'˜Really chuffed' with our best fleece win at Nidderdale Show

This last weekend has been a hectic one, with the gimmer lamb sale at the auction at Pateley on Saturday and the Nidderdale Show on Monday. We thought that the gimmer day at Pateley would be a disaster with the prices at other auctions down.

Before we could even take them to the auction, we had to do some trimming up and colouring up, we thought that all of the messing around before we took them would be a waste of time because if they didn’t make enough money they would have to come home because the price they were making they would have made more selling them fat.

Thankfully, after all the time taken with the lambs it paid off, we have never had them making up to £95 a head making them have a good average. I think that everyone said that the sale was the best sale of the year so far and most people were happy.

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We didn’t win any rosettes but we were happy with the price and one of the people who bought them came back for them because he bought some last year and they did well so he came back for more.

We were pleased that we didn’t take them anywhere else because it takes so much time and the prices haven’t been as good at the other markets so we find taking them to Pateley is so much easier and it is good to support the local auction.

Sunday was the day to get ready for the show. We weren’t prepared at all, we still needed to get some sheep that were on the moor. On Sunday morning we thought we had better get on to get them gathered up but things didn’t go to plan as when we went around the cows two of them looked unwell when we went around, we thought that they had fog fever.

It is untreatable and can kill the cow and is caused when they go into lush green grass, we got the vet to check that we were right with what was wrong with them.

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Once we had them sorted it was back to gathering the sheep up to Spain and to get the ones we want to show out. The ones that we sorted out we thought might jump out of the pens at the show as they might be wanting their lambs back.

Sunday afternoon consisted of washing and trimming all 11 show sheep with all of the little helpers, my little sisters.

Monday seemed to come around too fast and we had to get on early to get around the cows and check that everything was okay before we could go to the show. None of the sheep managed to escape overnight so then we got them in and checked them over before getting them to the show.

We didn’t expect to come away with many prizes because there was a good entry of Dalesbred in the local class. Things weren’t going well with our tup lamb with no prize but then we had our three shearling tups in and one of them did better than we thought, getting a first prize. We didn’t have much luck with the gimmer lambs, shearling gimmers and ewes.

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But we did get fourth prize with the group of four. We won a cup for the shearling tup which we won three years ago, and I was surprised when I went to get that cup and got another as well. I hadn’t managed to get back to the sheep pens before the cups were given and the second cup was for the best fleece in the class, which is judged separately to the rest of them because it is judged by a wool judge.

We were really chuffed with the day, none of us thought that it would be just as good as this and hopefully this win with the shearling tup might help him sell when we take him to Bentham tup sale at the start of October.

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