We had a Jacobs like him once and his horns grew so long that he could scarcely graze. We had to saw off the tips. This is quite painless as the only living part is down at the horn root.

Here is an elderly Blackface ewe, photographed by Loch Spelve, Mull, in late September 2002. She is showing signs of middle aged spread, but otherwise looks in reasonable condition. Her wool is growing back after having been 'clipped' (shorn) in the summer.

Wool is quite different from hair, in that it grows afresh each season, pushing the old fleece up from the skin. If not shorn, the old fleece will peel off. Hair, by contrast, grows continuously, like that on our own heads and bodies. The growth on sheeps' faces and legs is hair, not wool.

When a ewe such as her above is crossed with a Jacobs like him at the top of the page, the result is an all-black animal with a variable number of small, crumpled horns. Curiously, a brown-and-white father and a mother with a black face and white wool produce such progeny. These are sometimes shown on the images from the temporary webcam, and I managed to get close to this one with a digital camera:

Some Blackface Show Champions

  

Here are a couple of champion Blackface ewes from the Autumn 2002 Newsletter of the Blackface Sheep Breeders' Association. These are (left to right) from Pamela Forbes, Eastmill Farms, and David Marshall, Gosland Farm, which won prizes at Dewar's Centenary Show.

Breeders often immerse their animals in so-called 'bloom dip' which dyes them with strange colours. This does have the practical advantage that these special sheep can be easily picked out on the hill. Some breeders operate a racket, in that they buy each others' 'prize' lambs for inflated prices, and then expect us poor farmers down the line to pay silly sums for their progeny.

Here is a champion tup (or ram) at the recent Dewar's show. Here we see the present fashion for a grey-nosed type, probably due to the introduction of Swaledale blood. The "Swalies" are a very hardy English breed from Yorkshire, and the tups have corkscrew horns of several turns. With the Blackface, two turns is about the maximum.

Over recent years the fashion in Blackfaces has gone from an all-black face to a mottled black and white face, and now to this grey-nosed type. Below, we see a pen of a tup and several ewes also from the Dewar's Show:

A common deformity is sheep is an undershot or receding jaw. Such animals are known as "sow-mouthed". A tup can only do two years on any given "hirsel" (sheep-grazing area) before he starts serving his own daughters. This inbreeding can lead to "soo-moothies". The same problem arises if uncastrated lambs ("riggs") are allowed to mature and run about the hill.

Sheep only have incisor teeth on the lower jaw, which bite against a hard gum on the upper jaw. With the undershot lower jaw, the teeth don't meet the gum so they are unable to graze properly and never thrive. In due course I will get a picture of such a deformed animal to put in here.

Inbreeding in humans leads to a similar condition, and gives rise to the people known as "chinless wonders". It's amazing how similar our genes are in the animal kingdom.

Also, thank God, the Blackface breed is said to be free of scrapie, a disease said to be similar to BSE or mad cow disease. But whatever the scientists say, in fact very little is known about these conditions.

Back in 1958 I spent three months in the former Yugoslavia, travelling around and learning the language. Since then I have returned regularly, whatever the state of the country - or countries, since all the split-ups. Once in the late 1980's we were staying with friends down near Dubrovnik, and one day took a run up into the mountains of Montenegro. While it had been hot and sunny on the coast, inland at an altitude of several thousand feet it was pouring with rain.

I saw some sheep at the side of the road so grabbed a camera and jumped out. I was astonished at how similar they were to our Blackfaces. The only obvious difference is the slight curliness of the wool:

Note the bell round the animal's neck. There were no people or houses around, otherwise I would have asked about the sheep and possibly been invited in for a cosy chat on the subject over Turkish coffee and plum brandy. For all their ferocious reputation, the Montenegrins are very hospitable people. I would have liked the opportunity of widening my Serbo-Croat vocabulary with some sheep terms. My wife was sufficiently interested to get out of the car for a look, raincoat over her head. Near this place is a village called Crkvice, which is said to have the highest rainfall in Europe.

