YOUNGEST SHEPHERDESS, BAA NONE
BY
IT’S difficult to pull the wool over schoolgirl Esther Whittingham’s eyes... aged just 12, she is Britain’s youngest shepherdess.
While some playground pals are hooked on TikTok, Esther looks after a flock of nine sheep on her family farm. She even delivers baby lambs with her bare hands.
Her dad Grant said: “She’s brilliant with them and she spends every minute she can with them.”
Esther was given her first lamb aged six, and just a year later she bid for her own sheep at auction. She has developed such an affinity with her woolly friends they now come flocking to her rather than Grant, 50, and mum Rachel, 46.
Proud Grant, of Yew Tree Farm in Chester, said: “Just this weekend she delivered her second season of lambs and she knew exactly what she was doing.
“Last year was the first year we let her do it and one of her friends came to watch.
“Esther was at the back of this sheep completely unfazed, and her friend stood there g obsmacked.
“She gets up before school to give the lambs a bottle and feed the sheep, and even goes in to say goodnight to them in her pyjamas.”
Rachel added: “She smells of sheep all the time.”