4th July 2010

A lot has happened since the last news on the 31st May.

After Dare’s reserve champion win at the South Suffolk, we attended two county shows with a team of 10 at each show (Suffolk – beginning of June and Royal Norfolk – end of June).  The Show team tends to be the same at each show during the season.  This year we swapped over one ram lamb, as we have three we like.

We like to enter:-

One older ram – Glaven Dare
One older ewe - Glaven Classic
Two shearling rams – Glaven Expert and Glaven Excalibur
Two shearling ewes – Glaven Elise and Glaven Ebony
Two ram lambs – Glaven Flint and Glaven Flashman (or Glaven Frenzy)
Two ewe lambs – Glaven Frolic and Glaven Fidget

We won the group of three at the Suffolk and Royal Norfolk shows with Expert, Elise and Ebony (three shearlings – one male and two females), which we were thrilled with.  At the Suffolk we also won the ewe lamb class with Fidget.

We had more success at the Royal Norfolk Show winning the reserve champion with Dare – the champion was Catfield Hall’s ewe.  We also put another group (three lambs – Flint, Frolic and Fidget) in the rare breeds interbreed group of three and came second to a beautiful trio of Shetlands.  The owner couldn’t believe it – we were thrilled for her as I believe she has been talking about retiring from showing.  It was a very hot show. 

See all our results in the Glaven results section of our website.

Our last two shows are the Wayland on the 1st August and the Aylsham at the end of August (on the bank holiday Monday).  We need to get our entries in for these shows soon.  We will probably take the three ram lambs and see what the two judges think of them!

All the lambs have been weaned and today’s job was to separate the males and females – we don’t want any accidents – the oldest are now five months old.  We have left the youngest ram lamb (Fortune) with his sister (Fame) for another 4 – 6 weeks, as he is younger and smaller than the big boys, and as a result will probably get bullied.  Fingers crossed he doesn’t get up to any mischief!

We hope the grass will begin to green up at Holly Farm - there are now only two lambs and two ponies grazing there.  The rest of the flock are at Harpley (where the grass is good) and on an old petrol dump area near Hillington, where there are a lot of rabbits and not much grass. 

Two of the rams (Charlie and Dauntless the teaser) have been performing on The Sheep Show, around the show circuit, and will be returned when they are needed for work again in August/September.

We are now planning the 2011 lambing season, and deciding when to put  Dauntless the teaser in and whether to sponge again – we have done so for 4 years now.  It is meant to bring the ewes on heat altogether and therefore ensure they lamb at the same time, but last season the ewes did not get pregnant as quickly as we had hoped and ended up lambing over a 6 week period.  We are planning on using 4 rams this season – Charlie, Dare, Expert and Abercarron Casey who was purchased last September as a lamb at the Traditional Native Breeds Show and Sale.  We seem to have increased to 20 ewes – two of these (our two show shearlings – Elise and Ebony) are being sold in-lamb later in the year.

Meat (hogget & lamb) available – please ring to order.

Shearling rams are available for sale and can be collected after the last show (30th August). This would be either directly from the Aylsham Show or after our compulsory 6 day shut down. All available females sold this season – please email to book for next year.