Students ‘Flock’ to Online Talk by One of UK’s Top Sheep Farmers

There is nothing woolly about Neil McGowan and the award-winning way he farms sheep at his farm near Blairgowrie. In fact, Neil and his wife Debbie were chosen as Farmers’ Weekly 2020 Sheep farmer of the Year in recognition of their forward-thinking methods. They were recognised for being at the forefront of precision sheep farming, using statistics to select the best breeding stock and electronic tagging to evaluate lamb performance.

So, imagine out delight when Neil agreed to give an online talk to our AgriSkills Landbased students. As Neil says,

“Using technology so that we can gather quality data has radically improved our decision making and has really helped our business progress. I’m delighted to give any encouragement and advice I can to any future young farmers.”

Landbased lecturer, Peter Beattie adds,

“Having a speaker of Neil’s calibre is so inspiring for our students and with quality data production featuring strongly in our Agritech and Livestock Production Units, it’s wonderful to hear from a top practitioner. Our students were keen to question Neil about dog worrying, lambing percentages, breed choice, target weights, colostrum, animal welfare and finding work in sheep production. This is a career for a new breed of tech-savvy, hard-working, caring, young entrepreneurs.”