2004 Newsletter

What a year!!!

Our thoughts go out to those severely affected this year.

Once again, mother nature has reminded us who’s really in control.

I guess, the lessons we must learn from this, is our systems (and sheep) must be robust enough to handle these extremes (with weather forecasters telling us to expect even more in the future!).

Here at Turnberry we took a battering in February and then again even worse in August.

It’s been an extremely difficult year – you know it’s wet around here when you get stuck on the quads going down the hills!

A special mention should be made of our committed team, who have endured wet, muddy clothes/raincoats etc. every day for a long time now! Thanks guys!

It has been very satisfying to see how well our Coopworth flock has “hacked the pace” even with over 200% lambs on board.

Our philosophy of pushing our sheep to identify those who perform, even under less than favourable conditions has really paid off in a year like this.

Even under the extreme conditions, losses have been minimal (mainly pregnant ewes getting stuck in slips) and we are still on target for a good lambing.

Well, we bombarded you with technical information last year after our client workshop, so we thought this year we’d keep things brief.

Finally I hope lambing has gone well and here’s hoping for a great spring.

See you at ram selection time.

Cheers

Simon, Pascale and Bill Carthew