by Amanda Owen
I could make out her head, tipped backwards, her mouth open, gasping for air. Then she was gone.
‘Has she drowned?’ asked Miles.
‘I dunno,’ I said, although in all honesty I couldn’t see how she could survive.
We walked back to the bridge, where the rest of the stray sheep had by now been loaded into the trailer.
‘Yer one down, I’m afraid,’ I said to Clive and our neighbour. ‘She’s gone, and I doubt you’ll be seeing her again.’
The next morning, the weather had changed. It was bright, clear and had a fresh but cold feel to it, a typical morning after a storm. The yard was washed clean, the water had subsided, and only the lines of flotsam on the riverbanks told of the previous evening’s deluge.
Miles went to feed the chickens before school, returning with the news that there was a very clean sheep grazing along the roadside and he reckoned it was the missing yow.
Somehow she’d managed to get herself onto dry land, and seemed none the worse for her watery encounter. Maybe her saving grace was that she hadn’t much wool on – I know from experience that a woolled yow with a saturated fleece is an absolute dead weight, and she’d have struggled to lift herself out of the river.
Once while I was working near Penrith on a shearing gang, I jumped into the river Eamont, a very deep and fast-flowing river, to save a woolled yow that was floundering. I’ve always been a confident swimmer, not stylish but strong enough, I thought, to rescue a sheep. I hadn’t taken much off in the way of clothes due to the gathering of onlookers. I can’t recall the circumstances that led to a sheep being in the river, but I remember very clearly treading water while trying to support her head; and how, when we reached the muddy shore, her legs collapsed under the weight of her own wool. She was fine. I hung a few of my wet clothes on a nearby gorse bush and for a while felt quite the hero – until the farmer came along and said, ‘Thoo should ’ave let the bugger drown, it’s allus been a beggar for escapin’.’
We tag and record every yow and lamb that goes to the moor, and there are always some that never return. Some we write off, assuming they’ve drowned in a river or bog. But sometimes we’re pleasantly surprised to find them when they turn in late, having just strayed off their heaf; for sheep are free spirits and wander off on their own little adventures, only coming back to the safety of the flock when they feel threatened or are tempted by the rustle of a feed bag.
Tonsing the sheep (pulling out the white hairs from their black bits) is a time-consuming but essential beautification process required to make them ready for the sales. We have a couple of tonsing crates, contraptions specially designed for this job: the tups or yows are hoisted up to eye level and restrained with a collar, their heads resting on a pivoted saddle-shaped cushion. We might use the crates, or if the sheep is amenable, we will lay it down on its side while we sit on a small bale of straw. It largely depends on how much work is needed on the sheep. Throughout October I accept that there will be no tweezers in my makeup bag: the sheep will have perfectly shaped brows, but I will not be looking so well groomed. Fed up with sharing, I had a notion that I would stash my good tweezers away and buy cheap stainless-steel pairs from the local chemist’s – perfectly adequate for the removal of stray white facial hairs, I thought.
But I was wrong. I had a small group of unhappy men in the yard, complaining that the new tweezers were not grippy enough.
‘Nay to hell, they’re as slape as snot,’ said Clive. ‘I cannae git them hairs for love na’ money.’
Alec and Steve nodded in unison.
‘They’re useless,’ Clive continued, even after roughening up the edges on the stones on the building corner. The substandard stainless-steel ones were soon lost in the straw covering the floor of the barn, or stuffed into a straw bale for temporary safe-keeping and then forgotten about – and the men were back demanding my prized Tweezermans.
As Clive’s birthday is in October it made perfect sense to me to buy him his very own tweezers, good ones in super-bright colours so he could easily spot them in the straw. Now he looks like a regular man about town, with the tweezers living in his top waistcoat pocket at all times. He is not alone: recently Reuben came home from the auction saying that he needed to find the metal detector, as Eric, a farmer further down the dale, needed to borrow it.
‘Whatever for?’ I asked.
‘Dunno, ’e wouldn’t tell mi,’ said Reuben. ‘Just said ’e’d lost summat.’
