SHEEP-MAD Katie Nobles is right at home down on the farm with the lambs.

Katie, 11, is a pupil at Holme Junior and Infant School.

But at this time of year school and homework take a back seat as she concentrates on the lambing.

On the family farm, everyone mucks in to help.

Katie, who lives at Lower Fold Farm in Holme, has her own sheepdog, three-year-old Nell, and loves nothing better than looking after the sheep and lambs.

She and Nell regularly help her father Robert round up the flock and pen them.

She also keeps an eye on the livestock, helps with lambing and bottle feeds the lambs that need a bit of help.

When she’s not at school, all of her free time is spent with the sheep. And when she grows up, Katie wants to be ... a farmer.

Three years ago she took part in Harden Moss Sheep Dog Trials and she is hoping to join Young Farmers in the near future.

Her father Robert said: “Katie is sheep and sheepdog mad.

“She has got a natural flair with livestock. She has a good eye, she knows when something isn’t right with the stock, and you can genuinely trust her with the animals.

“If Katie had her way, she wouldn’t be at school, she would spend all her time on the farm with the lambs.”

While lambing is mostly over in lowland areas, Lower Fold Farm and other Pennine farms around Huddersfield are right in the middle of it.

Farmers try to plan their lambing to coincide with warmer weather and growth of new grass after the winter.

It is estimated that there are 30 million sheep in Britain.