My Farming Week: Aoife Randles, Knockanuha, Kilgarvan, Co Kerry

I farm: “With my father Patsy. We have about 600 ewes at home. We have a purebred, commercial Lanark flock. Then we have about 150 Aberfields. The Aberfield ewes are really just for a terminal sire, we put the Suffolk rams on them.”

Land: “We have a lot of green land around the shed, but most of our land would be hill. We’re lucky enough where we’re situated, our hill is green and travelable. It’s a great hill, there are no rocks.”

Dogs: “You’d be lost without them. I actually only asked my father the other day, would he rather have the quad or the dog? And he actually couldn’t answer the question. I couldn’t give an answer either, I don’t know what I’d rather have.”

Lambing: “We usually start around 1 April, we’d have the ram out around 3 November. We’re at it for a month. It’s harsh enough going, but in fairness we have a shed, but it’s a cattle shed.”

Pens: “We had cows until two years ago, we sold them. We put hurdles in the calving pens. We have the doubles near the shed and they can come in, also if there’s any bit of a problem case or if it’s a bad night things can come in.”

Sheep prices: “The fat lamb is making no money compared to the store lamb. Every sheep farmer wants to bring their lamb to a good place, a good fine weight. It’s the factories, they’re paying up to 21.5kg and it’s killing the fat lamb. “I can’t understand how they’re doing it to the sheep crowd, how they’re only paying up to 21.5kg. It’s a joke like.”

Macroom Mart: “I’m there just about 12 months now. I love it. I got a job there lucky enough one day. We drew ram lambs to Macroom one Wednesday and they were short staffed that day. The manager, Jerh O’Sullivan, came out to me and said, ‘Look, will you ever work today and if you don’t like it you don’t have to come back.’ I love it. I love the sheep sales.”