Writing in 2002, I am pleased to report that this old blue diesel Volkswagen, about 1982 vintage, is still on the road. In most honourable retirement, we are sparing it further trips to the Balkans and it is used only as a local island runabout.

Here we see that they have black ones there too, and in fact in this small flock we see that the local shepherds are not too concerned about purity of the breed. They come in all sorts, even one that might almost be a Jacobs:

I consulted Ryder's invaluable work, and he mentions the coarse-wooled Zackel type, known in Yugoslavia as the Pramenka. There is also the Dubrovnik type, finer-wooled, which he says exhibit 'variability of fleece type and colour'. From what I saw of these sheep, the wool looked quite fine, so they were probably of the Dubrovnik type. I did not attempt to catch and handle the sheep - I might have got shot at. Every Montenegrin worth his salt carries a rifle, preferably the Lee-Enfield 0.303 for its accuracy at long range. Hospitable they may be, but not if you interfere with their property without permission. Here is an illustration from Ryder's Sheep and Man p. 345:

None of these appear to have horns, but as Ryder says, there is great variability. He also mentions transhumance - the moving of sheep with the seasons between low and high ground - but this would seem to have died out. They must be very hardy to withstand winters in this desolate scenery:

But enough of sheep in some exotic bits of 'abroad'. Returning to Mull, this is how we used to do the clipping in the old days:

Here, on the left, Joe is working on an old clipping stool. These triangular items of furniture were quite practical for our wild and rough-fleeced sheep. Often, the wool was little more than a coat of felt like an old Army blanket and you just picked away with the points of the shears to get it off as best as you could. But with a sheep in good condition, where there was a good 'rise' on the wool (growth of the new season), you could use the old backhanded downward slashing technique on both sides, then tip her off the stool and cut away along the back. Mind you, the sheep didn't look too pretty after this treatment.

Next from the left after Joe, we have Archie, who is trying the New Zealand method lately introduced at that time (the 1960's) from the Antipodes. This is extremely efficient when you have mastered it, but very hard on the back with all the bending required. You work standing, and bending when needed, with the sheep leaning against your legs and gradually turned around, finally kneeling on her neck for the 'long blows up the back'. (A 'blow' is a stroke of the shears). Working with hand shears like this, it is quite restful, and I have even had sheep go to sleep on me while I worked on a difficult fleece, but with petrol-engined shears, the little two-stroke engine roaring on a gantry over your head, stress levels are increased for both sheep and man.

Then after these photos were taken, Les came to work for us. He had a Landrover with a compressor which went onto the power take-off, and we could use pneumatic shears. These were a lot quieter, causing less stress, but there were technical problems with the system - mainly due to water vapour condensing in the compressed air system. Electric machine shears are the best, if you have power available which we didn't then at that place.

Next from the left is Marguerite, standing by with a washing-up liquid squeezy bottle filled with balsam ready to treat any cuts. These can be a problem with the hand shears, as the sheeps' skin below the wool is very delicate. Any untreated cuts will immediately be attacked by the green-arsed flies, which lay their eggs and the maggots soon eat their way into the body of the animal and kill it.

Then on the right, we have good old Jimmy taking a smoke while waiting for me to 'crock' his next sheep.

Here, we have Archie with a wool bag, and myself looking distinctly rough after a heavy night with the boys. But there's nothing like a day in the 'fank' (collection of sheep pens) to cure you of a hangover and prepare you for the next one. Then Jimmy, raking up the fallen wool, and two of the others dealing with the fleeces.

These days, most of the clipping is done by itinerant gangs - New Zealanders, Aussies, Falkland Islanders - who follow the clipping seasons round the world and are paid on a per-sheep basis. Great lads, and their sheer professionalism is pretty to watch. It's just a pity that what we get for the wool is not much more than what we pay them, but the wool must be got off the sheeps' backs.

As regards the old clipping stools, they were absolutely filthy with grease (lanolin) from the wool and daubs of the 'keel', the paints used to mark the sheep after clipping. Even so, I sold them to an antique dealer for a reasonable sum and they are probably being used in some London theme pub. So now I am using any scrap timber to knock up more clipping stools, smearing them with all the stuff, and hoping that the antique dealer will return!