Category: Sheep Farming

Agricultural History Exmoor EYA 2023 Scottish Exmoor Links sheep Sheep Farming Shepherd Little

Explore Your Archive – December 1st  2023  Hobbies

Did the occupants of Hoar Oak Cottage have hobbies? It’s very hard to imagine them having any time for hobbies.  Easier to imagine that some of the things we may consider nowadays as hobbies were part of their everyday lives – knitting for example or dipping candles or felt making or growing herbs.  However, one thing that is a characteristic of many of the shepherds at Hoar Oak is their huge interest and skill in breeding and training sheepdogs. Certainly, the sheepdog was a part of the sheep farmer’s working life, but it might be said the interest and devotion given to these dogs went beyond simple work.  Perhaps, almost a hobby. The archive is lucky to hold several photographs and digitised copies of certificates and programmes of Exmoor Sheep Dog Trials linked to the Little family and their ‘hobby’ of breeding and trialling sheepdogs.  Below is a photo of William Little of Hoar Oak trialling and the front cover of the programme for the 1976 Exmoor Sheep Dog Trials – please get in touch (info@hoaroakcottage.org) if you’d like scans of the entire programme contents. Thanks to David Little for supporting the Friends of Hoar Oak Cottage and allowing us to make surrogate copies of many of his photos, documents and sheep dog certificates and trial programmes. Dave was a descendant of one of the Scottish shepherds on Exmoor – John Little, and son of William Little who was shepherd at Hoar Oak Cottage in the 1930s.
Posted by Bette Baldwin
#SheepBite Agricultural History Exmoor Scottish Exmoor Links Sheep Farming Uncategorized

#SheepBite

It is said that Eskimos have a hundred words for snow.  Exmoor shepherds may have had as many for sheep.

Some will have been in common use in Scotland and some on Exmoor, others used elsewhere in the country.  It would be intriguing to know, when the Scottish shepherds brought their #SheepBite words with them, whether any of these new terms became adopted by the Exmoor farmers.

Many #SheepBite words can still be heard on the moor today.  If you farm with sheep we’d love to know which ones you still use and what they mean.

Over the coming months we plan to add more and more – why not tell us which ones are your favourites and why you like them?

With thanks to Norah Solesbury for supplying many of the words used by Scottish shepherds.

 

#Husk or Hooze

A troublesome cough in lambs caused by lungworms most commonly during wet autumn months.  Death is caused by anaemia and exhaustion, sometimes after many weeks of illness.  When coughing, the lamb with expel large numbers of the parasites into their pasture where they can live for many months and infecting others grazing there.  Shepherds used a mix of turpentine and milk with variable results.  Husk in older sheep was caused by a different worm, not apparent before butchering.  Now, regular worming of sheep prevents the disease.

#Braxy

Often just referred to as the Sickness, Braxy was once a common disease amongst hill sheep, usually affecting younger animals. It may have been the cause of many deaths during the winter months brought on by them eating frozen grass or root crops.  With few signs of illness before death, the carcass decays more rapidly than is usual; despite this the meat was often eaten without ill effect to human or dog. Nowadays, sheep are vaccinated against it (see #Drench, below)

#Drench

Nothing to do with the shepherds getting wet!  A drench is a liquid medicine given either as a preventative measure or as a cure.

#Drenching Horn (or, nowadays, Gun)

In the days before drenching (dosing) guns were invented, sheep drenches were given via drenching horns made from a sheep’s horn which had been cut lengthways to form a type of shallow spoon.  The drenching gun resembles a large metal syringe with a tube which is inserted far  into the sheep’s mouth.    By this means a prescribed amount of the drench is released down the sheep’s throat.

#Fluke (Liver Fluke)

A parasitic flatworm that completes its life cycle within sheep causing liver damage and in severe cases, sudden death from haemorrhage.  Most commonly found in wetter areas as the host is a minute mud snail and, as a consequence is normally more problematic in especially wet years  – such as those of 1860-61 and 1879-1880 when over three million sheep died nationally.  However, fluke can be transferred to drier pasture by infected animals.  Now treated by drugs; in the past, herbal remedies may have been used with varying degrees of success.  A cautionary note: watercress should not be gathered from fluke infested streams as they can infect humans  when ingested.

#Buist (or Keel or Bust)

Pronounced ‘Bist’: to mark a sheep’s fleece with paint.  One of the oldest forms of sheep identification. This would often be with the farmer’s initials and each farm would have its own colour.  After shearing, of course, the sheep would need to be rebuisted.   The image shows Exmoor Horn sheep belonging to the late Dick French of Brendon Barton, one of the closest farms to Hoar Oak Cottage.  The initials A F were his father’s, the + usually denotes a glebe (or tithe) farm

#Buisting Iron

The marking iron used to apply paint to a fleece, sometimes individual letters, sometimes with the ‘complete’ branding mark; attached to a metal shank.  There would often be a smaller iron for lambs.  Occasionally they would be made from wood as shown in the photo below

#Keel Pot

The pot holding the paint (or paint/tar mix) into which the buisting iron would be dipped.  Often sheep were marked with just a daub of paint using a wooden stick (‘keel’ or ‘paddle’)

#Hogg (or Hogget)

From August/September in the year of birth until the next summer when the fleece is sheared (clipped) off, the sheep is a ‘hogg’ (Scotland) or hogget (parts of England/Wales).  Does Exmoor say hogg or hogget?

