Come one, come all: Ireland's sheep and goats are going to be counted this week

EVER TRIED COUNTING sheep to get to sleep in the evenings?

The farmers of Ireland are set to have a whole of that ahead of them this week – although they’ll be doing so while awake and will have to include goats in the count.

This comes as they prepare their submissions for the Sheep and Goat Census 2014.

The date for the count has been set as Sunday 14 December, when flock owners are required to have returned their completed forms.

There are over 43,000 sheep and goat farmers registered with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine’s database.

Farmers are legally obliged to participate in the count with the information collected being used for farm and flock inspection and to show that farmers meet requirements for payments under specific subsidy schemes.

Such schemes include the Single Payment Scheme, Disadvantaged Area Scheme, REPS, AEOS and the Grassland Sheep Scheme.

Flock owners are reminded by the Department that the only acceptable proof of postage is Registered or Express post receipts. Forms are required to be returned to Government Buildings, Portlaoise, Co Laois.

An option exists for submissions to be made online.

Spare a thought for the farmers of Ireland this week, they could have a task ahead of them…

Read: Frozen, Morning Ireland, and the C word: The week in numbers

Also: New census questions are this week’s first cut-back casualty