Our Little Farm
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Nine Acres of Heaven
We wanted to keep sheep from the beginning and looked at various breeds like Herdwicks, Jacobs etc, but being novice shepherds we decided to keep to the breed that is common to these parts, the Welsh Mountain.
These small sheep have evolved over the centuries to become very hardy and well adapted at living on the sparse grazing and steep inclines.
Having said that, all shepherds know that sheep have a tendency to just drop down dead. One minute they are happily chewing the cud and the next they have stopped breathing.
Once you accept this peculiarity keeping sheep is a lot of fun, but also a lot of hard work.
Pigs are easy to grow and convert. Just pop a pig into a pen, feed it every day and at the end of a few months you have an animal heavy with delicious meat.
Sheep by comparison take a lot more time and energy just to keep them alive.
Lambing always seem to come when the weather is at its worst. Cold, rain, snow is always on the menu at lambing. The tiny lambs enter this wet chilly world and often their mother’s just walk off and leave them, having forgotten, that they have just given birth!
Other ewes luckily are better mothers and nuzzle their fragile young to suckle and take the life giving colostrum from their udder which gives the lamb the building blocks for survival. This suckling also makes the bond between mother and baby.
Lambs from one mother may try and suckle from another and will meet short shrift for their efforts. The ewe will butt the lamb away making sure that her milk is only taken by her own young.
Sheep are prone to all manner of tummy upsets and this leads to scouring. This requires the ewe to be dagged where all the soiled fleece from around the back end and the tail is cut away, as in the photo at right. This is also done before lambing to ensure a clean delivery.
This year the weather was warm and wet just after lambing, so we knew that the flock might be prone to fly strike. We have been free of this nasty disease for many years, but this year it returned with a vengeance and all the farmers around were suffering.
We treated our flock against the fly, but still lost some new born’s to this terrible disease which once it takes a hold, has no real cure.
The remaining lambs are very healthy and when the flock was shorn last week the farmer who helped us us, remarked what good condition our little flock was in!
The ram and the new lambs
Jess with Annie the lead ewe
Short back and sides please
Lambing in the snow
Spring grass at last