Sheep farming diary
The Borough Farm flock graze across 400 acres of some of North Devon’s most beautiful countryside. At first glance it may appear that sheep ‘just look after themselves’ but the reality is rather different. I often hear sheep farmers comment ‘the problem with sheep is that there is always something that needs doing!’
So with over 1500 ewes and lambs to shepherd, sheepdogs to train and a summer of displays there’s always plenty to do. Here’s some of the latest goings on on Borough Farm….
Other related pages the Borough Farm Flock or Borough Farm dogs .
snow again
added by David on Wednesday January 20, 2010 at 9:57 pmJanuary saw a week of snow at Borough farm and although only a few inches actually fell, it froze hard and turned the farm drive into a sheet of ice. The sheep flock were completely unconcerned. The Romney ewes are a hardy breed and scarcely seem to notice the cold. They gather around the bale feeders and await their next bale of silage, fortunately all of the sheep were in easily accessible fields and feeding wasn’t difficult.
On the coastal ground at Mortehoe, the snow hardly settled, so they carried on grazing as usual
a new sheep shed for Borough farm
added by David on Tuesday January 19, 2010 at 11:20 pmThe beginning of the year saw the arrival of ’swing-shovel’ excavator to prepare the site for our new sheep shed. We’ve been short of shed room for some years, with enough space to house little over half of the ewe flock, so this year we’ve decided to erect a new shed (nearly 5500 square feet) which will be big enough to house a further 350 sheep.
It’s always a bit sad to see the digger starting to work, knowing that it will change the look of the farm for ever, bit the resulting shed will be a great asset for the sheep farming
winter feeding
added by David on Sunday January 3, 2010 at 10:08 pmBy the fourth week of December there is little grass on which the ewes can graze, and I certainly don’t want the flock to go hungry in mid pregnancy, so most years the Christmas week is the week in which I start to feed the ewe flock with silage. However when I offered the first flock their first silage of the year they walked away hardly giving the bale a sniff. It’s easy to detect good silage with the human nose, but it’s sometimes hard to predict what sheep consider to be unpalatable. The bale that I had offered them came from the second cut of silage during the summer, and had been well and truly rained upon, and although it smelt ok to me the sheep had other ideas!
This leaves something of a problem as I know that the first batch of silage that we made during the fine June weather is so good that the sheep will gorge themselves, and in all probability finish the lot with half the winter still remaining. It’s also highly nutritious so it will be ideal for feeding over the lambing period. What’s the answer? well before I resort to buying a months supply of silage I think we’ll have to try a few more bales of the substandard stuff, it might just be that they were being over fussy at the beginning of the season… After all it smells alright to me!
Winter at Borough Farm
added by David on Monday December 14, 2009 at 8:37 pmWinter is now well and truly upon us, with weeks of rain through October and November. The Borough Farm ewes should now all be in-lamb, the rams were joined with them on the 23rd of October and because sheep are pregnant for 147 days (within a day or 2) I know that we will start to lamb on the 19th March. The rams carry a ‘raddle’ paint on their chests, and when they ’serve’ (mate with) a they leave a raddle mark behind. By changing the colour of the paint after a week, I can tell which sheep will lamb in which week.
This year the ewes went to ram very quickly with 310 ewes makred with an orange raddle mark for the first week of lambing. With most of the rest of the flock marked (marked Blue) for the second week, we are in for a busy time, so i’m hoping that if it rains now we’ll have a dry time at the end of march!
roy of the rovers
added by David on Monday October 19, 2009 at 10:34 pmYou may have read about ‘Roy’, my recent recruit to the pack. He arrived at Borough farm back in January and although he show great potential, he’s certainly a challenge! Roy is never unhappy, even when he’s being told off for gross misbehaviour during a training session, he just wags his tail. To look at him you would think that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth
He gets frustrated when he’s not the one out and working, sometimes he just barks to show his frustration, but on one occasion during the summer he showed his dis-pleasure at being left behind by eating my crook! However, worse was to come….
