Journal Features
Rod's keeping up an age-old tradition
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| One man and his dog: shepherd Rob Hawke and Jess the sheepdog. DB3224P24 |
AT this time of year a long time ago, shepherds were, according to St Luke, keeping watch over their flocks by night in a field not far from the stable in Bethlehem where a new born babe lay in a manger.
Nights in the Holy Land are presumably balmier than those to be experienced on a Wiltshire hillside in the
middle of winter - and shepherd Rob Hawke has no
intention of spending Christmas night in the open air keeping an eye on his 650 ewes.
Not that Rob, who lives in Bishopstone with wife Anna and young son Alfie, will neglect the sheep completely.
"Christmas Day is not complete unless we've been around the sheep." Rob tells me. "We're not watching them by starlight but we'll see them by first light."
Rob, 38, is a contract shepherd and not only looks after his own sheep, but also attends to the 600-strong flock belonging to Lord Head.
The animals graze land in Dorset and Wiltshire in the winter, going where the grass is literally greener.
Cattle farmers and other landowners tend to lease out land they are not using over winter, and it's the shepherd's job to oversee the movement of livestock to wherever grazing is plentiful and available.
Healthy sheep can be left pretty much to their own devices, but keeping them healthy is very much the
modern shepherd's concern.
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| Jess rounds up her flock at full speed. DB3224P17 |
Rob's sheep are kept outside throughout the year, including the lambing season, so his working day is entirely dictated by daylight with shorter hours in the winter.
The breeding cycle of sheep is five months, and while we fondly imagine rams get randy as the sap rises in springtime, the chances are the cold winter months of November and December saw them at their most active, turned out into fields of around 50 ewes to a ram, in order for the lambing season to hit its stride around March and April.
Maternity care for ewes is much more high-tech than in Biblical times with pregnancy scans at 90 days' gestation carried out by mobile ultrasound, allowing the shepherd to plan ahead with ewes separated into groups depending on how many lambs each expects.
It's possible to foster a lamb from a triplet family onto a mum with just one baby, so that most ewes end up with two lambs apiece.
"We probably assist with under five per cent of births," says Rob, which was probably just as well as he explains that the number of sheep per man has increased
dramatically in recent years as farm labour is laid off.
Rob grew up in Cornwall where his parents had a
smallholding.
It seems that he was always destined for an outdoors life.
"I did spend two weeks in a travel agents, but life's too short to be in a job that you are not happy with," he muses.
He went instead to agricultural college.
He has shepherded in Dorset and Sussex, but an
invitation to work part-time for Lord Head two-and-a-half years ago, bringing with it the chance to graze his own flock on the land as well, was too good to resist.
Now he finds himself in the age-old job of shepherd on land which is a stone's throw from territory once watched over by Isaac Bawcombe and his son, Caleb, the Martin Down shepherds who earned literary immortality in W H Hudson's A Shepherd's Life.
The Bawcombes' rural life was hard, their comforts basic, and conditions of work brutally tough in the chilly depths of a Wiltshire winter.
Modern shepherding is very different - and a long way from the teatowels and crooks of infant nativity plays - but one crucial element of the job remains the same.
No shepherd is complete without the most important tool of his trade - his dog.
"You never see a good flock of sheep without a good shepherd and you never find a good shepherd without a good dog," acknowledges Rob.
He has, he says, always been a
"dogaholic" and he trained his first puppy, Misty, himself, but then bought a trained dog, Clyde, from a family friend.
"He'd been trained to a trial standard and opened my eyes to what a dog could do," says Rob.
"It's a partnership.
"They are not cars you can jump in - you need to develop the skills to handle the dog."
Rob has eight, although he has brought only two - 18-month old Jess and three-year- old Mac - when we turn up at the field where he trains other sheepdog owners to train their dogs.
Border collies are the dog of choice, but bearded and Welsh collies are also popular and other breeds like the Australian Kelpies or the New Zealand bred Huntaways, can also be useful in sheepwork.
Training other people to handle their dogs has become a sideline for shepherds like Rob, particularly as sheepdog trials increase in popularity.
One Man and His Dog may have
disappeared from our television screens years ago, but up and down the country,
trials are held on a regular basis.
Far from being farming types, many of the competitors these days are hobbyists - office workers and professional types keen to get out into the country in their leisure time and train their dogs up to trial
standard. The day we meet, Rob is helping Tarrant Monkton smallholder, Gerard Wyllys, coax his dog, Tang, to do a full
circuit of the field, seeking out sheep in the hollows and shadows by the perimeter hedges.
Tang, it seems, is not so keen in putting in the legwork and would rather go straight for the clutch of sheep in the centre of the field.
Gerard hopes one day to have a sheepdog trial winner bred from Rob's dogs.
"It's terrific fun seeing the dogs working and doing that they love to do," he says.
A promising border collie pup might cost around £200, but full trained, its value shoots up to anything between £1500 - £5000 - presumably worth its weight in gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Find out more about sheepdog training at www.allaboutsheepdogs.com.
11:49am Thursday 20th December 2007
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