IT was an extra special Christmas day for ten-year-old shepherdess Anna Herbert, who spent much of the time watching over the birth of her burgeoning flock’s first lamb.
Anna, from Westwick, put her 40 strong flock of ewes to tupp in August, planning an early lambing season and ensuring she is among the first to go to market with her fat lambs.
She proudly keeps a record of each ewe and when it was put to the tupp and knows meticulously when each is about to lamb.
She said: “On February 18 it starts to get finished. The busiest is around January 18, there are about seven then.”
Although her father Andrew deals mostly with arable farming and fattening cattle and pigs, Anna developed an interest in sheep while visiting her grandfather Malcolm Dobinson’s farm in Caldwell.
She got her first seven pet lambs at the age of five and has been growing her flock ever since. She now breeds Suffolk and Texels and borrows a Charollais ram from her granddad to put to her ewes.
