Meet the Yorkshire farmer's daughter roaming far and wide to get lambing experience

Charlotte Stringer who farms with her father Mike at High Callis Wold in Bishop Wilton is one of the latter. She has all the credentials, bags of experience that comes from being a sheep farmer’s daughter, has been lambing since she could stand up and she’s looking for work away from the farm not because she couldn’t do it already at home but because she is looking to become a vet, is currently in her first year at Harper Adams and like many others in her position needs to be lambing anywhere but home.

“I was obsessed with lambing from a young age and absolutely love it, but it has also always been my ambition to become a vet and you can’t just put in your vet application that you’ve been working on the family farm for so many years because you could be making it up.

“Also, because you’re the boss’ daughter you sometimes won’t get the really difficult lambings to do, the really more difficult ones, because there may be someone on the farm protecting you from those. The thing is I want and need those probably more so than the easy lambings.

“I’m not afraid of any work, I want to travel and I really want to be a bit more independent. I’ll go anywhere in the country.

Charlotte also knows that there are some who might put themselves up for lambing work just to gain the experience and not to earn, but she is confident in her ability and her experience and believes that is worth something.

“Some vet students often have to put themselves up to help with lambing for free, particularly those who are coming into the profession to perhaps go into small animal veterinary practices and have not been brought up on farms lambing, and yet now realise they need that experience too.

“I also know that in that respect it makes me quite lucky, because those don’t have the access I have had readily available all my life.

“What it means to other sheep farmers who are looking for assistance with lambing is that with me they will get someone who doesn’t need watching over. Mules form the basis of the flock and we have Charollais-cross sheep too. I know what I’m doing and if I wasn’t on my veterinary course I could just as easily put myself up for a paid-for lambing job.

Since starting her studies at Harper Adams in September 2022 Charlotte has set about gaining other work away from her father’s farm to add weight to her vet’s ambitions.

“We have cattle and sheep at home, but while at Harper I have also been working on a dairy farm, calf rearing in Shropshire. Last year I worked at a pig farm for three months looking after the farrowing houses, helping sows give birth, vaccinating, feeding up and general pig work.

“The veterinary profession is a very hard one to get into. It takes about five years normally but will take me six because I didn’t quite make the grade with my A levels last year, so I’m on a bio-veterinary degree course instead of the veterinary degree at present.

“It is a good degree to have and is a route into the welfare and pharmaceutical side, but you can’t become a vet from it and that is still my dream profession. I’m looking to get 70 per cent and higher to get on to the veterinary degree course next year.

Charlotte said she is fully aware of the profession’s record on personal mental health that has led to it being one of the most stressful with problems in anxiety and depression but that she isn’t to be deterred.

“I understand there is a struggle at the moment to find vets that are practical enough but also have the intelligence to become a vet, and that there is a need for more farm vets.

“I love animals. I have worked with local vets on work experience and I know that you can only fully understand the pressures when you become a vet so it is hard to say whether you will cope but I’m drawn to it, it’s a passion.

“I know the vets mental health side is awful, but I also know that getting into it is competitive and I’m determined to make it.

“The interview process I went through previously to be offered the places I had at two universities I will have to go through all over again but none of that matters. It included roleplays and discussions and what my opinion was on culling and why we cull. I enjoyed the process and will enjoy it again.

Right now though, Charlotte wants a job. That’s basically it. She wants to show a sheep farmer, any sheep farmer, that her existing experience in lambing for her father for many years is worthy of being taken on to do a job for whoever it may be.

“I really don’t mind what breed of ewes I end up lambing. I’d love some more experience with Texels and I love Suffolk sheep. One of my other dreams would be having my own flock of Suffolks but quite seriously I’m up for anything. Quite a few of my friends who take up lambing jobs go into North Yorkshire and into the Dales. Outdoor lambing interests me a lot too.

Charlotte is by no means the only young person in her position, but she’s also determined that she won’t be one that doesn’t work come lambing time.