The Sheep Farmers' Year

From Pat MacPhail

One of this season's lambs

It's the start of another sheep year with the tups about to go out with the ewes. Lambing in April/May turned out to be good with many twins, despite the bitterly cold frosty weather. We didn't get much snow, just a fierce northerly wind and frozen ground which gave the sheep little to eat. This took its toll on the food budget, with many of us buying extra hay and other supplements at vast prices.

Blackface Tup

Prices at the market for ewes, ewe lambs and male lambs were well up on last year. This table gives some idea of prices over the last five years, though it was worked out using very broad averages:

2006 £25.00

2007 £15.00

2008 £30.00

2009 £37.50

2010 £50.00

A good tup lamb this year would be around £500, whereas last year it might have been £200, and you could have picked a very reasonable tup for £80 - £90. The top price for a tup this year was over £2,000 at Fort William, and decent tups were selling for very high prices.

The good 2010 prices are just as well as it looks as though we are heading for another hard winter. However the ewes are looking good thanks to a late flush of grass.

Ewe with her lamb on the hill in autumn

The hay and silage crops were on a par with last year and the first load of beet pulp arrived today. Sugar beet pellets are a good way of feeding hill sheep. They can be fed on the ground or in troughs, and the sheep love them. Fed together with mineral licks, which comes in buckets, along with hay or silage, pulp gives the sheep the nutrition they need over the winter. Let us hope for a dry winter - there is nothing worse than being up to your knees in mud, for us or the sheep!