Up on Dartmoor in West Devon close to the South Hams border near Meavy is Greenwell Farm.

It is a hill farm part-tenanted part -owned with both sheep and cattle including the legendary Belted Galloways, Galloways and South Devons.

They welcomed visitors to the farm last weekend at an event called “Lambing Live 25.”

Farmer Mat Cole explained: “We just invite the public into our lambing barn and it’s lovely to invite the public onto the farm just talk about the sheep and how we manage them at this time of year and then more broadly about how we manage the flocks and why we do what we do at certain times of year, how we interact with the home farm to the commons and the moorlands, why we keep the types of sheep we keep, so we're keeping hill breeds here of White-faced Dartmoors and Scotch Blackfaces.”

He continued: “These ewes would lamb on their second birthday so they're two years old when they give birth for the first time and they'd probably live with us until they're six or seven years old so they'd have four or five crops with us and then we'd probably sell them on, because we're a hill farm we'd probably sell them on to other farmers lower down the hill and they'd probably have another couple of crops out of them.

“We've got about a flock of just over 200 ewes so we'd like as close to 300 lambs as we can find.

“You know, we've got some bigger flocks of Scotch Blackfaces that run out on the moor.

“They don't have quite so many lambs, but we'd like a lamb per ewe”

In November and December the ewes are put with the rams for six weeks.

In January and February the pregnant eves are scanned and the ewes come in to the shed at the end of February before lambing in March.

In May and June the ewes are dosed for worms and the lambs are vaccinated.

The shearing begins and all sheep are sprayed against external parasites,

In July and August shearing continues and the lambs are weaned.

The old ewes are sold off.

The lambs start being fattened up for sale and the young ewes are returned to the moor.

Matt then described what happens next: “We will start selling our lambs at market usually from September through until about February.

“We're very much a seasonal product.

“Most sheep farmers don't make any money for about six months of the year and then they start selling.

Mat continued: “We sell most of the males.

“We will only select a few males that we've considered to be good enough to sell to other farmers as breeding animals.

“The rest of the males will be sold as lamb in the autumn.

“And then we'll also sell a proportion of our females that we don't need to retain this flock.”

The farm supplies a local business called Goosemoor as well as thousands of lambs to Morrisons in the south of England.