Surrey Homes | SH46 | August 2018 | Wedding supplement inside

Jane Howard’s
Fables from
the Farm
Why cows win the farm animal popularity
contest – and sheep most definitely do not
Among those of us old enough to remember, Coopers
Farm has often been likened to an i-spy Book of The
Farm. These tiny pocket books were the pre-digital
way of keeping children entertained. Each one was dedicated
to a different topic like The Seaside, Birds, Cars or even
Motorways (a novelty way back then), each page illustrated
with objects you had to look out for and then tick off.
Once completed, and I never knew anyone who ever did,
you could send them back to the publisher – Big Chief I
Spy - and look forward to receiving a magnificent prize such
as a pencil or a badge. Those were the days!
Fact is over the past 20 years we have managed to collect,
or at some point tried our hand at, most of the farm animals
that would have featured in one of these books – cows, pigs,
sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, guinea fowl – and many of
them are still here. Though some are most definitely not.
The goats were the worst, escaping, eating the roses,
making a racket and generally getting in the way. They only
lasted a few weeks but sheep come a close second in my
“more effort than their worth” opinion, but
it’s OK because they’re Adrian’s sheep and my
cows, so it’s not my problem.
When we first came to Coopers we had
almost no farm knowledge, Adrian decided to
sign up for an NVQ in agriculture at Hadlow
College. While there he was taken under the
wing of a very experienced shepherd who
turned up at the farm one day with five ewes
and a ram having rightly decided that being taught in a
classroom is only half the job, getting stuck in is far more
important. The die was cast, the flock was installed so, as
you do, I went and bought six cows.
“Sheep shearing
can be a very
competitive
business”
But here’s the thing. Once the cows are turned out in the
fields in the spring, apart from checking on them every day
it’s a pretty carefree summer. The shepherd’s work however
is never quite done.
As someone famously said there are two things sheep like
doing, one is escaping and one is dying and if they can die
escaping then that is true happiness.
All summer they have to be regularly wormed, have jabs
to stop diseases, their feet trimmed and be
sprayed with noxious chemicals to prevent fly
strike, a ghastly Hammer House of Horror
condition where bluebottle flies lay their eggs
in the wool and if undetected the maggots
burrow into the sheep’s skin and literally
devour the poor animal.
This is less of a problem once they’ve been
shorn but that too is a major undertaking –
and, rather like a hot dog eating competition, can be a very
competitive business.
Matt Smith, a farmer from Cornwall can shear a sheep in
44 seconds and recently broke a world record by shearing
731 ewes in nine hours!
In his heyday, Adrian could manage about 15 sheep a
week, not quite a match for Matt who by my calculations
would whizz through our 80 in under an hour, but these
days we employ the services of the much younger James.
But it still takes the two of them all day to get them in,
shear them, swap the combs and cutters, make endless cups
of tea and ‘wind’ the fleeces into big wool sacks.
Over in the cattle department I will spend my summer
wandering gently through the meadows watching my brown
cows just grow sleeker and glossier.
I rest my case.
Follow Jane Howard – and the farm – on Instagram @coopersfarm
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