The “Flying Flock” came to Dell Field on Wednesday, 16 September 2009, and will be resident on the Estate until after Christmas.
If you are walking your dog in the area, please keep it on a lead.
Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust, like many other conservation organisations, keeps its own flock of sheep to graze its grassland nature reserves. During the last few decades a large proportion of our flower-rich grassland has been lost due to reversion to scrub and then woodland. It is therefore vital to save the heaths, commons and downs that still survive.
Grazing is the traditional form of management but the number of commercial flocks and herds continues to decline. The alternative is cutting but this is a drastic and sudden process that tends to decrease the species diversity of the grassland. Furthermore, the cuttings have to be raked off afterwards, which is a tedious and back-breaking job disliked by most volunteers. Grazing is a more gradual process as the sheep eat some plants and leave others. They don’t flatten anthills like mowing machines but their hooves do create small bare patches where seeds can germinate. They also return some nutrients to the soil in the form of dung.
The Trust’s “Flying Flock” consists of about 40 Shetland ewes. The island breeds are used because they are hardy, people-friendly, and better at controlling scrub than the more modern breeds as they will browse bushes as well as grazing the grass. They are very thrifty and can survive on low fertility systems, i.e. grasslands without fertilizers. They are also much more intelligent than domestic breeds.