Annie McGuinness is a 27-year-old environmental technician for EPS Water and sheep farmer from Carlingford. She tells Niamh Devereux about becoming an internet star with her adopted farmyard companion
Hi Annie! Tell us a little bit about your farming life and background?
I have been farming alongside my father for as long as I can remember. We farm here in Carlingford and the Cooley Penisula. We run a flock of lowland ewes predominantly Texel x Suffolk and lamb them around St Patrick’s Day in March. I studied Agriculture and Environmental Management in Mountbellew Agri College & ATU. When I was in my second year of college, I ventured over to Cumbria in England for my work placement to lamb sheep with a good friend of mine. This farm consisted of nearly 1000 acres, 350 dairy cows, 650 ewes, beef stock and tillage. Sure, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into; we landed over there at the start of February and the ewes didn’t start lambing until the end of February! We were thrown into the dairy parlour with not a notion about one end of a cow from another, being two sheep women…we soon got the hang of it and I ended up loving it.
After my three-month placement was complete, the farmers asked me to come back to the farm and work there over the summer so I travelled back to Park House farm and worked there every summer during my holidays while I was in college. After I finished college, I returned again in June and came back home for good the following March for lambing time. I learned so so much while I was in England from amazing people and made some life-long friends. This was back in 2022. Once lambing was finished up at home, I searched high and low for a job to do with my degree, because that was the said thing to do. “You need to get a good job with that degree of yours” my mother would say, but I could not find anything, I ended up working for a local dairy farmer. I told the boss man Donal I could be there for a week or a year, I don’t know. I ended up staying there for nine months and I absolutely loved every minute of it. If they are ever stuck now I do some relief milking in the morning before I head to work, I still absolutely love milking.
Along with running the sheep farm, you work full-time as an environmental technician; it must be pretty full-on.
Yes, I started with EPS Water in November three years ago and haven’t looked back since. They are a very fair company to work for and give me my three weeks annual leave for lambing time which is the most important thing! For lambing season, the work started back at the end of January when we took all of the doubles and triplets into the shed. Before I start my 8:30am-5pm, I have the ewes to feed. I got up every single morning just before 6:30am and had all the feeding done before I went to work. Then I fed them again once I got home. You are flat out from the end of January right into April.
Another string to your bow now is being a content creator on social media; how did that all come about?
Hmm, good question! I have always posted sheep content on social media from a young age, but it is only really in the last year not even it has all really kicked off.
When it started to skyrocket (Annie now has 72,000 followers on Instagram, 43,000 on TikTok and millions of views on her videos) did it surprise you?
It started to take off at the start of the year when I was posting videos of myself feeding the ewes most mornings on TikTok and Instagram. Then once the lambing content started rolling in, boom, my following just went insane. I am 100% myself when I post and I feel that is what people love. And I have to say, it makes my life a lot easier; I used to spend hours editing videos and then just throwing a song over them, and don’t get me wrong I still do post videos like that, but I don’t feel the pressure to have as many perfectly edited videos now because realistically they aren’t the ones that grasp peoples attention!
The response has been amazing, people love seeing new life come into the world. I had to laugh, a lady commented on one of my reels saying, “Sorry, but this is the exact moment I realised we’ve been doing Instagram all wrong and the real influencers are birthing lambs not trying on Zara” — this comment has stuck in my head since the moment I seen it. Of course, I get negative and hate comments aswell; if they bother me that much I will just block and delete the person. I understand that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but you know yourself, there is only so much you can take.
People have really fallen in love with 68, or Grá, as you have now named her…tell us more about how you have adopted her as a pet lamb?!
