We farm: “My wife Heather and I are hill farmers from Co Wicklow and farm 81ac of wet, hilly, marginal land. We keep about 120 ewes. We used to have sucklers, but we got out of them. The ewes are Suffolk x Cheviot and we also keep some horned Scotch ewes.”

The ram: “We run a Texel ram with the flock. The Texel breed suits better for the land that we have and they are very easy to manage.”

This week: “At the moment, the sheep are down on the middle of the mountain and the ram is in with them. We will start feeding some silage at the end of November and they will come down for lambing at the start of February. Heather goes up on the mountain every day to herd the sheep with her sheepdog.”

Lambing: “The busiest time of the year for us is spring time. The ewes that are carrying twins will be brought down to the shed and the singles will be left out to the fields near the house. We hope to start lambing at the start of March and the lambing period usually runs for five weeks.”

Store lambs: “We sell all of our lambs to the mart as store lambs. The first crop of lambs usually heads to the mart around the second week in June when they reach 40kg. We would bring lambs to the mart then most weeks to sell once they reach the weight. We usually finish selling them around the first week in October.”

Sheepdogs: “We’ve been breeding sheepdogs here for around 25-30 years. The dogs are worked every day. Myself and Heather both have our own working dogs. I do a lot of contract sheep work for local farmers, which involves going up on the mountain to bring sheep down for dosing and shearing. You would be lost if you didn’t have a good working dog.”

Trials: “We are hosting a nursery trial here on our farm on 8 December. There are different classes for trials, Class A, Class B and Beginners. Class A the dog has to be under three years old and has to have placed in an open trial or won a novice trial in the past 12 months. Class B is for dogs under three years old on 1 October that have no points and the Beginners class is for the person, not the dog.”

Future plans: “We have no intentions of changing our system of farming. The next generation to come along may only be part-time farming, as you would only be able to graze around 1.5 ewes to the acre with the land we have.”

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