A few weeks ago he was left in the truck while I was out training with Fly, I heard a crash and a bang coming from the direction of the Land rover, and looked around to see Roy looking out of the hole where one of the back windows should be. He’d ripped the rubber mounting from the window, the glass had dropped out and there he was with his head through the hole, wagging his tail!
clamping sheep
added by David on Sunday October 18, 2009 at 12:56 pmOver the years there have been few innovations in sheep farming that have really made a difference to a shepherd’s life. Those that spring to mind are the move to housing sheep over the lambing period and the arrival of the quod-bike as a means of transport. Further back of course there have been the arrival of wire fences and the electric shearing machine, but with those and one or two other changes apart, shepherding remains the same highly manual job as it has done for generations, so when a new invention comes along we sheep farmers tend to be a sceptical bunch.
I was at a sheep event earlier in the year where a salesman was demonstrating the merits of a new sheep restraining device the ‘Combi-clamp’. Like all of those around me I shook my head and thought of all of the reasons that it wouldn’t work for me then turned and walked away.
The Autumn is a busy time for a shepherd, with all of the flock needing individual attention, including the ‘docking’ of the wool around their tails. The job is hard work as traditionally we turn each sheep over to ‘dock’ them, so when a friend of mine, Robert, rang to say that he had bought a ‘Combi clamp’, I was keen to hear his verdict. ‘It’s brilliant’ he said ‘half the work and twice as quick’. As Robert shepherds over 2000 ewes, I consider that he knows his stuff, so in a fit of enthusiasm I bought one for myself…. It’s brilliant!
The sheep run into the clamp single file and by standing on a plate at the side, the shepherd is able to firmly clamp them whilst any treatment is administered and the wool ‘docked’ from around the tail. I completed all of the Autumn sheep work on the 700 Borough farm ewes in 4 days, and didn’t work nearly as hard as before. So to the list of Quod bikes and shearing machines I’m now adding the Combi-clamp to my list of must have’s for a shepherd.
the end of the summer
added by David on Thursday October 8, 2009 at 12:59 pmThis years summer has once again been unforgettable, and not nessecarily forthe right reasons! July and August were once again very wet, fortunately we only had to cancel one display, the very last at Borough farm.It was great to welcome so many visitors to the displays over the summer despite the weather…next year the weather will be perfect!
Our resident Swallows and House Martins give the first clue that the summer is at an end, forming small flocks as they feed up ready for the long trip to winter in Arfica . This year the House Martins spent a warm September morning basking in the reflected warmth of the tiles on the farmhouse roof
On Morte point the seals too have enjoyed their summer. We now have more than ever before colonising one particular gulley on the north side. Seals only need to pull themselves onto land in order to give birth, and until a few years ago seals had never been seen on the rocks of Morte point. This year however they have been regularly sunning themselves on the rocks. Some might say it’s because it has been just as wet out of the water as it is in!
The best weather of the year seems to have come in September, and now into October. So we’re now planning to have a sheepdog display and farm walk in the October half term. You can find out more on this link….
fern’s unforgettable day
added by David on Friday September 18, 2009 at 12:45 pmThis summer hasn’t exactly be memorable for the days of hot weather, but surprisingly there have been an awful lot of wasps around as Fern found out at our last Dunster castle display of the summer.
Each year we hold six sheepdog and falconry displays at Dunster Castle in Somerset. It’s a beautiful setting on the sheltered ‘lawns’ below the castle and audience numbers have been growing each year.
When we arrived for the last display, I sent Fern to gather in the 10 sheep that we use for the display, but on her way to gather the sheep Fern must have run through a wasp nest, for when she returned with the sheep she was plastered in wasps. I started trying to brush the wasps from her coat with my crook, but they were burrowing in to her fur in order to sting her. Within a matter of a couple of minutes Fern was unconcious, and I loaded her into the front of the Land rover and raced her off to find a vet. Fortunately Chris, from the National Trust knew of the nearest vet in Minehead, and he was able to take her straight there, while I carried on with the show using the other dogs.
