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A Co Wicklow sheep farmer and his neighbour spent four hours digging through snow to rescue nine sheep that were caught in snow drifts during Storm Emma.
Ashley O’Reilly told the Irish Farmers Journal that he used his quad to check his main flock of in-lamb ewes during Storm Emma on Thursday morning and considered himself lucky that the snow had mostly drifted out on to roads.
However, when he went to another field to check the hoggets he kept from last year, things were not so positive.
“They were nowhere to be seen,” he said. “Then, in the top of a drift, I could just see one head sticking out the top stuck in a gorse bush.”
The hoggets had gone into the ditch on the wrong side of the field for shelter and were completely buried.
“I got my neighbour, James Whelan, who’s not a farmer at all, and my father,” O’Reilly recounted.
“We used two shovels and the bucket of the tractor to dig them out. It took us nearly four hours to get them all out but they were all alive.”
“We were very lucky to find the last one. We were just about to give up when my foot slipped down a soft patch and on to the hogget’s head. I could see her looking up at me from the hole - she's the last one in the video.”
Rescued
Nine hoggets in all were rescued from the drift, which was 7ft above ground level but about 15ft deep where it drifted the length of the ditch.
Of the nine, six were Kerry hill sheep, two Texel and one Blue Leicester. Two of the nine were in lamb and all are now housed following their dramatic rescue.
“They are hardy sheep, the Leicester would be the only one to worry about because she's a softer lowland type,” said the farmer.
Other farmers in the Donard locality had severe difficulty getting into their lambing sheds when snow drifts blocked the shed doors.
Got a Storm Emma farming story? Get in touch, via news@farmersjournal.ie
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