Turned out it was his tweezers, his favourite pair. Once upon a time it was a secret that the Swaledales were tidied up before sale time, with the odd stray white hair removed with the fingernails. It is now deemed normal to define the black from the white. As well as tonsing, we trim the bellies to give the sheep extra height and use peat to colour the fleece. The peat is gathered from the haggs at the moor, dampened and mounded into a ball. It’s then dabbed onto the fleece, applied with the lightest of touches; it then dries to a subtle shade of heather grey, emphasizing the whiteness on their legs and faces. It is not about faking; more about enhancement.
When all of our surplus breeding females, young and old, have been sold, it’s time for the tup sales. For the whole of October we keep a close eye on the young tups (shearlings), needing them to remain quiet and settled. It’s not easy, because this is the time of year when the sap is rising and they are desperate to escape and find some wanton yows. We keep the tups inside, away from the yows, but they can vent their frustration on one another. Full-on fights can happen, the tups going literally head to head, sometimes leading to disfigurement – which scuppers any plans to get them to auction looking their best. Even if the damage is just cosmetic, it will ruin any chance of them going into the show ring, and will put off would-be buyers. We try to keep the tups together but if we hear the sickening noise of them smashing headlong into one another, then it’s time for a spell of solitary confinement. The problem then is boredom: a bored tup can rub all the hair off his face in a single afternoon.
Eclipse was one of our better tups. ‘’E’s a bit special, this ’un,’ said Clive on many occasions in the run-up to the sales.
But Eclipse was on a mission to self-destruct.
First he wanted to fight with all and sundry, so he ended up in a stable, all on his lonesome. Then he decided to rub on everything: the bale of hay, the water bucket, the door frame. His blood was up, his mind was racing and what he needed was a distraction.
Clive made him a punchbag out of an empty feed bag stuffed with hay, suspended from a beam. Tufts of hay stuck out of the bag here and there, and Eclipse would alternate between nibbling and wrestling with it. It did the trick, with the distraction preserving his good looks so that he went to the sale and made £11,000.
Every year the pens of the local auction marts come alive with farmers and their families showing off the best of their breeding and on the lookout for new tups to introduce to their flocks. Farmers will often take home rather more than they bargained for. We call it Tup Sale-itis, the coughs and colds that are spread so easily through a throng of people in a confined space. Many people are laid low the week after tup sales.
The sales are held over a few days, old tups and tup lambs on the first day, then shearlings. After the weeks of beautification, it is a relief when sale day finally arrives. It begins early with a show. Two judges are chosen by the Swaledale Sheep Breeders Association, and their task is to rank the competitors’ sheep. Rosettes are awarded down to sixth place, and are much coveted because fastening one to the rails of your pen brings potential buyers your way. The start of the sale is announced by a bell, and the sale ring begins to fill with buyers and spectators. A ballot drawn prior to the sale decides the order in the ring: nobody wants to be first, and nobody wants to be last. Somewhere in the middle is perfect, with the sale warming up but before the buyers are fully committed and losing interest. For vendors, the wait is spent sitting on a hay bale in a well-bedded pen, talking through the tups’ pedigree with would-be
buyers and getting through lots of cups of coffee from the auction canteen. A tannoy system relays the fortunes or misfortunes of those who are in the ring. When big prices are being reached, silence descends over the pens, everyone listening. The auctioneer’s dulcet tones are relayed through the crackling loudspeaker.
‘Value the breedin’,’ he says. ‘This is ’im today, I’m not startin’ ’im under ten thousand, so come on gentlemen let’s be gettin’ on . . . Where d’ya wanna be? Someone’ll give me five, surely?’
Someone does. ‘Thank you very much,’ he says, and then he’s off. The flap of a catalogue or an almost imperceptible wink means another bid.
‘Six, seven, eight . . . ten, is that right?’ says the auctioneer, his eyes scanning the room, the drovers in the ring helping by pointing bidders out. Bids come in thick and fast, in ever increasing increments.
‘Twelve, fifteen, eighteen.’
By now there is a palpable tension, as the bidders dwindle and the final two remaining begin to waver.
