Cavan woman grabs Australian pedigree sheep scene by the horns

Cavan woman Jill Noble has grabbed the Australian pedigree sheep scene by the horns and is now a well-known face across the industry.

Noble, a native of Killeshandra, landed in Sydney soon after the 2000 Olympics with a return plane ticket that she never used.

Twenty-five years on, she now runs 500 pedigree Wiltshire Horn sheep on 155ac on her Hallston Valley Farm, Gippsland, Victoria, alongside Australian husband Gary Tie.

The sheep farmer is a niece of Harry Noble who, with wife Heather, breeds Charolais cattle and Texel sheep at Noble Pedigrees, Kilcoursey, Co Longford.

Noble had a love of sheep from a young age and has fond memories of lambing ewes and feeding pet lambs with her late father Sam Noble, a native of Aughnacliffe, Co Longford.

“My mother Evelyn had a business in town but I was always around sheep in particular with dad, and the cattle,” she said.

“I’d a small hand so I was very useful at lambing. I always liked animals and I always got the job of looking after the pups or the bottle-fed lambs but I went to boarding school and sort of exited the farming way of life for a long time.”

Wiltshire Horn

After years working in business across Australia, in 2015 Noble was finally able to get back to the sheep and purchased a farm an hour and half east of Melbourne.

The Wiltshire Horn sheep appealed from the get go and her pedigree flock is now one of the largest of the breed in Australia, supplying rams to several states each year.

The shedding breed was first thought to come to England with the Romans and was a foundation breed for many better-known sheep today, including the Hampshire Down.

Noble’s ewes were put to the ram in autumn (February-March) and lambed in late winter (July-August), with weaning in November. Their hardiness made them ideally suited to the Gippsland hills.

“We wouldn’t say they’re zero work but we definitely don’t have to do as much, particularly with the older ones,” she said.

“Occasionally, we will have to assist with a lambing but they’re very good mothers, very good milkers and very fertile.”

Ewes scanned typically at 150% and all lambed outdoors, with minimum assistance.

There were no lambing pens and the approach taken with the flock was very much survival of the fittest, with the top lambs kept on for pedigree use and nothing pampered.

Any Wiltshires that didn’t make the pedigree grade were slaughtered and processed as ‘cut and pack’ lamb and mutton to customers.

The breed is slow-maturing but lean and Noble said even older ewes and rams kill out with a carcase not typical of most aged sheep.

“We’ve basically created our own market and I’m selling sheep here all year round,” she said.

Showing

Showing is a major part of Noble’s farm and she has become a familiar face at some of Australia’s top pedigree livestock gatherings.

“With our stud, we want to be able to promote the animals that we’ve got and the product that we produce,” she said.

“The showing is a bit of that promotion but it’s also a great social outlet.”

At this year’s 170-year-old Melbourne Royal Show, a ram bred and exhibited by Noble took home the Wiltshire Horn supreme champion ribbon.

As well as showing her own stock, she MC’d proceedings in the sheep ring and had the farming and non-farming crowd keenly observing the sashing of some of the interbreed champions. She got all exhibitors to explain their breed’s purpose - wool or meat, terminal or maternal - and broke it down from farming lingo into terms understood by the general public.

The Cavan woman felt this kind of communication was of growing importance for farmers at home in Ireland and in Australia.

“Lots of learning and education happens at the show and going to the shows is a great way for me to contribute to the sheep industry more broadly,” she said.

While she had put a lot of work into it, she said being Irish had helped her open doors in sheep showing circles.

“I think because I’m Irish, I get away with an awful lot, and I think the accent gets me doors opened,” she laughed.

“I feel like I’ve been really able to capitalise on being Irish out here.

“They do love Irish people in Australia and generally, we do work very, very hard and I have worked very hard, both of us have, to get what we have.”

Often travelling home and regularly in touch with her farming relatives in Ireland, Noble said she doesn’t think she would have been able to get as strong a footing in agriculture in Cavan.

Land

Obtaining 155ac of good farmland and being at the helm of one of the biggest sheep shows in the country would be challenging, she said.

Noble said she “probably wouldn’t” have been able to get the land access at home.

“My brother was here in April and he said to me ‘there’s no way you could do this in Ireland, it just wouldn’t work’,” she explained.

She also highlighted the lack of schemes to support farming in Australia.

“Not that we want it or ask or need it, but there are no schemes here,” she said.

“There’s none of that, it’s quite different, you have to be independent and you have to stand up on your own feet and to be honest, I quite like that.

Innovation

“If there’s something we need to change, we change it, we adjust it, we’re innovative.

“As a female starting off, or indeed as anyone getting into farming, as an under 50-year-old, you’ve got a little bit of sense behind you.”

Noble also runs a podcast on sheep farming in Australia and the farm recently began hosting visitors as part of a new farm stay business.

“There’s a lot of people from the city who come out for a couple of nights and enjoy the Gippsland views,” she explained.

Her father passed away in March of 2024 and although he never got to see his daughter’s set up on the other side of the world, she hoped he would be proud.

“I never thought I’d end up here. It’s a dream come true,” she said.