Posted by AndyG on August 27, 2007 at 07:59:37 from 130.159.248.222 user AndyG.
In Reply to: Re: Sheep and Dixon. posted by Laurence Monkhouse on August 27, 2007 at 07:23:56:
This doesn't seem to be the case today. A few years ago, when living next to a Scottish (lowland) farm, the farmer informed me that the profit per head - not more than £30 - was lost for any particular sheep for each occasion the vet had to be called out. "More trouble than they're worth". He gave up keeping sheep shortly after this, to concentrate on the more lucrative barley-for-whisky market - one year before Britain's last big outbreak of Foot & Mouth.
In a more Dick Callum-related recent incident, in February this year, my wife and I saved a Herdwick Sheep (the world's most gorgeous) in Patterdale, having found it caught on a barbed-wire fence, its front feet on the ground, its back feet dangling in mid-air. It might have been stuck for days.
What surprised me about this event was - for all their fluffiness - it weighed next to nothing. Easily less than our chubby collie/Staffie cross, and easily lowerable by a couple of children with a rope.
...I didn't get a sledge in compensation, though. :-(