‘Don’t leave him now, lads, just round him up. Are yer sure you’ve finished? ’Cos I’m gonna sell ’im.’
Then the gavel falls.
Topping the auction is what so many breeders dream of, but the reality is that only a very small handful of tups reach these magical heights. Many will leave the ring with their tups unsold, the auctioneer’s words, ‘There’ll be another day for ’im,’ ringing in their ears.
There are tups for all pockets, whatever your budget, from fifty pounds to fifty thousand. At the higher prices, the tups go to the award-winning pedigree breeders who have to keep bringing in the best-quality breeding lines to stay at the top. Once you’ve been into the auction office and paid the price, he’s yours to take home. One year there was big trouble at the auction when one of the top-money tups went missing. When later in the day his new owner went to pick him up, the tup was nowhere to be seen. Nobody knew where he had gone. There are hundreds of tups in the auction each day, so there was a lot of searching to be done. Later that evening, when everyone had gone home, there was one unclaimed tup left in the pens. Tied into his fleece on the middle of his back was the little circular label with his lot number: 616. But read the other way up, it was 919. The tup in the pen had been bought earlier for a few hundred pounds, but an honest mix-up had sent the buyer home with one worth thousands. The issue was soon resolved, and the tups reunited with their rightful owners.
Every year there are dramas, whether it’s an established breeder taking bad prices, or a little-known breeder winning the show. There are no guarantees, and we all have good years and bad ones. We’ve learned to expect the unexpected.
One year, our friends Colin and Anne spent weeks in the run-up to the tup sales getting excited about their prospects, feeling confident that they had a good packet of tups. They set off to auction in good spirits, and after putting the tups into the pen they went to the canteen for bacon sandwiches and coffee. People were already milling around, so it wasn’t long before they headed back to their pen to talk to prospective buyers. Leaning over the gate, supping their coffee, they noticed that one of their tups was asleep at the back of the pen and was not exactly showing himself off to the viewers.
‘Anne, ga an’ git that tup up,’ said Colin.
Anne dutifully put down her paper coffee cup and went into the pen, the tups moving to the other side while the sleeping one didn’t stir. It is not unusual for a sheep to sleep quite deeply: we’ve had them asleep in the fields, and walked right up to them before they woke. Unfortunately, though, this time the sleep was of a permanent nature. Hurrying back to Colin, Anne beckoned him.
‘Colin,’ she muttered, sotto voce. ‘He’s dead.’
‘What yer on aboot? Are you sure?’
‘I knaw a dead tup when I see one,’ she replied.
Tipping the remainder of his coffee onto the concrete, Colin opened the pen gate and walked purposefully over to the tup with the sole intention of proving Anne wrong.
A casual nudge in the ribs with the front of his brogue got no response. He gave a firmer kick: still nothing. Anne looked on, hands on hips. Sidling up to her, he said, ‘Anne . . . Anne, ’e’s as dead as an ’ammer.’
It was time to decide what to do. Their friend Dave was summoned.
‘I need yer to ’elp us out ’ere, Dave,’ said Colin quietly. ‘There’s a whole load o’ folk around and I need to get rid of a body without anyone seeing.’
‘Yer tup’s fizzled out?’ said Dave, astounded.
‘Shhhhhhhh,’ murmured Anne.
It was not a great selling point, having a dead tup in the pen, cause of death unknown. They’re supposed to be fit, full of fire and ready for action, not belly up.
The auction was buzzing with folk, and so far nobody had realized that the tup lying down at the back of Colin and Anne’s pen, his legs folded under him, his chin resting on the straw on the floor, his eyes closed and a peaceful expression on his face, was now grazing heavenly pastures.
Anne hurried off to bring the Land Rover and trailer onto the loading docks while Colin hatched a plan.
‘This is what we’re gonna do,’ he said.
‘Are yer sure ’e’s dead?’ said Dave, looking through the pen bars.
‘We’ve been through this,’ said Colin. ‘’E’s definitely dead. We’re gonna get hod of a horn each, Anne’ll keep his back end up an’ we’re gonna walk ’im out of the auction like nowt’s wrong. If anyone asks where he’s going then we’ll say that he’s going for his picture takin’.’
