Off to Wales!

While Ken stayed home to care for the farm I headed off to Wales again to continue training to become an approved judge for Black Welsh Mountain Sheep.

After a relatively unevventful plane flight from Grand Junction to Dallas, then overnight flight from Dallas to London Heathrow, tube to Paddington Station, Train to Newport, Train to Abergavenny and lastly taxi I finally arrived in Abergavenny Wales to the Beavan Family Butcher Shop.

The Beavans' were featured in the BBC program Lambing Live. I made e-mail contact and had arranged to come visit and stay at their B&B for the first couple of days.

Most tourists are not that interested in butcher shops, but I enjoyed talking to Huw & Jan about the issues of running a small butcher shop that caters to the local trade and provides good fresh locally raised meats and eggs.


Huw Beavan


Jan Beavan


Then it was off to Great Tre-Rhew Farm and home of Kate, Jim, Trevor & Anne Beavan. The B&B portion is to the left of this picture.


As soon as I got my stuff in it was off to watch and try not to get in the way as Jim sorted out the lambs to be weaned and checked his ewes for teeth and tits. He was sorting out which ewes would be culled and which would stay for another lambing. Culls got a spot on their rump so they are easy to sort out later. Hopefully I didn't get in the way too much.

Ewes in catch pen.


Checking teeth.


I really liked his chute set-up. I don't think it would work for us because of the horns on our rams but it was sure convenient to work a bunch of sheep around. If we had all polled sheep it would be fine.

Then we moved the ewes to new grazing.


Lambs got moved to a different field



I really liked the old stone water trough. I wonder how long that's been there?


Beautiful cottage garden.

Wales Trip

I was fortunate to be able to attend the Black Welsh Mountain Sheep Annual Show and Sale in Abergavenny Wales 4 September 2008. Then I got to judge and view a number of flocks culminated by my attendance at the Cadet Judges training held at Ted Williams Garth Uchaf farm in Pentyrch Wales. In between I did some touristy stuff. As I sort pictures and notes I will be posting the trip highlights here.

I will be inserting them in the blog in date order of when I did them so look at older posts for details.

Somerset 6 September 2008

Another day with Melinda Baker. We sorted and looked at her entire flock and then got to visit two other flocks as well.

Here are Melinda's show sheep, ewe lambs and wethers.

After getting the catch pens set up we got the sheep into the pen. It was refreshing to see someone else set up pens and fences to guide the sheep rather than use a herding dog.

Here's everyone caught. We sorted sheep and discussed the good and bad points of all of them. Some were marked for butcher soon and others will be kept for a while. I really enjoyed talking to another person about their flock and had a great time.

Our next stop was to evaluate the ram lambs that belong to Dr. Peter Holden. I didn't get any pictures there but Melinda and I ended up with the same sheep as the number 1 and 2 ram lambs and also agreed on the poorest ones. We had a few differences in the middle ranks but I felt good about my explanations and also could see what she was looking for in her sheep as well.

Melinda had arranged for us to visit Lyn Cockerill and see her flock of Black Welsh.

Somerset 5 September 2008

My next stop was at Melinda Baker's farm in Shepton Mallet, Somerset. She had to work part of the day on Friday so her husband kindly took the day and took me around to play tourist.

This is the chapel of the Marston house that belonged to the Earls of Cork and Orrey. The Manor is now a corporate headquarters.


This is Longleat house, an Edwardian Manor that belongs to the Marquis of Bath. Much of the land is now a safari park but we didn't go in because of the rain.


This is another lovely manor house.


We then headed to the small village of Frome. Here is one of the roads.

In Frome we stopped at the museum and they had a book with weaving drafts. Frome was a center for tweeds and fine worsteds and I would have really loved to see the weaving book and go through it. There were samples of the cloth and the full weaving draft and sett listed. I hope they will consider documenting and publishing this valuable book.


We didn't go in but I liked the looks of this traditional pub.

My second castle was Nunney Castle, a French style 14th century moated castle





This was probably part of the original stables and castle outbuildings but is now owned separately.





Our tourist stuff done we went back to the farm. There I met Mrs. McGregor and her daughter. They had come to pick up a ram lamb they were buying from Melinda. We first adjourned to the house for tea and to fill out all the required movement paperwork. The UK is much more restrictive about documenting animal movement than the US. Every sheep is double tagged and all movements on or off the farm are documented.

The ram on the right is the one that was sold.

Here is another picture of him.

Melinda's ram lambs, and her yearling ram and a wether buddy in the back.

I particularly liked this ram lamb. Unfortunately he is of the lowest scrapie resistance and was under a mandatory slaughter order. The UK requires that all group 4 and 5 rams are slaughtered. In the US nearly all of our sheep would be slaughtered because we have so few of the resistant genotypes here. Of my own 27 adult rams only 4 would be acceptable to keep in the UK.

This is Lovel Jumping Jack her yearling ram. He has the preferred style of UK horns, much thinner and longer than ours and more closely set to the head.

They loaded the ram into the back of their SUV and tied his head to the headrest. It was a most unusual way to haul a a sheep.

We had planned to look at Melinda's ewes in the yard individually but it was raining hard and we decided not to move them in. We did go see them in the pasture and we talked about their good and bad points and what the senior judges will be looking for.

Thus ended my first day of flock visits.

Black Welsh Show and Sale 4 September 2008

In the pens ready to be judged.



Ted Williams with his ewe entry.

Julia Patterson with her ram.

Judge Matthew Evans checking the turn of a ram's horns.

Adult Ram class



E.O Williams with his ram
Another nice older ram.
And another.
And a very nice boy with wide spread horns.

Checking the shoulders.

Checking the back and loin area. This is the shearling ram class.

Ram lamb class.

Judging Will Workman's ram lamb.

More ram lambs.

And still more ram lambs.
From right to left Chris Garn, Patricia Laws, Will Workman, E.O Williams and then I am not sure who the next handlers are as I got pictures of the sheep not the people.


The top three, first place winners in each class. From front to back. Julia Patterson with her winner adult ram. Patricia Laws with her shearling ram winner and E.O. Williams with his winning ram lamb.

The breed Champion Patricia Laws and her ram Hounsley Joker sired by Abbotstone Colin. Sold for 440 guineas.

Reserve is E.O Williams with his ram lamb Wenallt Kenchester sired by Wenallt Endevour. Sold for 390 guineas.

Pen of ewes before the auction.

Rams before the auction.

Pen of ewes being sold in the auction.

The auction ring.

Will Workman's ewes he bought at the auction. I had to find the best head out of this batch as part of my judges training.


Driving with Melinda Baker and her husband to Somerset where I was staying for the next few dys.


White horse on chalk hills.

View into Melinda's ram pasture out the window of my room.