The vets put her on a drip and gave her steroids and pain killers, and thankfully within a couple of hours she was on the mend. Although she spent that night in the vets, the following day I picked her up, and she was well enough to perform at the Borough Farm display the following evening!
So a big thank you to the staff at White Lodge Veterinary Clinic for saving the day! (even if Fern does still look a bit grumpy!)
Black gorse, blue tongue.
added by David on Wednesday July 22, 2009 at 1:29 pmWith the silage made in June, the beginning of July gave us a chance to catch up on some of the sheep work and gather in the ewes for their ‘blue tongue’ vaccination.
‘Blue tongue’ is a disease that sheep farmers in this country had scarcely heard of until two years ago. However the disease that was once only found in Africa has spread north through Europe over the past few years, arriving in the UK in 2007. A vaccine has been developed to prevent sheep from contracting the disease ( which is carried by midges) And as reports from farms affected in Europe is pretty devastating, we’re pleased to have that protection. However the vaccine only covers 1 strain of the diseases and there are a total of 23 strains.
The gathering of Morte Point coincided with a gorse fire on the point. The long dry spell had left the scruby areas tinder dry. That shouldn’t be a problem, but when someone emptied their barbeque ashes onto the gorse the result was a major fire.
The Woolacombe fire brigade spent all of one night trying to put out the blaze, but with the fire burning deep into the peaty ground under the scrub it was an almost impossible task. Over the following 5 days they were called out a further 6 times, as each time there was any flare up reported, they are required to answer the call.
The gathering of the Morte Point flock wasn’t without incident either. On the north side of the point there is an aut crop known as the three cornered island, the most inaccessible place to gather sheep from. Although they rarely graze there it does seem that whenever we need to gather there are a few sheep there, determined to avoid capture.
I sent Jake to bring them up as it takes a very careful dog to drive them along the top of an 80 foot cliff. However the ewes were in no mood to cooperate and found a steep incline on which to hide
We eventually got them moving again and the flock headed for the pens
Vaccination itself is a quick operation and in little over an hour the flock were back out onto the point. Ready to try and avoid capture again on the gather to wean the lambs in a couple of weeks time!
mist’s puppies
added by David on Thursday July 2, 2009 at 12:38 pmIf you watched the final episode of ‘Sheepdog tales’ last Sunday morning on Channel Five, you’ll know that Mist had a litter of puppies earlier this year. We had to keep them a secret so as not to spoil the surprise for the telly, but now that the episode has been broadcast we can let the cat out of the bag (or the puppies out of the kennel!)
The puppies were born on March 6th, there were 4 girls in the litter (we only showed 3 on the telly, just so as the naming of the pups didn’t last too long) they are absolutely tiny when they are first born
Although their Dad is Eddie (she was the only husband that Mist was interested in) one of them looks the exact image of their grandfather Jake. They spent the first few weeks of their lives in the laundry room. Mist was a good Mum, but like most working sheepdogs she was itching to get back to work after a week of being a Mother.
Pups grow very quickly and by the time they are eight weeks old they are no longer dependent on their mother at all. One by one they left to go to other farms to start training as sheepdogs. At such an early age there is no way of telling which will make the best sheepdog, so the first three farmers that bought them chose them on appearance, leaving just one behind……. the Jake look alike (who we were calling ‘baby Jake’ or ‘Jackie’!!)
For a couple of weeks she stayed around the house, and played in the yard, but at 14 weeks old my son Nick (11) decided to see if she was interested in sheep, and for the next three nights he took her to the training paddock on his own. He reported back that she was doing all the things that I’d most want to hear! On the fourth evening I thought that I’d better have a look for myself, and was amazed to see what she was able to do.
Since then she’s been allowed to work for a few minutes 2 or 3 times a week. However, she can no longer be left free around the yard as she heads straight for the training paddock and rounds up the sheep.
We’ve now given her a proper sheepdog name ‘Dart’ and I’ve been so pleased with her work that at the first display last night, she was allowed to take a small part, accompanied by her father, Eddie and of course with Nick on hand to help catch her.
