Weighing Sheep For Market, It’s a Family Affair

Both children love sheep. How lucky is that? Boo can often be found in her pyjamas and wellies talking to the ‘sheeps’ (rams) and chickens in the front field near the house.

While G says maaaaaaaa whenever he sees a sheep. Unlike other toddlers who say baa for sheep, G, quite rightly says maaaaaaa which sounds much more like a real sheep. So it’s Maa Maa Black Sheep in our house.

I digress.

Hubster loves having great ideas, like deciding at 4pm on a Saturday that he might take some lambs to market on the Monday so it is all hands on deck to round up the lambs and weigh them all.

In order to make any kind of profit, we make sure the lambs weigh at least 40 kilogrammes before we send them.

They are gathered into a holding pen in a field, encouraged into a corral and then weighed individually.

This is where my usual job comes in. Hubster barks ‘in’ or ‘out’ to me and I have to open and close the gate accordingly.

If they are 40kg or over, the go into the trailer. If they are under 40kg, they go back into the field.

The children love helping out. For the lambs going to market, each one has to be ear tagged with our herd number (also our lottery numbers until it went up to £2.50 a go).

G held the ear tag bucket, maaaa-ed at all the sheep that went by and climbed the gates.

Boo read them her Peppa Pig magazine while they waited to be weighed.

It’s a team effort.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, only 14 were ready to go. The market is 50 miles away and the trailer holds up to 40 lambs so it wasn’t worth the cost of diesel to only take 14 animals.

They have a reprieve for now.

It did pass the time until teatime though.