Visitors to Ramsey will probably have come across our flock of Welsh mountain sheep. They are part of our conservation grazing scheme primarily for the benefit of chough although many other species benefit from the grazed grassland such as wheatears.
Managing the sheep involves a good deal of animal husbandry and Lisa and I have been well trained over the years in this respect by Derek Rees, a local farmer who also brings our post and supplies to the island in his purpose built boats. However there is one job that we all leave to the experts in this field.....shearing!
Each year around this time Aled and his gang from the Gwaun valley in north Pembrokeshire cross the Sound with all their equipment and make short work of our relatively small flock (100 animals this year).
Wool prices have improved of late and at least cover the costs of shearing. Shearing needs to be done regardless of the income however as leaving thick fleeces on the animals through summer would be very uncomfortable for them and leave them prone to a very nasty condition called fly-strike whereby green bottles lay their eggs in the fleece and when the maggots hatch start eating the flesh of the sheep. Untreated this will often kill the sheep. Now that they are sheared we can forget about this potential issue until at least September and the sheep can stay cool in the long hot summer that lies ahead for us!.......
Below is a short video we made yesterday of the event, starting off with a 'sheepdogs-eye' view of proceedings as Dewi gathered them in! It was all filmed on a new Go-Pro camera kindly donated to the island by our boat operator Thousand Islands Expeditions
I'm still very much getting used to using it so please excuse the shaky editing!
.