Livestock Initiatives
Select Farms Scheme
To supply Marks and Spencer with top quality beef and lamb we operate a Select Farm Scheme. Only farmers producing sucker beef animals are members of the beef scheme. The farm must be Farm Quality Assured and meet additional welfare, management and environmental standards.
Aberdeen Angus Club
Increasing demand for fully traceable quality Angus beef encouraged us to establish our own Aberdeen Angus club. This initiative gives farmers a clearly structured bonus payment scheme for their Angus cattle, allowing them to develop breeding policies with security. The basic bonus is payable on all registered Aberdeen Angus that are within the specified weights and grades. A substantially higher bonus is payable on sucker bred Angus cattle from Linden Select Farms. There is a pre-slaughter registration requirement for all Angus cattle. This allows for pre-slaughter traceability to be carried out. Random DNA tests are carried out on selected animals to provide extra confidence to our customers.
Rosé Veal
We have established a successful Rosé veal market in Europe, and have developed a livestock system to produce calves suitable for these outlets. The calves are fed a special concentrate and roughage diet to produce a pink meat, and are slaughtered from 8 to 11 months of age. This is an extremely welfare friendly system that allows Holstein bull calves to be reared on specialist units in Northern Ireland rather than being exported to white veal systems in Europe.
Rissington Lamb
To produce year round tender lamb with consistent flavour we have introduced specialised New Zealand sheep genetics to Northern Ireland. On the maternal side the Highlander composite ewe has excellent fertility and easy lambing traits while the Primera ram has the ability to mature quickly and efficiently to produce a good carcase. This is an opportunity for local farmers to work closely with Marks and Spencer and Linden Foods to produce quality specialised lamb for an established market. As part of the incentive to producers we have introduced a Price Pledge to improve predictability of farmers? return.
Linden Livestock
Launched early in 2008, this new branch of the Linden Foods Group has been established with the sole purpose of ensuring adequate supplies of livestock in the future. Linden Livestock, working in association with Blade Farming, will establish a network of calf rearing units in Northern Ireland for the purpose of rearing calves to 12 weeks of age. The calves will pass at this stage on to specialist beef finishers to be finished using a number of different finishing systems, ranging from intensive cereal finishing to extensive grass based finishing. This integrated approach to beef farming will create opportunities for large and small scale producers who face great uncertainty at present.