Dr. James Coull
Scottish Studies, 7, (1963).
The stock shows the modern crofting characteristic of an emphasis on sheep (see Fig. 6). A dozen crofters have as many as 60 to 100 sheep, but only half a dozen have as many as 3 cows, and there are only about 40 cows in Melness now compared with some 2,000 ewes.
The sheep are almost all Cheviots - the usual breed in the north-west mainland, and although not the best suited to this rather bleak environment, under the present economic conditions they pay as well as any. Every crofter now looks after his own sheep, apart from the occasions of gathering (for dipping, shearing, separating the lambs from the ewes, and bringing inside the ring fence for winter), when crofters generally work with their fellows in the township.
Selling demands a long haul to market - generally to Lairg but occasionally to Forsinard, both 50 miles away on the railway in East Sutherland. Some of the crofters go to the expense of wintering their hoggs on the East Coast, although this costs about £2 per head (including freight); others keep them within the district ring fence in the winter season from 25th October to 25th May, although this means that they are in poorer condition at the end of it. According to the grazings regulations, the whole district is open to all stock in winter, but some crofters with fenced crofts exclude others than their own. Those with most sheep all give hand feed in winter - a practice which began between the wars, and is now done even in the best winters; in bad years it may necessitate the costly expedient, of buying in fodder. In summer, the sheep graze on the Moine common, although there are some lost in the bogs and over the cliffs.
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