Settled In

Readers will be pleased to know that the sheep have settled in OK and are all thriving on our nice moist green grass. 40 shades of Green and all that. In this case, obviously "The Green and Red of Mayo" as these ladies were born in Irishtown, Co.Mayo so should be supporting Mayo in tomorrow's All-Ireland GAA football final and if Dad can get them a green and red flag for one of their fence posts he probably will. Our mission is to settle them down nicely so that they are calmly eating and putting on weight. They arrived at respectively 31, 32 and 33 kg and a good slaughter weight would be in the range 46 to 60 kg, 46 for lean meat, 60 for more fatty meat.

Looking at the various websites, carcass weight is about 48% of live weight (although that depends on about a million other factors) and the offal bits that Mum and Dad love (hearts, kidneys, liver) are on top of that. A big old shoulder joint here can be around €27, and the lamb meat can be from €5 per kilo for scraggy stewing bits, up to €21 for rack of lamb. The theory is that having bought these girls for €80 each (€2.44 per kilo live weight) we should still win and have the fun of owning sheep, followed by a freezer full of lamb slaughtered and butchered up by our own tame butcher's "behind the scenes" meat factory, Cuniffe's.

There is, though, a 2nd option which may be called into play. These are healthy, good quality girls who would easily take being bred from to produce our own lambs. This obviously involves keeping them  alive and fed through the winter and then putting them to a hired or bought in ram at the appropriate time and then coping with all the lambing fun and games. Mum and Dad are not sure if they are ready for all that yet. Meanwhile, there's an acre less for Dad to mow.

All the hand feeding and making friends is mainly about getting them so used to us that we can slip a halter onto each one and lead them about the place, including onto other grass like the front lawn. You get them used to the bucket of 'nuts', goes the theory and they will follow you anywhere, so you can get them to the lawn and 'home' again when required. You can also tether them to the fence by their front end while you clip any 'dags' off (I'm not going to explain) round their bums to keep them clean and prevent fly-strike.