More from our Bowmont
We love Lesley, she has a way of writing, as if she’s right there next to you, squeezing every bit of energy out of her words and onto a computer screen. Her commitment to her animals and our Bowmont, has once again - inspired!
You may think that preserving a modern rare breed like the Bowmont is simply a case of putting male and female together as often as nature allows and encouraging them to get on with it, taking care of course to nurture the offspring especially well.
Yes of course this is the main way we go about things and I spend a good deal of time around now ensuring I am putting the right animals together in order to get the best possible fleeces on the healthiest animals. But it is not enough. Rare breeds of any kind are in constant danger these days from disease outbreaks and their control measures. DEFRA’s heavy handed approach to Foot and Mouth in 2001 is a very present memory round here and the fresh outbreak in 2007 was a real wake up call. The government vet agency, now called Animal Health seem to have no mechanism to give special status to my goats and sheep despite their unique genetic status. This means that they will be slaughtered along with any other animals in a disease outbreak.
I cannot allow 30 years of work to go to waste. I already have some embryos and semen frozen from my goats. I am now slowly doing the same for my Bowmonts. Last year I had semen frozen from Pickle, my senior ram. This year it is embryo collection. One good ewe who has not lambed since she prolapsed spectacularly and is consequently sitting around doing not much, is being programmed for embryo harvesting. This is an invasive process. The vet came yesterday and inserted sponges to get her cycling and in a few days time I must start injecting her twice a day with a cocktail of chemicals to make her superovulate.
At the due time, she and my chosen ram will go to the AI centre together and the eggs she has produced (hopefully many more than normal) will be fertilised – not naturally but by laparoscopic techniques, semen having first been taken from my ram. This is to ensure the highest success rate possible. A few days later the ewe will return to the AI centre to have the resulting tiny embryos flushed out of her. They will then be frozen until I need them. The ewe will then come home for some rest and recovery.
All this sounds quite matter of fact. It hides mixed feelings on my part. I have no doubts at all that I need to do this for the sake of the breed. It only takes one walker on our footpath to bring in FMD if it is in the area. The sheep of course are also perfectly capable of developing some catastrophic disease problem themselves. I have the only guaranteed pure bred Bowmont flock in the country. These sheep are unique. There is no other way at the moment to ensure their survival in the event of disaster.
Yet I am not comfortable. Sheep are probably the most abused and neglected of all farm animals. My vet said yesterday when we were discussing this very point, that the commonly held belief that sheep just suddenly decide to die for no apparent reason is on the whole complete rubbish. Sheep show symptoms just like any other animal. It’s just that they are looked at relatively rarely by many farmers and the early signs get missed. The greater the numbers the less you will notice.
They are long suffering, quiet beasts and it goes against the grain for me to put this ewe through all the injections and the trauma of two surgical procedures despite the excellent care I and the vets will of course give her. She is with two companions in my isolation block and is in the sheep equivalent of 5 star luxury with comfy bedding, good hay and a handful of concentrate. What more could a sheep want? And yet I feel guilty. The day I stop feeling so is the day I shall have abandoned my principle :
“It is our privilege to share the lives of our animals and to use their fibres. It is our duty to treat them with respect and kindness at all times.”
For more on Lesley and the farm:
http://devonfinefibres.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/preserving-the-bowmont/
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