Sheep shearing at Farm Ness

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Transcript

00:00I have a newfound appreciation for farming.

00:04Welcome to Farm Ness, where I met all creatures big and small,

00:08but more importantly, I learnt how hard farming life actually is.

00:17Starting with sheep shearing, I got to understand why it's important to the sheep's health,

00:22where the wool goes, and I even got to give it a shot myself.

00:26Straddle her head with your legs, that's it.

00:29Okay, and get your left foot under her bumcheek and hold her leg that way, your left hand.

00:34This way?

00:35Yeah, have you got one?

00:36Yeah.

00:37Okay.

00:38I think, probably.

00:39You've got a stretch.

00:43I'm not good at this.

00:44Do you think you can reach down there?

00:45But with a bit of perseverance and a lot of fear, I got there eventually.

00:50However, it did take me about 20 minutes to do just one sheep,

00:54in comparison to the professionals who had already sheared hundreds.

01:00The way that they have to really secure the sheep when they're fidgeting,

01:05and they're big creatures.

01:07The shaver, it's like pure blades, and it's vibrating,

01:11so it's really difficult to keep a hold of.

01:13If you let go of that, that was my main concern.

01:16I could chop off my leg, let alone the sheep's fur.

01:19These sheep go to the Black Isle Show, to the shearing competition.

01:22So the shearers that are just behind us there, they're starting to get them ready

01:26by crutching off the tail and some of the belly underneath.

01:29And it also helps us control fly strike in the sheep.

01:33Fly strike is a really nasty one.

01:36Basically, the fly lay their eggs, and then maggots hatch out

01:39and basically start eating the sheep alive.

01:42So if you don't see it or you don't catch it, it'll kill the sheep quite quickly.

01:46We normally don't have a problem, but when the weather was really good at the start,

01:50we had five, ten cases.

01:52It's such a good, natural product, the wool,

01:55and it's such a shame that it's almost undervalued

01:58because it comes every year, it's there,

02:01and then it goes to make clothes, carpets, it goes everywhere, yeah.