@narayani@kipper1951 tups are rams - male sheep. The tups and ewes are kept separated until Autumn, when the tups are put back with the ewes. So that the farmer knows when a ewe has been mated, and therefore when she will lamb, he puts a harness on the ram, so that a block of coloured wax on his chest will mark her rump. The sequence is often yellow, green, blue, red, black - for five weeks of lambing in March and April.
@anniesue I knew that the breeding rams wore a harness that marked the ewes they had bred. I didn't know that there was a color sequence for lambing time. Thanks for the rest of the story.
