THIS time of year we are busy marking tups every day. This is known as ‘raddleing’.

Raddle is a coloured powder that we mix with cooking oil to create a runny paint-like solution. We then go around the tups, which are in various different fields with ewes.

We take a bucket of feed and the tups come running.

While he has his head in the bucket we paint the solution on to his brisket – chest between front legs - with a raddel stick (a wooden spatula). Different colours are used so that we can tell later on towards lambing time when the ewes will be due. We start with yellow then green then red and lastly black.

The cycle of a sheep is 17 days so we change the colours every eight to 10 days, and we mark 20 tups so all this takes a while.

As well as all this Brian changes some of the tups, especially the Blue Faced Leicester tups, after 17 days to make sure they have served the ewes.

Meanwhile Andrew Bland, who works for us, is feeding the cows all winter, and will be cleaning out night and morning and feeding them with silage and vitamins.

The calves are fed with a concentrate feed, as well as still sucking their mothers. The calves bought in to replace older cows are bucket fed with mixed powder milk.

Jayne Knowles farms at Selside