The marketing situation on Fair Isle has just changed this year. Previously the buyers would come in, all 3 of them, along with auctioneer and every croft would have its own mini auction.
This year they have decided to no longer come in, but, we hope, to use an islander as an agent & this will prob mean that only the really good big ewe lambs and exceptional castrated ram lambs get sold and as usual the islanders have to foot the freight bills in getting the lambs to mainland shetland. Now that we are just about at the end of lambing I am becoming ever more thankfull that our sheep have thrown such a super crop of lambs & more than 3/4 are ewe lambs. Feeding, we feed sheep nuts, buy in about 1& 1/2 tonnes which feeds our 20 croft ewes (bred for marketable lambs) from mid october to mid may. Because of the rainfall we get here, we work haylage instead of hay, but our sheep arnt all that taken on it, it mostly goes to the cows & our ram. The price you get for your lambs is such a pittance that if we dont get all the lambs sold, we wont break even on the hard feed costs this year. Im going out to the flock book sales at the end of the year to get us some registered stock, that way we can start to offer pedigree breeding stock alongside our meat stock. Angela www.fairislefibres.blogspot.com Bed & Breakfast upon the Isle of Fair Isle www.burklecrafts.co.uk High quality hand dyed spinning fibers www.fairislefibers.co.uk To stop mail temporarily mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: set nomail To restore send: set mail