#Wethers (or Wedder Hoggs)

Tup (male) lambs which have been castrated and are being fattened for the market.  If kept beyond the stage when they are lambs they become known as ‘wedder hoggs’

#Stell

Stells are open, circular pens – usually made from stone that sheep can wander into freely in bad weather.  Still commonly seen in Scotland, Scottish shepherd  Robert Tait Little brought his knowledge of them to Exmoor.  Click here to find out about the one built at Hoar Oak Cottage

#Lamb

When does a lamb stop being a lamb?  Young sheep born in Spring are known as lambs until their first August when they become #hoggs (or #hoggets)

Posted by Bette Baldwin
Agricultural History Exmoor Heritage History Scottish Exmoor Links sheep Sheep Farming

Exmoor – Land of Goshen?

Exmoor may seem like a forbidding, remote or even extreme environment to our modern minds.  To the Scottish shepherds who travelled south to Exmoor in the 19th century to work for Frederic Winn Knight it would have felt very much like home from home.  Most of them came from similar, or even more, remote rural areas in the Scottish Borders and they were used to wild weather and wild countryside.

But could it be that coming south might seem like coming to the Land of Goshen for these shepherd families?  Frederic Knight seemed to think so. On the 6th of November 1883 he had an article published in the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette about Exmoor sheep farming.

He says in the article that although the climate of Exmoor may seem severe to a native of the Devonshire sea-coast the “shepherds from the Scotch borders have frequently remarked, on receiving accounts of snowstorms in their native hills, that on coming to Exmoor they had come into the land of Goshen.”  

He explains how his sheep flocks need no additional feed during the winter months and that “only twice in the last twenty years have I lost sheep in snowstorms and the loss compared with the number of sheep wintered has been infinitesimal, as it was accidental.  No sheep with liver-rot or fluke has ever been known on Exmoor.” 

Although Mr Knight doesn’t make clear precisely what he means by Land of Goshen – nor what the accident was that caused the loss of sheep during winter – it can probably be assumed he was referring to the balmy climate and agricultural benefits of farming in Southern England.  The newspaper article gives a very positive view of sheep farming on Exmoor at the end of the 1800s and should probably be seen as a bit of free media for Mr Knight wishing to put a very positive spin on his agricultural activities on Exmoor.

The Friends researches into the Scottish shepherds at Hoar Oak Cottage and elsewhere on Exmoor don’t necessarily paint a similar picture.  Their lives, for the most part, included highs and lows, good times and bad times.  Some stayed on Exmoor.  Most went back to their homes and families in Scotland.  So was Exmoor their Land of Goshen?  Maybe it was a bit warmer then the Scottish Borders.  Maybe the chance of a job with a cottage was attractive.  Maybe sheep farming in the south was easier than in the north.

We’ll never know.  We can only be sure that Frederic Knight certainly thought it was.  At least according to what he wrote in this newspaper article published over 130 years ago.

 

 

Posted by Bette Baldwin
Agricultural History Heritage History Sheep Farming Stells

Protecting sheep in winter

When the early shepherds travelled to Exmoor from Scotland with their sheep it was not surprising that they continued to use the traditional Scottish ways of caring for their flocks.

During the winter months’ a careful watch on the weather was essential for a sudden snowstorm could result in the loss of large numbers of sheep. If the snow came late in the season, the losses could be even greater for the ewes would be heavily pregnant. Even if they survived, the stresses the weather caused through cold, exhaustion and hunger would often result in the death of unborn lambs. One way to protect the sheep was to build stells – stone enclosures that the sheep could enter whenever bad weather was imminent.

Perhaps what is more surprising is that, although the shepherds are long gone, it is still possible to find traces of their methods both on the ground and through the notes they kept – for example in Head Shepherd Robert Tait Little’s diaries.

In his diary for 1879, he enters details of two visits to Scotland, travelling by railway to Dumfries from South Molton.

Alongside, he also makes detailed notes for the design of circular stells, quoting directly from the writings of Captain William Napier (published 1822) who farmed at Etterick:

“…a circular stell of dry stone dike, ten yards in diameter, with a three feet open door, and six feet high, including cope, as [sic] the least expensive, and the most sure and efficient improvement that can possibly be adopted…” 

Just yards from Hoar Oak Cottage the remains of a such a stell is marked by low earthen banks. Bracken grows in the disturbed soil of the stell floor to form a perfect circle, making its position and size clearly visible.

Why circular? Although stells can be oval or even rectangular (as at Buscombe Beeches to the southeast of Hoar Oak), Captain Napier considers circular to be far superior: “…the action of the blast [wind] upon the circular surface of the wall, causes a rotatory motion in the air, to such a considerable height, that when the diameter of the circle is kept within proper bounds, the snow is thrown off at a tangent in every direction, and the included space left thus uncovered within…” He also states that it is not just he that is of this opinion but also of some others including, rather tantalizingly, a “Mr Little.” There is no way of knowing if he is referring to one of Robert Tait Little’s shepherding ancestors.

It is well established that sheep flocks that live and roam on unfenced mountain and moorland, learn through the generations to remain within a limited, albeit large, area of many hundreds of acres. They know where to forage and also where and when to take shelter. The shepherd, by building stells, takes advantage of this instinct for the sheep naturally enter and remain within the enclosure whenever bad weather is due. There is no need for a gate to retain them. Here, they are safe and can be kept well fed. Perhaps an even greater advantage of stells is that the shepherd is also safe for there is no need to be out on the moor searching for lost or buried sheep in drifting snow.

The photo below is an abstract from the landscape photo used by The Friends of Hoar Oak Cottage to show the cottage in its Exmoor setting.  The Hoar Oak stell can be seen in the left foreground.  The structure was probably built under Head Shepherd Little’s instructions when Shepherd Renwick o(1879 to 1886) or Shepherd Johnstone (1886 to 1904) were the shepherds in charge of the Hoar Oak herding.

 

Posted by Bette Baldwin