The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Land Management => Topic started by: macgro7 on June 02, 2019, 06:44:57 pm
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I'm looking at a farm for sale in Wales - it comes with common grazing rights for 800 sheep, 40 cows and 8 horses.
The question is ifbyoir release all of those animals on 4000 acres of common land how on earth are you suppose to round them up for shearing, lambing, tupping etc???
Do other people have grazing rights on the same hills? How are you supposed to know which ones are yours? Would you check 800 individual sheep ear tags and segregate from neighbours 800? Wow
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In Scotland, only crofts have grazing rights. Here, the Crofting Commission would be able to give you inofrmation on Grazings Committees, that manage common grazings. Traditionally crofters work together to gather stock off the grazings and shear, dose etc.
There may be something similar in Wales.
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I know of two ways it’s done. Hefting, where each flock knows its own terrain and broadly doesn’t stray, so you can get your own sheep in. But it takes generations to heft a flock, so unless you’re buying with both rights and hefted flock, that would be tough to get established. Or the cooperative model Rosemary describes, where commoners work together on gathers up to five times a year, and work through all the sheep together. Must be a heck of a job getting the ewes and lambs paired up so each can mark or remove his or her own. :o
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Where I grew up in Wales most house holders on the common land had grazing rights. Not as many as hundreds, and most householders didn’t use them, so with this assumption the common land was grazed by about four/five people and then others had a few ponies or cattle or whatever. In much the same way as a fank in crofting, a date to round up sheep was agree and everyone would go and help. The ground was wet, there were no quads, it was all done on cobs or foot. I had a pony so was asked to help, they’d sometimes give me a dog and a name of a bit of common early in the morning and off we’d go. The sheep basically knew what they were doing. Just had to keep an eye out for stragglers, cunning ones hiding, carry small lambs and stop traffic.
Then they’d be sorted, occasionally some belonging to other people would be taken away, but mostly dealt with communally, just given the other people’s marks or whatever. It was the same with the common ponies, but only once a year and much harder. Now it’s broken up with fences, fewer sheep, quad bikes and little community about it.
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We have common grazing rights and I had the same thought. Not really sure how to best use it as it's for 40 cows or 300 sheep but I have the same concern.
Does anyone know if you can rent your common grazing rights out as I wont, for example, be using them within the next 12 months as I have more pressing projects on my own land?
Thanks and sorry to ask a question on someone else's thread
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I think it will depend on your individual documentation. I looked at a property once had grazing rights on the common, but it stipulated what animals and that they had to be owned by the commoner.
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Generally they stick together in their own flocks, so while they'll all wander about over our commons, it's not too hard to come back with just ours when I go up for them - they recognise me and my voice and the sound of my quad and will come running to see if I've got food, but will mostly ignore my neighbours when they're up there. If anyone does accidentally bring in a couple of someone else's, we just put them back out again once we're done working with our own. Every shareholder in the commons will have their own flock mark (mine is a big green C on the back!) which is put on with oil-based marker, they last pretty well. A neighbour kindly got me an iron made up by the blacksmith's apprentice, so I can squelch it into the paint bucket and press it onto their backs, which makes it very clear and easy to spot at a distance.
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Thanks everyone! Really interesting.
Will bucket training work with 850 ewes + their lambs though?
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Haha.
When a pal and I bought a 1000 acre moorland farm with hefted flock of 450 Swaledales and 80 mules, neither of us having worked a sheepdog before, we were anxious about gathering our fell and being able to bring the sheep in for the treatments they needed. Smallholding friends advised bucket training.
Let me tell you, you do not get between 450 Swaledales and their feed :roflanim: One dog wouldn’t get off the quad bike at all, the other learned to run a path through the sheep so I could drive behind him dispensing up to a quarter of a tonne of cake from the ‘snacker’ towed behind.
Neither dog would disembark when we went to feed the mules. :roflanim:
Joking aside, it took us a while to learn to gather our fell. The first time, it took several days to get all the girls home for their pre-tupping crutching and tailing. By year two, we could usually bring them all fairly reliably in in under two hours when they weren’t with lambs. More difficult when they had lambs, they don’t flock the same when they have lambs with them.
Prey animals lose all interest in food once their flight hormones kick in. So a bucket only works if they aren’t alarmed. ;).
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I think you would need some good huntaway dogs for that kind of herding
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I think you would need some good huntaway dogs for that kind of herding
Oh, these dogs had no problem gathering and driving the sheep, they just knew better than to put themselves between a ravening hoard with a combined weight of around 27 tonnes on 1800 cloven feet, travelling at approx twenty miles an hour, bearing down on a quarter of a tonne of cake spread out in a line! :roflanim: