The wet weather has been making life difficult to get all our jobs done on the reserve, as many of them require dry conditions. However, a window of a few dry days meant we could finally get round to shearing our very woolly ewes! We need the weather to be warm and dry, partly so the sheep don’t get too much of a shock when their fleece comes off, but also because shearing a soggy sheep is very hard work. So on Tuesday, two shearing contractors came to the farm, and it was all hands on deck to get the long over due clipping done!
The first job was to collect the 200 North Country Mules, and the 100 Romney Marsh sheep from the fields and in to the holding pens, while separating the lambs (not an easy job, but we had two sheep dogs on hand to help). Once these were in we could start the process of getting the sheep though the race and shorn. Michael, our farm hand, had the job of getting the ewes through the race and in to the holding bay. This was perhaps the hardest job of all, as the ewes hate being shorn with a passion, and so need quite a lot of encouragement before they can be persuaded to move in the right direction! The two shearers worked like machines, removing an entire fleece in just about two minutes. This meant the two rollers and baggers (myself, and Patrick, the site manager) had to work just as quickly and machine like to keep up! Our job was to remove all the “daggings” from the fleece. Daggings are the mucky collections of sheep droppings, which hang like dreadlocks from the backside of sheep. Once removed, we then folded the fleece in on itself and rolled it up like a sleeping bag, and then placed inside a big collecting bag. Each collecting bag is about the same size and shape as a double mattress, and once these bags are filled, they are stitched up and labelled, ready to be sent off and sold. The very last job in the sheep production line was to let the newly shorn, and naked looking sheep back out in to the field, and reunite them with their lambs. It was a tiring, but fun day for the team, and at the end of the day, we all finished smelling more than a little sheep like!
Keeley