June is still a busy time for all of us on the farm. We have our annual Open Farm Sunday event to prepare for, which this year was a tremendous success and I’d like to thank all the fantastic volunteers who helped with the smooth running of the event, as well as all the Croots team. We had some great feedback and around 1700 visitors came and saw some of the ways we look after the animals on the farm and hopefully learnt one or two things as well. One of the demonstrations we organise is sheep shearing.
It never ceases to amaze me, just how quick Bernard Archer can shear a sheep – about a minute a sheep and whilst this may not be the quickest time, the sheep always look relaxed and unharmed in the process. Bernard is a farmer himself and he really understands sheep and always takes extra care. Shearing is also an opportunity to check the flocks health and so he tells us if he sees anything wrong like lameness or a bad bag which we can then spray mark and treat quickly afterwards. My son Jamie is in the Ashbourne Young Farmers Club and at this weeks event, they organised an opportunity to learn about shearing and to actually have a go themselves, so I ended up sitting in the car for around two hours at a farm in mid Derbyshire waiting for him and I’m glad to report, he was very enthusiastic to learn more! After the sheep is sheared the wool is wrapped up and put into a wool bag, where it is stitched up and labelled, so the British Wool Board know who to pay, which is very little especially after paying the shearer! Shearing is so important to a sheep’s health, it prevents the build up of manure, allows the right amount of wool growth which helps the sheep manage its body temperature and decreases the risk of heat stress, so well done Bernard!!
