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We didn’t always keep sheep on the farm, and they only appeared here about 38 years ago.
When I was growing up, I had a preconceived notion of what a shepherd was.
The image in my mind was of an old man bent over and leaning on a crook with his trusty sheepdog close by.
How times have changed. With the advance of television and social media, it’s now very trendy for a shepherd to be young and female. It is a positive change in our industry that is wonderful to see.
I’m definitely all for giving young people, whether male or female, a chance in farming.
Control
A few years ago, my eldest son came home from Scotland and took over the running of the sheep enterprise on this farm. I totally stepped back and give him full control to do as he saw fit. I don’t interfere in his decision-making, but I am there if he wants my advice.
Memories
When I look back at my time keeping sheep I have some very fond memories. It can be very satisfying to walk through a field with young lambs, especially when the weather is good, and the lambs are racing around.
I have other memories that are not as nice.
When I started keeping sheep I had no houses for them and everything was lambed outside. My wife, Elizabeth, and I would get up every night for over two months and walk through the fields with a torch to check ewes.
It became a bit of a ritual. There were those nights with heavy rain when you could be sure there would be something lambing. We’d stand in the rain for a while, watching, and then would decide to grab the ewe and see what was going on.
There was always a bit of sport catching them, often involving a race round and round and eventually a rugby tackle. Quite often, we would fall out and have a few choice words for each other.
Even though the sheep are penned, there’s still catching to be done and sheep to be moved to where you want them
In most cases, the lambs were coming right, and patience would have seen them prevail.
Although there were times that the lambs weren’t presented properly and we had done the right thing catching them.
There were a few years when Elizabeth was pregnant or the children were young that I had to do this all on my own. Those were tough years. I would have to run to catch the ewe, then I would have to try and hold her and assist her to lamb without her breaking away.
Housed
Compared to that, my son William has made massive strides. The sheep are all housed for lambing, and he has cameras in all the sheds so that ewes can be watched on the mobile phones day or night. He has made the system a lot easier to manage. I don’t think he would have any interest in going back to the way I was sheep farming.
He has the system set up that he can do most of the work himself. The only problem is that, no matter how good you are, everyone needs some sleep.
So Elizabeth and I keep an eye on the sheep from 10pm until about 3am. William then gets up at 4am and works through to 10pm the next night.
It means everyone gets some sleep, but it still brings back lots of memories. Even though the sheep are penned, there’s still catching to be done and sheep to be moved to where you want them. Then there’s the task of holding the ewe while trying to pull a lamb out that doesn’t really want to enter this world.
Non-stop
On one particular night the lambing felt like it was non-stop. When I got back to bed I couldn’t help but think of the old shepherd bent over and propping himself up with his crook. I fully understood why he looked the way he did.
Lambing sheep (indeed everything to do with sheep) is a job for a young person. If I hadn’t my son involved I don’t think that there would be any sheep here now.
Perhaps it is a reminder for us older people that we need to step back and let the young ones at it.
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