Grá was pretty much dead when I found her out in the field. She had a severe chill and was on death’s door, gasping for her last breaths when I found her. I didn’t think there was much hope for her. I took her in dried her with a towel, tubed her milk, injected her with Metacam for pain relief, dried her with the hair drier and left her under the heat lamp. I genuinely wasn’t expecting her to survive, so when I returned to the shed to see her wee head perked up a few hours later I got some hop. I thought I had performed a miracle. I don’t usually keep pet lambs but there was just something so special about this lamb that made me want to guard her with my life so I said I would take her under my wing and call her my own! She is a part of the family now and she has recently been acquainted with another wee friend.
Your posts don’t sugarcoat the realities of farming. Do you think it is important to really show what it is like behind the scenes?
Of course, I don’t think people understand the blood, sweat and tears that go into every operation of farming whether it be a big or small farm. I do it for the love of it. It is in no way an easy job but when the job is going well, there is no better feeling in the world. On the other hand, though, when things are not going so well it can be a challenging time. I am a member of the Cooley Sheep Breeders association and if I am having issues on the farm or a problem with an animal I know one of them is only a call or a text message away. The same goes for the connections I have made on social media over the years. I am telling you now, I wouldn’t be half the farmer I am without the help of other farmers on social media; it has brought so many positives to us in the farming community. It is great to see what everyone else does and sometimes you can pick up on different things and make a few changes of your own if you see a better practice elsewhere!
I’m sure many people have been in touch to say you have educated them on the likes of wet adoptions since you began to post content!?
Yes, plenty of people, even David McCullagh from RTE Radio 1 has been educated on the likes of wet adoptions! Look, I know when I was younger I didn’t have a notion about all these different tricks and it is just experience over the years from working on other farms and seeing different posts on social media that taught me! I love sharing my knowledge with everyone and, you know, if it helps one or two people sure isn’t that a bonus. I am no genius that’s for sure, but I try my very best with every single animal I have and I think that is the most important thing. But having the knowledge behind it and knowing which injections are the right ones to use and so on is a massive, massive bonus and again, these are skills and knowledge you pick up over time
It is also great to see a young woman in what is often a male-dominated field – have you noticed attitudes shifting around women in farming?
To be honest with you, I think a lot of men in recent years have changed their perception on women in farming; we are no longer just the farm hand or the one who feeds the pet lambs, we are the decision makers in many cases. I know myself here on our home farm my father could not do it without me, not a hope! Us women are mighty, no job is too big or too small. I don’t know one woman who is afraid of hard work or who isn’t a problem solver.
What advice would you give young women considering a career in agriculture?
Go for it, follow your dream. Sure why not, what have you got to lose? You won’t know until you try. It is an occupation that suits both genders and don’t let anyone tell you any different. As much as I would love to be farming full time, it is no way sustainable if you want to live a pretty comfortable lifestyle, though. Especially with the cost of living and everything else these days, if you were just at the commercial sheep game on a scale like myself you would be scraping the barrel. It is a great way of life and to me, farming is my escape. I wouldn’t change it for the world.
There is a big appetite (no pun intended) for farm-led content in recent times, with the likes of Clarkson’s Farm being a huge success, for example. It seems to be an accessible way to bridge the gap between farmers and the public; how important is it to you to be a part of this?
I love being a part of it and I think it is absolutely brilliant to see people from the likes of Dublin reaching out to me saying that their kids look forward to coming home and watching my Instagram Stories and Reels during lambing time, to see what the updates on the farm are today. This year has just taken off; I definitely feel that Ireland as a whole are becoming more aware of where their food is coming from, especially with the latest ordeal with the Brazilian beef being imported into the country and it containing banned hormones. Nobody wants to be putting that crap into their bodies; we all need to start supporting the local butchers, bakers and grocery stores more and keep this wee country of ours alive and thriving!
Do you have bigger ambitions about where you would like to take your platform?
Look, I think we will see how it goes! I am pretty happy with the way things are going at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, it has been pretty overwhelming over the last couple of weeks and I am forever grateful to everyone who has supported me along the way with warm messages and comments every day. It is them people who keep you going!
Follow Annie on Instagram here
