Jimmy's farm and home of the Essex Pig

At Jimmy's Farm we concentrate our farming on breeding rare breeds. This means that there's not many of that particular type of animal. So it's very important to keep them going. We have rare breeds of Pigs, Sheep and Cows on the farm as well as a very wide variety of chicken breeds.

On Jimmy's Farm we have Essex Pigs, Saddlebacks and Gloucester Old Spots.

All our pigs roam free in their paddocks and love rolling around in the mud! You can see the three different rare breeds when you visit the farm.

Click here to learn more about them.

We have Soay and Jacob sheep at Jimmy's Farm.

SOAY SHEEP

This breed is intelligent, nimble animals with excellent mothering habits, always with quirky behavioural traits and lots of fun to watch. They are excellent conservation grazers, being content in woodland and on hillsides. The coloured fleece is sought after for many craft uses and their carcass produces lean meat of a delicious flavour fetching premium prices for the gourmet trade.

Soay sheep are fine-boned and late maturing. The tail is short and thin. The texture of their wool can vary, from soft fine wool to more coarse hairy fibres (or "kemps"), and mixtures in-between. The fleece is, normally, shed naturally.

Rams are two-horned and the horns are strong. Ewes are either two-horned, polled, or scurred.

Soay sheep are classified as "vulnerable" on the RBST survival watch list.

JACOB SHEEP

The Jacob sheep is an alert, active sheep being upstanding and deep bodied. White with well defined black patches. Head and neck generally black with a white blaze on the face extending down the chest. Both sexes are horned. Some strains of the breed have two horns and some have four.

This breed are very easy to breed from with high success rates and it’s not uncommon to have multiple births. Jacob ewes show consistently good mothering qualities and many will give sufficient milk to rear triplets without the need to bottle feeding. They produce exceptionally full flavour and leanness as meat.

We have 4 different breeds of cattle here at Jimmy's Farm. They are Red Poll, Highland Cross, Galloway and British White. They all look incredibly different.

RED POLL

The Red Poll is derived from the original cattle of Norfolk and Suffolk. The Norfolk cow, which was a beef type, frequently blood red in colour was crossed with the Suffolk polled bull, dairy cattle, back in the 18th century. With its long traditions of both dairy and beef qualities the Red Poll is therefore one of the original native dual purpose breeds. In the first half of the last century it was one of the dominant breeds in English dairy farming, and despite a decline in numbers, it has managed to maintina these dual qualities which gives it such a valuable niche role in quality beef production.

Red Polls are a lovely calm breed and they make excellent mothers. We have a new calf of our own on the farm at the moment, a female, who is settling in wonderfully well to life on the farm.

The breed is also renowned for an excellent quality of beef, which fits perfectly with the standards we keep on the farm.

HIGHLAND CROSS

The Highland Cross breed have the ability of a pure Highland cow to survive in harsh conditions and yet produce very high quality meat. The cross means that the females have excellent milk to rear their calfs into wonderful, large meat producing cattle.

GALLOWAY

The Galloway is one of the oldest and purest of our native cattle breeds. They are famed for their hardiness and can live off the poorest of land. The Galloway female is the ideal suckler cow, and will produce an excellent beefy calf, which is in great demand by people wanting highest quality, natural grown beef.

BRITISH WHITE

The British White breed are a healthy, hardy and long living breed of catlle. They are lean and are excellent for either dairy or beef production. The mothers produce an excellent supply of milk for either one or two calfs. They are very docile cows and natural foragers for the best grazing they can find.

We have Pygmy goats at Jimmy's Farm.

The pygmy goat is hardy, good natured, genetically small, cobby and compact. Head, neck and legs are short in relation to body length. The body is full-barreled and well muscled, circumference in relation to height and weight is proportionally greater than in other breeds. The differences between the male and female are very clearly defined. They are very alert and entertaining animals, which makes them ideal for Jimmy’s Farm!

The adult females grow to roughly 16-18 inches in height and the males grow up to around 22 inches.

These stocky little goats have incredible stamina and make great mothers. The males are recognizable by being larger in height, head-shape and with longer horns.