Day 3 Leault Sheep Farm and Glenturret Distillery


On Saturday morning, we grabbed a quick breakfast and then boarded the coach to drive to the Leault Farm in Kingussie, which is located in the Scottish Highlands. 

Leault Sheep Farm is a real working farm and as such tours are non-existent during the lambing season (which is now). We're fortunate enough to have a partnership with Leault Sheep Farm; otherwise we would not be able to visit during this time of year. 
We were greeted by about half a dozen border collies!

In this picture Neil explains to the students the other purposes of the land including hunting. The lands cover about 60,000 acres and groups of six are permitted to hunt (for about six thousand pounds a day). There are red deer, boars, and other game on the property. However, Neil only works for the sheep dog aspect of the farm. The farm is actully owned by another person. 



While we were there we received a 45 minute demonstration from Neil Ross, the handler of the dogs and steward of the farm. This was really exciting as we got to see the sheep dogs in action. Neil has about six thousand sheep and about 14 working dogs. He gives each dog has a unique set of commands and whistles in order to herd the sheep. He explained that he could not herd the sheep without his dogs. Speaking of which, he owns border collies (all males) ranging from ages 2.5 years to 14 years old. 


Probably one of the best parts was to hold the eight-week old puppies that Neil's children brought out for us. 
Sam holding an 8 week old border collie.

Ana holding an orphaned lamb. 

Neil explained a lot of interesting things about sheepdogs and being shepard. Neil explained that he starts training the puppies at 10 months of age. At that point he just brings them with him to the fields so that can get a feel for the work. He then gradually trains the puppies over the course of two years! While he says that you can train the pups in as little as six months, he prefers to train them slowly and not to force them into it so that you can produce better sheepdogs. He even says that he lets the dogs "choose" if they want to work (e.g. herd sheep) and when they want to stop.

Students also got to help Neil shear sheep and bottle feed an orphaned lamb. 
Holly helping Neil shear sheep.

About six years ago, there were 60,000 and 20 shepards according to Neil. Now that number is down to 6,000 sheep and two shepards (Neil and his brother). There are a various reasons for this decrease in number of sheep and sheep herders. 

For every excursion we always like to bring our hosts some treats from North Carolina. This year we brought roasted peanuts and pecans, apple and blackberry cobbler mixes, cheese biscuits, and a CALS carabiner. 

Neil's children opening our gifts. They got one of the blackberry cobbler mixes.
They seemed to enjoy the peanuts!


 After the wonderful tour at Leault Sheep Farm, we then traveled to a whisky distillery near Crieff, Scotland. We toured Glenturret Distillery, which is the oldest working distillery in the Scottish Highlands. 
Here we learned about the different steps in the single malt whisky. 
This is the famous grouse, a type of bird and the distillery's symbol.

Here are the aged barrells used to make their different prouducts. Glenturret takes great pride in using recycled wood and felled trees. They primarily use sherry wood. 

Towser- the distillery cat. 

Who doesn't want to see another picture of the sheep dog puppies?

Stay tuned as I'll be adding the students' perspectives from the trip in upcoming blog posts.

Slàinte mhath!

This is a kind of cheer (to your good health) in Scottish Gaelic!







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 7-Harper Adams University

Image
We spent the first half of today at Harper Adams University touring their facilities and meeting with their faculty and students. We were able to learn about the way they run their schools, facilities, and operations.  Here students learn a brief history of Harper Adams University from Dr. Catherine Baxter, one of hour hosts for the day. Harper Adams has a unique history in that it was founded in the beginning entirely by a wealth man in the late 19th century. Upon his death, he left his entire estate to set up a trust in order to set up a college whose only purpose was "to teach practical and theoretical agriculture". The college has about 3500 students (roughly the size of CALS population).  Here students listen to a lecturer from Harper Adams discuss her research with Holstein cows. One thing we noticed as toured the facilities at Harper Adams is that most (if not all) of their units (beef, swine, etc) are located on campus, so students are able to walk to their facilities...
Read more

Day 6 Centre for Alternative Technology and Powis Castle

Image
 Today was spent in Wales, which is a beautiful country. Today's theme was about sustainability and conservation. The city where we stayed, Machynlleth, is known as one of the most "green" cities in Wales.  This is one of the menu options for breakfast.  Who doesn't like cheese for breakfast? We slept in a little bit (until 9am) before getting on the bus and heading to the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT). CAT was founded in 1974 by a few volunteers from an old quarry. The centre now functions as an education center. It prides itself on having a low impact on the environment. The CAT offers several master's degrees and also offers short courses for students and the public. There are more than 3 hectares of displays and while there was not as much vegetation (because it's still winter), there was still a lot to see and do. Dr. Fisher talks about the impact of agriculture on the environmentand the work that the CAT does.  We hiked up several (58 or so) st...
Read more

Day 7-Harper Adams University-Student Perspectives

   Day 7- Harper Adams University and Afternoon in Iron Bridge Gorge  At Harper Adams today we had an opportunity to tour the grounds and the units. The first thing I noticed were the sheep in the front lawn. I thought to myself, wow I sure would love to go to a school that had sheep to welcome you! Harper Adams is a very old university that is settled within the countryside of Newport Shropshire, England. The school was opened in 1901 that had a total of 6 students. Needless to say it had grown rapidly since then in size and technology. We first had a brief introduction from one of the staff Mitch Crooks. We then, toured the dairy unit which housed around 300 milking Holstein cows. I have been to the unit back at NC State but this one is off the bat much larger an seems to be much more advanced than ours. They offer a carousel milking parlor that has been on the grounds since 2005. They also have a lot of research going on at this time. One was that the researchers added...
Read more