The Cottage Smallholder


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In praise of the animals that give us meat

Photo: Ewes and lambs

Photo: Ewes and lambs

With the sunnier days I’ve been working out of doors again. Back at the 40-acre estate. Basking in the opportunity to watch the wildlife as I paint.

Now there are sheep grazing one of the large paddocks. Many ewes clearly remembered that the approach of humans meant that their lambs disappeared last year.

When they see me looking, they hide their lambs on their offside and steadily stare. My heart goes out to them. We’d feel the same if our babies were mainly bred for meat.

Although I know now that free range doesn’t mean a 100% happy life, we have a tendency to romanticise the notion of free range in the UK. In fact, with cattle and sheep, it still means the horror of young being snatched, loaded onto a truck and disappearing forever.

My old friend Peggy told me that when the lambs were taken from the ewes in Moulton, the ewes pined for days.
“Their cries were truly harrowing. The ewes were bereft.”

Some farmers now try and contain the distress by removing the young in batches over a period of weeks. Perhaps this just extends the upset. On the same estate I’ve heard cattle calling for their young until well after dusk for many, many weeks.

The problem is that Danny and I love eating meat, although we do consume far less than we used to. The ewes touched me today but I’ll continue to buy free range lamb when I can afford to. But now I’ll truly appreciate their sacrifice.


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17 Comments

  1. My other half and I don’t eat lamb. He can’t bear the thought of eating something that never stood a chance, and I can’t bear the smell of it cooking so am happy to humour him. I’ve wondered about trying mutton, which is available every month at our local farmer’s market, but I’ve not bothered so far. Veal we avoid too, although it occurs to me often that its worth eating British veal, simply because otherwise the calves don’t get any life at all, being by-products of the dairy industry. Thing is, if you start looking into the source of your meat, you really do come away thinking you should be veggie – but then, as someone else said, cows and especially pigs would be obsolete species. Its a tough one. I almost envy those who never bother to think about it at all.

  2. This nearly reduced me to tears as I know only too well what you mean. We live in the middle of the countryside, and often hear the distressing cries of the mother cows and ewes. It haunts me for a very long time!
    It is all too obvious why they are crying and yes, it does persist go on for a long period of time. They will not give up hope! And like youself, my heart goes out to them but like you also, I eat meat. What a dilemma we humans make for ourselves sometimes. I would be only too happy to forgoe the young lambs, eating only older meat, knowing they had had something of a life.
    We had a wild duck raise fifteen ducklings on our patio a few years ago. She was gorgeous, tame to the degree of accepting foodie treats but not to get too close. She was a true braveheart, protecting the nest from us (not that it was necessary) and the hatching eggs and then taking her brood down into the woods. Alas, only to return a few days later with only one surviving duckling! She continued to use our pond for about a week until one night in the early hours, we heard a pathetic calling. My husband said it was the duckling and we shouldn’t keep feeding them. It was the duckling, but alas for a different reason. He was calling for his mother. Relentlessly. Dashing from one side of the pond to the other.. The next day we discovered a pile of feathers on the bank. His mother had been taken. He managed to survive on his own, poor little mite, for about five days when he too, eventually disappeared. I have never quite got over that.
    I have other such sad stories too but maybe I should wait until the moemnt arises for me to continue. Such is the course of nature. Beautiful but cruel.
    Thank you for your lovely articles. Beautifully written as always. I look forward to an insight in you colourful lives on a daily basis.
    Happy Easter to you all!

  3. It certainly is a dilemma. I, too, like meat and won’t be giving up eating it. I find the attitude of some people towards handling meat is very strange. They are happy to eat the meat but won’t handle it raw. I don’t think I could raise my own meat – even if I had somewhere to do it – although I am happy to accept the offer of some beef from a friend who has raised the animals on her farm. I guess I still need some separation between the animals and the meat.

  4. moggymerlin

    Your post reminded me of staying at a farm B & B in Wales many years ago. The calves had been taken away from their mothers that day and they cried for them all night long. We were due to stay another night but as the farmer and his wife had already gone off to market leaving us to lock up we wrote a note and left our money on the table. It was a very upsetting night. However, it hasn’t put me off eating meat. Thanks for your blog – always interesting and often thought provoking.

  5. Michelle in NZ

    Wow, never see sheep here with tails.

    Fiona, I agree and understand where you are coming from.

    Belinda – a roasted leg of hogget is beautiful. Here too some of the lamb leg steaks seems very generously proportioned, are more like from one of my ‘generously” sized legs.

    Tracy seems to have things going well for the ewes and lambs.

    Happy Easter Fiona and Danny, and to your readers.

  6. Belinda

    We raise a LOT of sheep in Australia & even here hogget & mutton is not often seen. People commonly believe it to be inferior.. tough & “gamey” in flavour.

    I used to be able to buy hogget legs from a butcher in Bathurst.

    A lot of the time when I see the size of the legs of “lamb” in the big supermarkets I think hmmm bit too big & sometimes I see leg chops & think the same thing.

  7. Its funny you post this, as on my way to and from my office I always take the country route and go past sheep in the fields and an actual lambing paddock where the day out babies are with their mums.
    I was only driving home to other night thinking to myself about the concept of ‘lamb’, at what stage did we decide to kill them as baby animals surelyoriginally we would have let the animal grow to its full potential and get more meat in the way of mutton. I wonder when it became fashionable to eat tender young lamb and sacrifice the quantity for the quality, maybe when we were given too much choice! I too like meat and know that if we all stopped eating it there would be no ewes or lambs in the first first place, no ones gonna pay to rear them for fun, but it struck me, I’ve never even eaten mutton, its not available, maybe I want the babies to grow up, and by choosing mutton more would get a longer life!

  8. We grow sheep and keep the lambs with the ewes until the ewes are quite grateful to stop nursing them. So far we haven’t noticed any distress on either side. I think it helps that all of the lambs are weaned together and stay together as a flock. Everyone’s happy.

  9. Cows are sometimes corralled into small fields which get really muddy. Part of that can be keeping them near the farm over winter but not always. As far as I knew sheep were free range, but then again I have never seen the cooped up pigs either but lots of lambs in open fields near where I used to live in Derbyshire. Sheep though are quite good to rear in areas which are not so suitable for arable farming.

  10. Belinda

    Hmmm, I didnt realise that there was non free range lamb…like cattle I assumed they were too big & troublesome to house…

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