Jessica Tilley-Moore, 20, is the farm education leader at Lower Drayton Farm in Penkridge, and also manages her own flock of sheep in Brewood.<\/p>\n
“I do worry about climate change. From last year the yields of crops were horrendous,” she said.<\/p>\n
“My bales of hay cost me the best part of \u00a3100 a bale.”<\/p>\n
Tilley-Moore dips into her own savings to feed her sheep, and said some people were forced to sell their flocks because they cannot afford to feed them.<\/p>\n
Climate-induced flooding takes a huge toll, which she called “horrendously stressful”, and causes health problems with the flock.<\/p>\n
In regards to heatwaves, the sheep benefit from the land being a mixture of woodland, pasture and hedges, meaning they have plenty of shade.<\/p>\n
However, there is still a strain for the 20-year-old in the heat.<\/p>\n
“One of the sheep had flies laying on a scab, so I was chasing her in 33 degree heat,” she said.<\/p>\n
Looking to the future, Tilley-Moore thinks selective breeding is the best way to adapt to climate change.<\/p>\n
“I have to look into breeding genetic lines adaptable to the heat, with fleeces that are a lot cooler,” she said, adding that her sheep that were bulkier were suffering more in the heatwave.<\/p>\n
“It is hard work, don’t get me wrong, but I would never change it because I do it for the love of it,” she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jessica Tilley-Moore, 20, is the farm education leader at Lower Drayton Farm in Penkridge, and also manages her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-660736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}