In the first of her regular columns for The Cornish Times, young shepherdess Harriet Allin tells how she and her brother have doubled their flock and hope for more new arrivals soon.
My name is Harriet Allin and I am 13 years old . I am a junior shepherdess and I love breeding and showing pedigree sheep.
My brother and I have our own flock of Zwartble sheep, which we have funded and looked after from the start . Two years ago I brought a Zwartble ram lamb, who I called Panda. I raised Panda from four days old. Shortly after my brother William brought, from another farmer, a ewe lamb who he called Fanta (as Fanta is his favourite drink ). In the March of 2019 Fanta had a ewe lamb called Grace . That was when we could officially call ourselves sheep breeders .
Grace was the start of our flock and since then we have doubled it with our two new lambs Hope and Hallelujah . In the near future we would like to have a flock of twenty quality show Zwartbles, all bred by ourselves.
This month we have been concentrating on tupping. This means hiring or buying a ram of a different blood line to improve the quality of both markings and confirmation in our sheep.
This year we have gone with a ram with only a little bit of white: as the saying goes in the Zwartble world: “You can always put in white, but you can’t take it out.” And we already have the white we need in our flock .
We are very pleased with the ram we have got, he is good looking and has good manners. It would be nice if our ewes would show their manners by sharing their shed with him, however, at night they have been making him sleep outside in the field .
He will stay with the ladies for six weeks and then we will see what happens when the scanner comes in November .
Hopefully they will be in lamb with lots of blobs to see on the scanner screen.