A new dawn for old breed

By Paul Connaughton [gallery link='file' columns='4' orderby='rand'] MARTIN Ward of Windfield Road, Menlough, Ballinasloe knows a lot about the Galway breed of sheep. His late father Jackie Ward was a genius with the Galway breed and as the old saying goes, 'breeding breaks out in the eye of the cat'. Martin's 14-year-old son Gerard has the same interest in the future of the breed as Robbie Keane has in US soccer. Put all that experience together and it's no wonder that Martin Ward achieved the highest accolade at this year's mammoth Tullamore Show, the Holy Grail for sheep exhibitors countrywide. Martin and Gerard are ecstatic at this win. The Ward family have exhibited at agricultural shows over many years in County Galway and have a glass case full of rosettes of every colour to prove it. Martin Ward farms 100 acres of, as he puts it, â€Ëœgood and bad land' and besides his sheep enterprise, keeps suckler cows as well. As with most other small farmers, Martin has to have off-farm employment and it is fortuitous that his job is working with the Teagasc research sheep flock at Mellow's College, Athenry, a base camp for his natural ability to breed All-Ireland prize-winning Galway sheep. The Galway Sheep Breeders' Association was founded back in the 1920s It appears that there were then two almost identical predominant breeds of sheep in counties Galway and Roscommon, namely the Galway Ewe and the Roscommon Ewe. I often heard my late father speak about the Roscommon breed, but it's a term I haven't heard for years. I understand both breeds were very similar and from stories I have been told, when the Galway Sheep Breeders Association was formed in 1923 this seems to have progressed the fortunes of the Galway breed whilst the Roscommon breed seemed to have integrated itself into the Galway breed. Tommy Sice of Athenry has had a lifetime association with the breed and had been the show's Secretary for over 40 years. Tommy said the fortunes of the breed have bobbed up and down over the years and the low point came around 1995 when there was very little interest in the Galway breed. New breeds of sheep were appearing all the time, breeds that had more lambs per ewe, breeds that had better carcase conformation and had early maturing characteristics. The buzz word was that in order to get lambs into the lucrative French market, the Galway breed was not the flavour of the month. However, a core group of Galway sheep farmers believed that with good breeding and accurate record keeping, the Galway breed could and would always have some part to play into the future. So poor was the future of the Galway breed in years gone by that it appeared that it was going down the road of the Kerry Cow, only to be seen at places like Killarney National Park in County Kerry, just for nostalgic memories.  Farmers like Tommy Sice of Athenry, Gerry Daly of Craughwell and Tom Murphy of Creagh, Ballinasloe, the current Secretary, and together with a membership of about 40 County Galway farmers, are slowly but surely putting the Galway sheep breed back on to the commercial sheep-farming stage. It was an important event when the Galway sheep breed was given recognition and some small financial help some years ago in the REPS scheme under an EU Directive for rare breeds of animals. One great quality of the Galway Ewe was its docility and the fences didn't need to be that secure to keep the Galway Ewe flock in their own fields. Back in the late 1950s there was â€Ëœa rush of blood' by many lowland farmers in east Galway to go to Connemara to purchase Cheviot horny ewes, which were only half the price of Galway sheep. Well, these small animals adorned as they were with a pair of curved horns, and accustomed to the vast mountainsides of Connemara, hardly knew what a fence was for. They created havoc in our village when they came and of the 20 that my late mother purchased, five were never seen again after the first week. They even were the cause of putting neighbours fighting over broken fences. I can assure you the trips to Connemara for sheep soon reduced to a trickle. Another milestone in the history of the breed was when the Irish Shows Association decided some years ago to entrust Mountbellew Agricultural Show with the holding of the All-Ireland Pair of Ewe Lambs competition. Great credit must go to Martin Holian of Osmonds for his efforts in getting his well-known national company to sponsor the event every year and also to Michael Hughes, the National Secretary of the I.S.A. who, as a former Secretary of Mountbellew Show, has greatly assisted in keeping this national competition in Mountbellew. 78-year-old Tommy Sice says it is not unusual for farmers as far away as Monaghan and Donegal to ring enquiring about purchasing a few Galway ewes and he expects well over one hundred good-quality Galway sheep at the special auction at Athenry Mart on 19th September next. I remember as a young lad having Galway ewes on our farm back in the 1950s. I always associated Galway sheep with sheer size, 'as big as a small ass' was how one of our neighbours described them. We always used an Oxford Down ram but even then the market was demanding a leaner and earlier maturing lamb. I vividly remember the extraordinary interest in the introduction of the Suffolk ram, specifically identifiable by a very black face and sure enough, the Galway ewe/Suffolk cross produced excellent lambs at that time. We purchased our first Suffolk ram in 1960 from the Irish Sugar Company at its then sheep farm at Gowla, Ballyforan, one of the many lives that bog had over the years. It was the talk of the village when this unusual breed of ram appeared, it was just about that time the Friesian breed of cows were appearing in the fields of County Galway. You weren't an aspiring young farmer if you didn't have a Suffolk ram, a Friesian cow, a Ferguson 35 or Ford Dexta tractor and be seen spreading the new high-powered fertiliser 10:10:20! This year's Mountbellew Agricultural Show will be held in the grounds of Mountbellew Agricultural College on Saturday next, September 10.