6:30am on a dark, cold November morning and I was struggling to load a very dead hogget into the back of my jeep. It was cold, lashing rain, and I was thinking that they had been right all along. When I muttered to anyone that would listen that I wanted to get into sheep the resounding response was: “You must like hardship so!”

We hadn’t had sheep on our farm for nearly sixty years. The last, remembered fondly by a neighbour, strayed all over the parish. Needless to say, I knew nothing about sheep but went ahead and bought in some hoggets last winter. A borrowed a Charollais ram from the friendly neighbour, some haphazard fencing and I was away. The morning after their arrival, said hogget was legs up in the air, full of fluke and obviously hadn’t coped with the ride from the wilds of Donegal.

Vaccination program

This week, I weighed the lambs and will get a first batch off next week. I’ll keep the majority of the ewe lambs as replacements. They’re all grass-finished as you might as well burn money as to buy in organic nuts. I’ll have to look at alternative feed options for the ewes come lambing season. Generally, processers are offering a 15% premium per kg for certified organic lamb at the moment, so if you compare that to a near 100% premium on hard feed then the numbers just aren’t adding up.

Over the past couple of months, the lambs have been struggling with scald so I’ve had to introduce regular foot bathing to get on top of it – thankfully it seems to be working so far. We have had an issue with clostridial disease on our farm so a strict vaccination program for all youngstock, calves and lambs, has got it under control.

There is no contractor who would think about ploughing our rocky fields

The most satisfying outcome of my first year with sheep is the effect they have had on pastures. Spraying obviously is not an option for us and there is no contractor who would think about ploughing our rocky fields. Tight grazing over the winter has vastly improved the clover in the sward, something us organic farmers shout about, and has reduced the ragwort markedly.

The majority of our internal boundaries are dry stone walls. They’ve taken a bit of hammering since the sheep arrived.

It’s a relatively quiet time on the farm, so a good time for our Bord Bia and annual organic inspections in the past couple of weeks. Both went smoothly despite the mounds of paperwork involved. However the elusive 100% Bord Bia mark is still… well… elusive.

As for sheep being hardship- I’m still waiting for the novelty to wear off.

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