The Aranui Flock
The Aranui Jacob flock began in 2020, when we purchased six ewes from the Coldwood Pedigree flock in Kent. Linda Brown introduced us to both this versatile breed and the friendly Jacob sheep community. Fast forward to 2025 and we have 25 ewes, 49 lambs and 34 hoggets and a selection of handsome rams all registered with the Jacob Sheep Society.
We are based in the North Pennines and that comes with the full force of the British weather in all its glory, from sunny perfection to driving rain and deep snow and ice in the long dark winter months. Our flock graze on the fells, on steep hills, I would be lying if I said that they don’t love a barn to snooze in, but they live out in all weathers and are fit, healthy and excellent mothers. Their thick fleeces keeping them warm. Our lambing is usually over Easter in April, which allows us to let the ewes to remain outdoors and as natural as possible.
The Ewes
Our ewes are true to the Jacob breed, they are amazing mothers. We spend a lot of time with them, and know their personalities. We keep a selection of ewes lambs each year and can see the family traits as our original six have become grandmothers.
Mary, Minnie, Connie, Wilma and Primrose have all raised triplets, Mary even surprising us with Quads in 2024. Jenifer has produced big twins every year, with one exception, when we found her in the field early last march with a single lamb who was quite clearly not a Jacob! our neighbours Zwartble ram had obviously made.a visit over the wall.
The ewes from the first lambs we had in 2021, Isadora, Isabel, Indie, Isla, Iris, Ivy, Ixora and Iza (you may guess that the letter I was a theme that year) have also been fantastic mothers. When Mary had her quads, her daughter Isabel had just given birth to a single and we popped one of the quads with her and she adopted it with no hesitation. We have never experienced a ewe reject her lambs.
It has also been a pleasure to see our ewes who have gone on to other Jacob flocks and become successful mothers in their own right.
The rams with their magnificent curling horns
Hieronymus Bosch, Kinloch Kudu and Riverbank Coal our three rams, bringing in bloodlines from successful pedigree flocks in the South, North and Scotland.
Jacobs are a slower growing breed than the some of the more commercial sheep breeds, and we made the decision early on to leave our tup lambs entire, rather than castrate as lambs. This gives us a chance to see how they develop, and keeps those beautiful horns. Our own Aranui Rua, has produced some fantastic lambs.
The rams are all calm and fantastic natures, they are kept in a flock together. We allow them to grow and keep them till they are two or three. The perfect Jacob marked rams are registered with the Jacob Sheep Society and sold as rams for their own flock. The other boys are produced for meat boxes, the feedback on our hogget and mutton meat is fantastic, including in some local restaurants. It cannot be compared to lamb from the supermarket!
Our Teaser
Aranui Tuatahi (Footstep), deserves a special section to himself. He was the first born Aranui lamb, the first of Mary’s triplets, and his name means first. He has always been footstep however, due to a marking in his spots that looked like a footstep. Footstep was the lamb that naturally liked attention, he would sit next to me with his head on my foot, and always come over for attention. He is always calm and yet manages to be leader of the pack. He is very handsome but perhaps a little bit short and with a narrow blaze, to be a ram. We used to have quite drawn out lambings, and having investigated teasers and discussed with our vet, we decided that Footstep had a job and one vasectomy later we now have a much tighter lambing.