If you visit an agricultural show, a shepherds meet or a stock auction you’ll rarely hear the word Sheep. Farmers have a wide terminology and vocabulary describing not just the gender, but age and purpose of the sheep.
Cull Yow – An old female yaw (ewe) that is too old for breeding.
Gimmer – Female sheep
Lamb – A sheep under 12 months of age.
Mule – A cross breed sheep. The most common mule is a Northern Mule. It’s a cross between a Bluefaced Leicester Tup and a Swaledale yow.
Pet Lamb – Also known as a bottling lamb. These are orphaned lambs that are raised by bottle feeding and often come out quite small because of it. Around lambing season you can find many a lamb in a farmers house being bottle fed.
Shearling – Also known as a Hogg. A lamb/young sheep that has finished weaning but has yet to have its first shearing. Generally 9 to 18 months, yet to cut its first two teeth.
Store – A weaned lamb that is often sold off for fattening.
Tup – Northern/Scottish for Ram. Male sheep used for breeding.
Wether – A castrated male sheep.
Yow – Cumbrian/Northern/Scottish for Ewe. A female sheep, which has given birth.
We’re officially open! It’s the start of our very first season here at Low Nest Studios and all only a matter of weeks since we got the keys. Despite a few hurdles we got there!
We’re really excited about not just the season ahead, but about the many years ahead of us. This morning was a stunningly beautiful morning (See images below) and we had a lovely walk to the Stone Circle to get Mackie exercised.
It wasn’t the smoothest of mornings prepping; the welcome packs still had John and Alisons details in it because the laminator hadn’t arrived so a mad rush printing and laminating fire instructions and maps. We then had the electrician in to do work to the new 4th apartment, put a new light into Raise’s kitchen and fix a flickering bathroom light in Dolly Wagon (however he had the wrong bit for Dolly Wagon! Doh). Open reach were also in adding an extra phone line. However the poor lad has to now lay 2.5km of new cabling (we do have WiFi for guests, as we’re adding a 4th apartment we wanted to give the internet a bit of a boost).
While all this was going on Alasdair popped into the boiler room to find the water UV filter had blown a leak and was blowing water everywhere (all fixed fairly quickly). So safe to say it wasn’t the cussiest of starts!
However we’re there! We are up, running and guests seem to be happy. So thank you to everybody who has helped us along the way and we look forward to seeing all the wonderful (and the rest of you) guests this year and next. We still have a couple of weeks left this year and 2020 is booking up fast, bookings open for 2021!
