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Title: HILL SHEEP FARM

Reference number: 0280

Date: 1948

Sponsor: COI for Dept. of Agriculture for Scotland

Production company: Campbell Harper Films Ltd.

Sound: sound

Original format: 35mm

Colour: bw

Fiction: non-fiction

Running time: 18.44 mins

Description: An account of the life and methods of a Highland hill sheep farm, showing the adaptations the hill farmer must make to a landscape left derelict by depopulation, and the care of his flock.

Shotlist: credits (0.17) shots of Blackface sheep being driven through pens at market. (0.50) Shots of ruined croft and an abandoned village in the Highlands; c/u hunters lying in bracken (1.53) shots of Highland sheep farmer approaching his house, where an older woman is giving letters to the postman. (2.23) c/u waterlogged soil; c/u drainage ditch; labourers cutting bracken using scythes. (3.25) shots of heather burning; cattle grazing pasture (3.59) tractor fertilising pasture for re-seeding (4.11) shots of shepherd and flock. Examining sheep. (4.33) c/u tick (4.49) Shots of inoculation and dipping (5.53) selection of best rams for breeding. Rams turned loose with ewes (7.33) postman brings mail to farm by bicycle. (8.10) Trip to village in van; c/u poster "Grand Dance McLaren Hall, Killin"; (8.52) shepherd sets off for hills in the spring; shots of lambing (10.30) shepherd retrieves drowned lamb from river, skins it and puts skin on a rejected lamb. Mother of dead lamb accepts the orphan (11.48) still-pregnant ewes and gimmers are brought down from the hills and penned (12.32) heavy ewes are examined; ewes that have aborted and lost their milk are marked and turned loose (12.51) Foster ewe's milk is rubbed onto a rejected lamb; ewe and lamb are penned together (13.22) remaining ewes are kept in nearby fields until they have lambed (13.36) sheep are returned to the hills (13.48) mid-June; the flock is brought down from the hills; shots of lambs being separated, marked and rams being castrated; c/u farmer notes the count (14.55) Barren ewes and last year's lambs are fleeced using hand shears (16.00) c/us of shepherds "drenching" the flock [anti-fluke doses are measured into glass tubes from an old teapot] (16.42) flock is shaped; older ewes are separated for sale; shot of sheep packed into van (17.34) shots of Border Leicester rams; Greyface sheep; Suffolk and Oxford Downs sheep (18.03) Shot of carcasses (18.09) shot of shepherds and flock on hillside (18.44)