EasyCare sheep help Tipperary based man to combine IT career with farming

Combining a full-time job as a software engineer with sheep farming is no mean feat but Josh Lamb is managing the two contrasting sides of his busy work life thanks to the low-maintenance breed of his flock.

As the name suggests, EasyCare sheep require much less labour for farmers than other breeds. They are noted for their strong meat yield, good lambing ratio and for thriving outdoors in harsh weather.

“They shed their own fleece, which means you don't have to shear them. They can be left out in the field for lambing, and they are very maternal sheep, who look after their lambs very well,” explains the Ballylooby-based farmer.

“They are also pretty good on their feet and don't need too much dosing,” he adds.

Fans of Clarkson's Farm will have come across these sheep in the latest series of the TV show detailing the ups and downs of life on Jeremy Clarkson's Diddly Squat farm in Oxfordshire in England.

Josh, who is an active member of the EasyCare Sheep Ireland, says the group has received phenomenal interest in the breed since they featured on the show.

“Kaleb (Clarkson's farm manager) had a dislike of sheep, to put it mildly, but when he saw how they performed, he bought some for himself. They seem to have done quite well.”

This is Josh's fourth year working as a part-time sheep farmer. He and his wife Sheila purchased their farm of just under 15 hectares at Ballyea near Ballylooby during the Covid pandemic in 2021 and moved lock stock and barrel from suburban Balbriggan to their new home with stunning views of the Knockmealdown Mountains.

Their farm is located close to Sheila's parents, the Hunters, who are grain farmers. Her family are originally from county Antrim and purchased their farm in Ballylooby in 1994 and moved there in 2001.

Josh is a native of Donabate in north county Dublin, and farming is also in his blood.

“From what I am told by my father, there has been a farmer in every generation of our family since the 1600s. My dad had conacre for years growing grain and vegetable crops. He did it full time in the 1980s and had a few bad years and finished up. I remember seeing him ploughing fields. He then had mushroom tunnels that finished in the 1990s.”

Josh worked on local dairy, beef and tillage farms during his school and college holidays. He also started working in IT in his teens and studied enterprise computing in DCU.

He has worked for the past 13 years for a software development company, which has its European headquarters in Dublin.

Despite his successful IT career, the Dublin man's love for farming and nature prompted him to take the plunge to buy his own farm.

“After having that little bit of experience, I decided I wanted to do it myself and run a profitable farming enterprise in partnership with nature. When I got a bit of money together, I thought I would like to give it a go.”

He completed his Green Cert by distance education at Grange Agricultural College and initially looked into suckler cow farming but opted instead to go into sheep after coming across a farmer in the United States called Greg Judy, who had low-maintenance St Croix sheep.

Josh felt sheep required less investment in terms of facilities and would also be a bit safer for young children to be around.

After researching the EasyCare breed, developed in the 1960s by Lolo Owen from Anglesea in Wales, he bought his first livestock in June 2022. He purchased 25 hogget ewes from William Hutchinson in Kilkenny and 9 ewe lambs from Peter Olden in Cork.

His flock has now grown to 100 breeding females, and he is working to increase the herd further to meet the farm's capacity.

His ability to juggle the demands of being a software engineer and farming is greatly helped by the fact he works remotely from home full-time.

“I make sure I work hard (for the IT company) because I appreciate it,” he says.

A few years before buying the farm, Josh completed a permaculture course in Sweden that looked at how you bring different nature systems together to work better together. He feels strongly about farming in harmony with nature and is in the Organic Farming Scheme.

Most of the farm is planted with multi-species sward, which is a mix of different grasses, clovers and herbs like chicory and plantain. “We haven't used any fertiliser since we bought the farm,” he points out.

The lambing season is the busiest time of the year for any sheep farmer, and this year Josh's sheep lambed over five weeks from March 2 to April 3. The majority of the ewes lambed in the field, with only a few brought indoors for adoptions.

His primary farm work over the summer months was moving the flock to fresh grazing paddocks every two to three days. During the period of drought when grass growth was poor, he supplemented their feed with oats but he generally doesn't have to do that.

He recently built a shed for wintering his flock. “I plan to put the rams out in October for four to five weeks, and once that is finished I will graze the rest of the farm out, and then they will go into the shed for the winter.”

Josh says his lambs typically make R3 grade at the factory and average about 20kgs in weight.

Due to their self-shedding fleece, Josh didn't have to worry about getting them sheared during the summer. Their hairy textured wool comes off in bits and pieces gradually and disappears into the grass.

Josh says he is working to weed out those sheep in his flock that don't fully shed their coat.

Indeed, he is putting his IT skills to good use to achieve this and other improvements to his flock by developing a data software system based on the Cloud Native System to collate information on each of his sheep. The software system is integrated with each sheep's tag and allows him to track weekly a range of information from weight to success at fleece shedding.

Josh is exploring the possibility of developing the data software system commercially for other farmers to use. “I built it earlier in the year and I am still refining it. I am using the system extensively out in the field. Having the sheep allows me to test the software.”

He is involved in spreading the word to other farmers about EasyCare sheep through his involvement in EasyCare Sheep Ireland, which was founded in 2024. He is the group's operations and technical officer and has showcased the breed with fellow group members at Tullamore Show and other agricultural shows around the country.

Josh pays tribute to fellow farmers, both locally and involved in EasyCare Sheep Ireland, who have been very generous with their time and knowledge in helping him to get established. He is also very appreciative of the welcome he and his family have received from the local community.

While the majority of Josh's income comes from his off-farm job, he hopes the money he makes from his sheep will become a bigger share of his overall income in the years ahead.

“The first year the farm was profitable was 2024 after starting in 2022. I obviously have had investments to make, but so far it's going well.”

Income aside, he finds working with his sheep good for his mental health while his daughters Rebecca (8), Isabelle (7) and Sophie (4) love them and are starting to get involved in rearing them.

If any of his daughters is interested in farming when they grow up, he hopes he will have a viable enterprise to hand over that fits in with their lifestyle.