The Hosting Farm

Norrby farm

Norrby farm is a modern professional sheep farm in Västmanland with intensive lamb production. In combinations with nature conservation the environmental work on the farm is a key part of Norrby Farm’s success concept.

On 180 hectares of arable land, Tomas and Anna grow grassland and cereals both

winter feed for the animals and for sale. Most of what is grown is wheat, barley and lupine.

The farm also has 150 hectares of natural pastures to take care of.

For over 30 years, Tomas, Anna and the family have worked with lamb products, in recent years they developed environmental work and raise the lambs on grass. The Olsson family breeds 1,500 slaughter lamb plus own recruitment every year. They also recruit and live stock within the breeds Dorset, Suffolk and Texel. The slaughter lamb production is geared towards both spring lambs with slaughter until Easter and autumn lambs raised on grass alone.

Norrby Farm has a goal of becoming self-sufficient 100% and they are almost there. The farm is working with precision grazing system where the idea is that the lambs that are slaughtered in the fall should be bred only on grass, then it requires that you have good grass in the fall.

Norrby Farm works with both herbs and grasses in mix, partly to provide a good balance in what the sheep graze but also to offer good bait throughout the season.

The Olsson family and Norrby farm

Tomas and Anna started their lamb productionon1991 at Norrby farm where Tomas was born. The very first ewe on the farm was bought by Tomas' mother the same year Tomas was born, in 1972.

Today, Norrby farm is Sweden's largest breeder. The three legs of the farm are breeding (live stock), production (lamb, the main focus of the farm) and entrepreneur (grown in recent years, lime and manure spreading in Mälardalen). On the farm, in addition to Tomas himself, Lovisa works as an animal keeper and his son Linus, who runs the entrepreneurial part. During the high season, Tomas also has the help of Rasmus, the eldest son.

In 1991, Tomas bought the first herding dog, Ronja from Hedene, Rose from Harry Thompson. Today it is Nötvallens Jean who manages the farm's  sheep together.

with Thomas. During grazing season, dogs are used daily in work, more or less.

The Sheep
Today there are about 700 fine wool/Dorset ewes, they are usually mixed with Texel or Suffolk where the offspring become slaughter lambs. On the farm there are also 100 purebred fine wool ewes that will be mixed with the Dorset for recruitment to create the mother bars, "findorset ewe". There are also around 100 Dorset, Suffolk and Texel on the farm to be able to produce their own rams. The sheep in the yard are used to dogs. Tomas believes there will be challenges at the trial. In the trial groups it will be crossing fine wool / dorset (findorset) but it will also be mixed with purebred fine wool. The aim is to make a fair and equal trial as possible says Tomas.

Lambing

The farm lambs about a third of the stock in December/January, these lambs are slaughtered in the spring. The next lambing then takes place in April and the lambs are released out to graze when they are one to two weeks old. These lambs are then slaughtered during autumn.  

The farm has worked with restaurants and restaurant wholesalers since 1997.

To be able to take advantage of all resources - sustainability work since a few years back Norrby farm also takes care of all the wool and sell it to factories. It is used and delivered to  

to hundreds of shops around the Nordic region. In order to be able to deliver wool, the farm must get at least 2 tons of wool which takes a while almost year to work together.

"It's not what we live on, but it's fun and is part of the sustainability work.

Norrby  Farm has received several awards and prizes, including HKScan's environmental award, nomination farmer of the year, ambassador of the year Mälardalen and lamb entrepreneur of the year.