THE recent wet and snowy weather is taking its toll on Exmoor’s farmers as they enter lambing season.

Dave Knight, a farmer at Wydon Farm, near Minehead, said it had been a struggle with the wet weather meaning there was little grass for the newborn lambs.

Mr Knight said his farm had lost eight or nine lambs out of 650 but felt his farm had “gotten off lightly” compared to some of the other farms on higher ground in Exmoor.

“Most of the lambs we lost were stress induced but I know it has been hard, people have lost sheep in the snow drifts and it has been tough on the ewes,” said Mr Knight, who is chairman of the Exmoor Hill Farming Network.

“It was hard when the snow hit though, we had to keep as many lambs as possible inside. The lanes received so much snow that we were blocked in for a week.”

Oliver Edwards, who runs Westermill Farm near Exford, said he and farms nearby had also felt the impact of the bad weather.

“We have had quite a few losses – we do not do a full count until May when we will know the full extent of the damage – but because of the bad weather there is not enough grass, and the pregnant ewes do not get enough nutrients due to a lack of food intake,” Mr Edwards said.

“It has also taken a lot of man hours and costs to keep the sheep inside during the worst of the weather.

“But, to be honest, it has been wet since August and the three snowfalls have just been the final straw.

“However, everyone is in the same boat, the snow has affected much of the country.”

Mr Edwards said the weather will definitely have taken a big financial toll on his and other businesses. “The snow came at completely the wrong time of year for farmers, right in the thick of lambing season,” he said.

Across the South West there are 7,389 sheep farms which have a total of around 3.1 million sheep. About half of these are breeding ewes. These farms employ 7,000 people directly and there are almost 23,000 other jobs linked to the industry, which contributes nearly £60m to the economy.