Our Beef

Devons produce wonderfully succulent, marbled beef with an excellent flavour.

All our beef cattle are pedigree ‘Red Ruby’ Devon and are born and raised at West Ilkerton. They are grass fed, kept as naturally as possible to minimise stress and are treated with compassion at all times.

During the spring, summer and autumn, they graze in large fields that have a variety of grass and scrub in them plus running water, so they are free to choose open ground or shade and shelter.

We use steers (castrated male calves) for our beef. When they are the correct weight, at around 26 months old, we take them to the local abattoir in Combe Martin ourselves. Our meat is dry-aged in a cold store at Combe Martin Meats for at least three weeks before being cut and packed by their master butcher.

All cuts are vacuum packed for freshness, and our beef burgers and sausages are put in freezer bags. The sausages and beef burgers are gluten free.

Our Lamb

All our lambs are born and raised here at West Ilkerton.

We have a flock of pedigree Exmoor horn ewes, and breed both purebred Exmoor horns and ‘halfbreds’ (crossed with a Border Leicester). These halfbred ewes are then put to a Texel or Chartex ram to get a larger, leaner carcass than a typical Exmoor horn would produce.

Lambing takes place indoors during the last two weeks of March and first two weeks of April. As soon as the lambs are strong enough, and if the weather is okay, they are let out into fields of fresh spring grass with their mothers and they stay outside in the fields until weaning in September, when the ewes and lambs are separated. The lambs are then let out as a flock on the lush after-grass from our hay and silage fields on the home side of the farm. Some ewe lambs are kept as flock replacements, some are sold for breeding to other farms and the best of our wether lambs (castrated males) are kept for our meat boxes while the rest are sold as store lambs at Blackmoor Gate market.

We take our meat lambs to the abattoir at Combe Martin ourselves. The meat is air dried in a cold store for up to a week before being cut and packaged according to our customer’s requirements by the master butcher at Combe Martin.