Sheep shearing at Farm Ness
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00:00I have a newfound appreciation for farming.
00:04Welcome to Farm Ness, where I met all creatures big and small,
00:08but more importantly, I learnt how hard farming life actually is.
00:17Starting with sheep shearing, I got to understand why it's important to the sheep's health,
00:22where the wool goes, and I even got to give it a shot myself.
00:26Straddle her head with your legs, that's it.
00:29Okay, and get your left foot under her bumcheek and hold her leg that way, your left hand.
00:34This way?
00:35Yeah, have you got one?
00:36Yeah.
00:37Okay.
00:38I think, probably.
00:39You've got a stretch.
00:43I'm not good at this.
00:44Do you think you can reach down there?
00:45But with a bit of perseverance and a lot of fear, I got there eventually.
00:50However, it did take me about 20 minutes to do just one sheep,
00:54in comparison to the professionals who had already sheared hundreds.
01:00The way that they have to really secure the sheep when they're fidgeting,
01:05and they're big creatures.
01:07The shaver, it's like pure blades, and it's vibrating,
01:11so it's really difficult to keep a hold of.
01:13If you let go of that, that was my main concern.
01:16I could chop off my leg, let alone the sheep's fur.
01:19These sheep go to the Black Isle Show, to the shearing competition.
01:22So the shearers that are just behind us there, they're starting to get them ready
01:26by crutching off the tail and some of the belly underneath.
01:29And it also helps us control fly strike in the sheep.
01:33Fly strike is a really nasty one.
01:36Basically, the fly lay their eggs, and then maggots hatch out
01:39and basically start eating the sheep alive.
01:42So if you don't see it or you don't catch it, it'll kill the sheep quite quickly.
01:46We normally don't have a problem, but when the weather was really good at the start,
01:50we had five, ten cases.
01:52It's such a good, natural product, the wool,
01:55and it's such a shame that it's almost undervalued
01:58because it comes every year, it's there,
02:01and then it goes to make clothes, carpets, it goes everywhere, yeah.