Preserve sheep brought back by young chap in West (9)
I believe the answer is:
marmalade
'preserve' is the definition.
(marmalade is a kind of preserve)
'sheep brought back by young chap in west' is the wordplay.
'sheep' becomes 'ram' (ram is a kind of sheep).
'brought back' says the letters should be written backwards.
'by young chap' becomes 'lad' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'west' becomes 'mae' (I've seen this before).
'ram' written backwards gives 'mar'.
'lad' placed within 'mae' is 'malade'.
'mar'+'malade'='MARMALADE'
(Other definitions for marmalade that I've seen before include "confiture" , "group?" , "Jame made from citrus fruits" , "Kind of cat" , "Eleven's [PRESERVE]" .)