By now Anne had returned, and the plan was put into action.
‘Jeez, he’s bloody ’eavy,’ said Anne.
‘C’mon, lift, woman,’ said Colin.
They set off down the alley, pushing through the sea of people. Nobody batted an eyelid. In fact, the tup got one or two compliments en route to the trailer.
‘Not a bad sort of a tup you’ve got there, Colin,’ said one. Nobody noticed the veins bulging in Colin’s forearm as he held the tup’s head aloft: he was lifting a dead weight in every sense of the word.
‘Mornin’, Anne, good sort you’ve got there,’ said another.
‘I was just on mi way to thi’ pen,’ said yet another.
‘We’ll be back in a minute,’ shouted a red-faced Anne. ‘Just takin’ im for ’is photo for t’flock book.’
They exchanged pleasantries for the whole of the short journey, and then unceremoniously bundled the tup into the trailer. Slamming the back door, they went back round to the pens, and nothing more was said.
‘Well done, Dave,’ said Colin. ‘I’ll buy thi a pint later on.’
The rest of the day went reasonably well, trade was brisk and they sold the rest of their tups. Afterwards, Colin, a man of his word, headed for the pub in search of his pallbearing friend Dave. The post-tup-sale drinking session went on late into the night. Finally, when time was called, they stumbled out of the pub door, a little worse for wear. Anne, the designated driver, was more clear-headed, and guided them along the dimly lit street to where the Land Rover was parked. Fumbling for the keys, she heard a faint thud.
‘Colin, did yer ’ear that?’ she said, standing stock-still.
‘What yer on about?’ said Colin, between hiccups.
‘I’m tellin yer, there’s summat in t’trailer.’
‘It’s Dave, he’s gone for a pee around t’back.’
‘No, Colin, I’m tellin’ yer – there’s summat in t’trailer.’
To appease her, Colin wobbled his way along the pavement and peered through the vents in the side of the trailer.
‘There’s a flamin’ tup in ’ere, Anne, fetch a light.’
‘’Ow many bloody brandies ’ave you ’ad, Colin?’
‘I’m tellin’ yer, there’s a tup in ’ere,’ he reiterated.
‘Aye, yer reet, Colin, a dead ’un.’
Going through her pockets, she reached for her phone and shone its torch into the trailer. Looking back at her was
a thoroughly bad-tempered tup.
‘Christ Almighty, ’e’s come back to life!’ she exclaimed.
‘Well, I’ve seen everything now,’ said Colin, shaking his head.
The next morning, in the sober light of day, they investigated the contents of the trailer. Sure enough, there stood the tup, as large as life and seemingly as fit as a fiddle. When Colin let the trailer door down, he bounded out and up across the field. They had no idea what had happened the previous day: he’d certainly been unconscious, and his breathing imperceptible. It was only a couple of days later that they found him lying flat-out in the field in exactly the same way, but sadly this time there was to be no resurrection.
Where there’s livestock there’s dead stock, but usually there’s no coming back from the latter. You do occasionally come across mysteries, and we will never know what happened to that tup. But it was certainly better that he died at home than with a new owner.
11
November
November for us is all about tupping time: turning the tups out, and getting the yows in lamb. We aim to get the tups out by 5 November, for lambs on 1 April. Bonfire night for April Fool’s Day. As a general rule, a hundred yows is the most that can be put to one tup. Any more than that, and you’re asking for trouble – an exhausted tup may overlook yows coming into season. We prefer to err on the side of caution, and have only fifty or sixty yows to a tup at any one time.
It isn’t just a case of putting a tup in the field with the yows and letting him do his work; it is vitally important that we monitor what is going on. Only one tup joins each small flock of yows because we breed pedigree, and we need to know which tup has sired which lambs. The yows are tailed, which means the wool from the sides of the tail are clipped in order to allow the tup better access. Then they are carefully selected, to make sure there’s no inbreeding and that the tup looks to be a good match for the yow. Darker yows are put to lighter tups and vice versa, in the hope that any failings the yow has can be rectified by matching her with a tup with the right credentials.