The weeks running up to tupping are when a sheep enterprise handles its flock more intensively than at any point outside lambing, and handling reveals losses that would otherwise go unnoticed for weeks. Martlands provides licensed fallen stock and ABP collection to flocks from the Lancashire mosslands to the Cumbrian fells, and breeding season fallen stock collection has a rhythm that is worth planning for rather than reacting to. The late summer and early autumn workload is driven less by dramatic incidents than by the accumulated culling and casualty decisions that a thorough pre-tupping assessment forces.
Why Losses Cluster Before and During Tupping
Bringing ewes in for condition scoring, dagging, vaccination and foot inspection puts every animal through a gate under somebody’s eye, often for the first time since weaning. Ewes carrying long-standing problems get identified, and a proportion of those are beyond treatment. Some are culled on welfare grounds, others die during or shortly after handling because the stress of gathering finds animals that were compensating quietly on the hill. Neither outcome is a failure of stockmanship, but both generate fallen stock over a compressed period.
Rams create a separate and less predictable workload. Tups are high-value animals kept in small groups and put under enormous physical demand for six weeks. Fighting injuries during the run-up, and losses from a variety of causes once they are working, mean that an individual ram death can represent a substantial financial event as well as a compliance one. Where a ram dies unexpectedly and there is any suggestion of a notifiable or infectious cause, the veterinary surgeon’s view should be sought before the animal is moved anywhere.
What the Regulations Require Through This Period
The Animal By-Products (Enforcement) (England) Regulations 2013 apply to a culled ewe exactly as they apply to one found dead in a field. Any animal that dies on the holding, or is killed on the holding for a purpose other than human consumption, is fallen stock and must be collected within twenty-four hours of discovery by a licensed collector. Burial and burning on the holding have been unlawful since 2003, with narrow exceptions for genuinely remote areas that do not cover the great majority of the North West.
Sheep are handled as Category 1 material and cannot be mixed with lower-risk streams. Our Category 1 ABP collection operates under Animal By-Products Licence No APB/CCN21/373/8002, Waste Carrier Licence CB/QE5406MT and Site Licence EAWML/100236, with a Commercial Document issued for every collection.
Culling Decisions and the Twenty-Four Hour Window
There is a practical point here that trips up otherwise well-run flocks. When a decision is taken to cull a group of ewes on welfare grounds over several days, each animal’s twenty-four hour window starts at its own point, not at the end of the exercise. Holding four ewes for three days so that one collection can take all of them is not compliant, however sensible it feels. The better approach is to plan the culling around a booked collection date rather than the reverse, so the animals and the vehicle arrive in the same window.
Where a flock is working through a large pre-tupping cull, tell us the expected numbers when you book. A scheduled visit within our farm and fallen stock collection service handles a planned group far more efficiently than a series of individual call-outs, and it produces a cleaner record.
Gathering Losses on Hill and Upland Ground
On fell and moorland units the pre-tupping gather is the point at which animals lost during the summer are finally accounted for. Some are found dead on the hill in a condition that makes cause of death impossible to establish, and some are found in places a vehicle will never reach. The realistic answer is to bring what can be brought to an accessible collection point and to be honest in your records about what could not be recovered, because an invented account is worse than an incomplete one.
Access is the practical constraint across much of our upland work, and it shapes how collections are planned rather than whether they happen. Our guidance on how fallen stock collection supports upland and remote farms covers the arrangements that tend to work, including agreed roadside collection points and timings that fit around a gather rather than cutting across it.
The Regional Picture Through Early Autumn
The flock geography we serve runs from lowland grassland flocks in West Lancashire, where tupping is early and the ground is easy, through the Bowland and Pennine fringe, and north into the fells. In Cumbria fallen stock collection the season starts later, the gathers are larger, and single collections routinely involve more animals than a lowland unit produces in a month.
Around Kendal fallen stock collection and the southern Lakes the mix of in-bye and fell ground means both patterns can occur on the same holding, with the in-bye flock handled on a lowland timetable while the hill flock runs several weeks behind. Journey time from Burscough up the M6 is short enough that this remains an area we cover on a same-day basis where it is needed.
Records That Support Your Assurance Position
Pre-tupping is a period of high recorded activity, with medicine records, condition scores and culling decisions all being generated at once, and the fallen stock documentation needs to sit alongside them. Every Martlands collection generates a Commercial Document, and where relevant a Waste Transfer Note, both accepted for Red Tractor, DEFRA audit, ISO 14001 and local authority inspection purposes. Bookings run through the KoLeCt system so each collection carries a traceable reference.
The wider requirements for a sheep enterprise, including the record-keeping expectations and how the collection documentation fits with holding records, are set out in our guide to fallen stock collection for sheep farmers. Reading it before the gather is considerably more useful than reading it afterwards.
Planning the Season With Us
If you know your handling dates, we can work to them. A flock that expects to cull a defined group over a fortnight is a predictable piece of work, and slotting it into an existing round is straightforward when we have notice. Ring 01704 776977 to book a collection or to discuss arrangements for the breeding season, or use contact us if you would rather set it up in writing.
