Tommy Boland: Soaking up the rays of hope as the lambing season gets into full swing

The start of the lambing season at Lyons Farm coincided with the arrival of last week's warm and dry conditions

Tommy Boland

March 23 2021 02:00 AM

As I write this article, I am in the lambing shed with the sunlight streaming in through the Yorkshire boarding, It’s making the screen difficult to see, but brings an air of joy as we know the springtime arrival of the new born lambs is, for now at least, being greeted with the warming and grass growing rays of the sun.

We will lamb about 80pc of the flock in a week, which makes for a busy but rewarding period. As I write, it is also St. Patrick’s Day and our second St. Patrick’s Day without the customary parade or visit to Croke Park for the club finals, and the seeding or reaping of a hangover!

My arrival at Lyons was delayed this morning as I had to attend our own parade, organized by my daughter Ailbhe (6) who enlisted her brothers and cousins for the event terminating in sweets and biscuits at their grandparents’ house.

I have resisted mentioning Covid in these articles for the last year, but something it has probably reminded us of is the pleasure to be derived from the simple things in life and the importance of these simple things to us all.

Covid-19 also presented a few new challenges when it came to getting our second-year students from the BAgrSc program in UCD out to Lyons for the lambing season.

Lambing lexicon

This was certainly the first-time terms like ‘pods’, ‘social distance’ and ‘mask wearing’ entered the lambing lexicon, but one thing that remained unchanged was the enthusiasm of the students for lambing practice - even for milking ewes as part of Jonathan Higgins’ research trial.

The resilience of the students is to be admired. I can hear the naysayers making false comparisons to young people of previous generations going to fight in wars as a reason to devalue the challenges faced by our young people, but that is a false equivalency.

The way of life for so many has been changed. Hopefully, it will soon revert to what we had before, but for now it remains a challenge.

It is really interesting to hear the students’ experiences of online learning, conducting most of their socialization and education through electronic platforms. The commonsense sentiment among all the groups is that other groups are more impacted than themselves. This empathy for others is a great trait to see in our young people.

The lambing is proceeding as it always does, with its share of highs and lows, difficult births and poor milkers occupying the majority of attention.

But the best performers are those that go unnoticed, lambing and rearing lambs without assistance. These ewes are the foundation of any flock and the fact that they go unnoticed, while perhaps a little unfair, speaks volumes of their value to the system.

Prof. Tommy Boland; Lecturer in Sheep Production, Lyons Farm, University College Dublin. @Pallastb tommy.boland@ucd.ie