Page 29 - The Farming Years proof

THE GooD SHEPHERD
At this point we decided on a forward plan for sheep for which I must admit Sylvia had more enthusiasm than me. The plan was to buy around 20 ewes and a ram for breeding and sell the lambs at 80 lbs weight which is 6 months plus from memory. So, in october 1979, we bought 18 Suffolk ewes at £41 each and had the loan of a ram. Sylvia decided to seek all the skills to manage the ock. She went on several Ministry of Agriculture courses which gave her considerable con dence to deal with births and even breach births. She would have made a good midwife! I wonder if having 4 children helped too?
one of the ewes was barren which we had to sell but the other 17 ewes produced 30 lambs so there was a good ratio of twins. Unfor- tunately, two lambs died. We had made pens in the barn for each ewe which made handling and supervising much easier and they could be individually fed giving each one a consistent food quan- tity. We then put the ewes on stubble to graze on the top eld at Loddington. Unfortunately, the M80 combine we had at the time was old and some grain was left in the straw. Sadly we lost 2 ewes which was very upsetting as the grain in the stomach swells. The result was we sold the remaining 15 ewes for £500. We did better with the lambs and sold 24 in the market for £600 in December. The freezer was now empty so we sent the remaining 4 to the butcher to replenish our needs.
I think by the end of March Sylvia was missing her personal farm- ing activity. She was never enthusiastic about tractor driving and crops and her house conversion activity had nished.
In 1981 she studied what you might call the better end of the market and thought we should buy a small ock of Dorset Polls. They are big sheep and look similar to Australian Merinos. They can lamb 3 times in 2 years which makes them cost effective. Sylvia found a ock of 10 ewes and a ram with an enthusiast in Harro- gate which involved a journey to collect with a borrowed large
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