass the same message four years ago and little has changed in the UK since then.

There may be a few pioneers holding on-farm sales with the tups on offer coming straight off the grass. These same pioneers are often also using estimated breeding values to promote their sales, but less than 5 per cent of the tups sold in Scotland have paperwork with that breeding bonus. The vast majority of buyers are still sticking to the visual impact associated with ram sales.

The sheep industry is very conservative and for conservative minds, the "it's aye been done this way" attitude is much less painful to the thought processes. My own bet is that the current system will continue.

But then I should tell you that I also thought England would win the World Cup and Murray would take Wimbledon, so my betting record is not too good.

What might change the current situation is if there was a financial bonus for buying rams with good performance figures. The Welsh Assembly has backed that move and it will be interesting to see if money talks.

In TELLING me how lazy, overfed rams would lie down and overheat their tackle, Vipond contributed to the second most unusual comment of my week.

The winner was Dr Scott Johnson, who was talking about bio-control of insect pests. That is the fancy term for some bugs eating other bugs in order to prevent crop damage. In the case he was discussing, the seven-spotted ladybird was the predator. Yes, you read that correctly, ladybirds are mean little creatures when they see aphids.

Johnson produced figures showing the ladybirds preferred juicy young aphids to older members of the family. A question was then asked about the experiment: had the ladybirds been used to eating aphids before they were tested?

The answer and winning comment was: "Yes, aphids had been part of their eating experience".

He also said one of the problems for fruit growers using bio-control was the predators left "body parts" in the crop, meaning they may leave a leg or two behind if they do not fancy them for lunch.

I now have nightmares about my "body parts" being found in a trough of cabbages after the pedigree sheep breeders get hold of me and decide I should be part of the sheep's "eating experience". Life as an agricultural reporter can be tough.