I awoke under the weather, got talked into taking a Covid test. Lo-and-behold, the little red line made its appearance, and my ailment took a turn for the worse.
Fresh air, my trusty remedy, beckoned. Raindrops drumming on the windowpanes, I embarked on a brief, low-level stroll.
“Raddle,” a peculiar term. Readers of Thomas Hardy may recall Diggory Venn, the Reddleman, from “The Return of the Native.” This Victorian peddler earned his keep selling reddle, or raddle, to shepherds. It’s a powder used to make the coloured gloop smeared directly on the wool of a tup’s brisket, or chest.
These sheep at Larner’s Hill have been well and truly raddled.
The purpose of raddling? Knowing which ewes have been tupped. Yet, that’s not entirely correct; it only reveals which ewes the tups have mounted and tried to mate. Coloured hindquarters don’t guarantee lambs in the belly. Much like humans, not everything conceives on the first go.
Why raddle tups if it doesn’t confirm pregnancy? Typically, it’s a management tool. The raddle colour will be changed during tupping time. Some farmers alter it after a week, giving an indication of when the deed was done. It is also used to distinguish the tup used in this initial seven days from ones used later. Other shepherds change colours more frequently, every ten days or a fortnight, so that sheep can be grouped at lambing time.
The raddle sequence kicks off with a light colour, yellow, followed by progressively darker ones: green and then red. Otherwise, it won’t be obvious about the sheep’s posterior.
Come lambing time, the sheep can be moved into the lambing shed based on their colour, signalling when they are due.
So, what is raddle exactly? It’s a coloured powder mixed with oil before being slathered onto the tup. Often, tup harnesses are used to hold the raddle, which will be in the form of a crayon. Straps around the chest and shoulders, the cradle in place on the tup’s brisket.
And throughout the rest of the year, the tups lounge about in a perpetual cycle of sleeping and eating.
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