Soils

Lyking farm is a 174ha suckler cow unit based in the parish of Sandwick, some 12 miles from Orkney’s main town of Kirkwall. Its 120 spring calving cows are mainly Simmental crosses which run with Limousin and Simmental bulls to produce stores sold at around 18 months of age. The soils at Lyking are all non-calcareous gleys of the Thurso association derived from Old Red Sandstone, and fall into two different soil series. The best land is of the imperfectly drained Bilbster series, whilst the heavier soils fall under the poorly drained Thurso series. The land is categorised under the Macaulay Land Capability for Agriculture (LCA) classification as 4.1 and 4.2. which is land capable of producing a narrow range of crops, primarily grassland, with short breaks of cereal and forage crops.