Costs Rise As Lambs Brought Indoors
Updated: 11:46pm UK, Monday 25 March 2013
By Frazer Maude, North of England Correspondent
The Dean family have been farming in the Yorkshire Dales village of Threshfield since 1236.
Toft House Farm will have seen some harsh winters through the centuries, but weather like this in late March won't have happened too often.
Angus Dean runs the farm with his brother, and during lambing season his day starts at around 5.30am. It doesn't end until past midnight.
With almost 1,000 sheep to care for, this is one of the toughest, but most rewarding, times of year.
The rewards are plain to see. He's gentle with his animals, and still can't hide the smile on his face as he delivers triplets to one sheep in its straw lined barn.
Ordinarily though, these lambs would enter the world in a field, not a barn. Their mother would be eating fresh grass, not expensive feed (called cake).
Drifting snow, biting winds, and sub-zero temperatures, mean the three new arrivals would struggle to last even a few hours outside.
"Even in the fields which aren't totally covered in snow aren't usable at the moment," explains Mr Dean.
"Because the sheep need the shelter provided by the dry stone walls. Only there isn't any shelter, because the walls are where the drifts have collected."
That means all but 70 of the flock have been brought indoors to lamb. Those that are still outside are ewes that are only going to have a single lamb, and so won't be giving birth for another couple of weeks.
If the weather doesn't break before then, they'll be brought inside too.
"Having the sheep inside might seem easier," said Mr Dean.
"But it can lead to confusion between the sheep over whose lambs are whose. So we have to move them around into different pens to keep them separated. And of course the feed costs are massively increased."
But even though his sheep are costing much more to feed than if they were eating grass (the cake costs around £250 per tonne), at least Toft House Farm is accessible at the moment to have the feed brought in.
Others aren't so lucky. Rachael Gillbanks from the NFU says: "I've spoken to some farmers in the Dales who are worried that their feed stocks are running dangerously low, and they can't get any more delivered because the farm roads aren't accessible for the delivery trucks. Several are almost running out of cake and hay."
The good news for Angus is that this has been a good year for the lambs. The quantity and quality of the offspring from his mixed flock of Texels, Mules, Swaledales and Leicester Blues has been high, and prices at the moment are reasonably good.
But with hundreds of sheep yet to give birth, and with space in the sheep sheds at a premium, for Angus, and his neighbours, the thaw can't come soon enough.
But like all Dalesfolk, Mr Dean and his brother are nothing if not resilient. And tough though it is at the moment, a farm that could bounce back after losing the entire flock to the devastation of foot and mouth, will surely survive this
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