My friend Agnes Winter, who has died aged 83 after a short illness, was a leading veterinary surgeon and scientist, and like me a Wensleydale sheep breeder.
She aspired to be a vet from an early age. Brought up on a North Yorkshire farm, with Guernsey cattle and Wensleydale sheep, she loved working with the animals, and gained a place at Liverpool University in 1960 to study veterinary science, one of only six women out of the 35 successful applicants for the course.
Born in Ilkley during the second world war, Agnes was the first of three daughters of a farming couple, Kate (nee Harbutt) and Tom Mason. She went to Skipton girls’ grammar school before embarking on her veterinary studies.
Having gained several awards as a student, she qualified as a vet in 1965 and remained at Liverpool as an assistant lecturer for two years, prior to spending the next two decades in practice in Mold, Flintshire, during which she worked on the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in 1967.
In 1969, she had married Tom Winter, a farmer in Flint in north Wales, where her interest in Wensleydale sheep further developed and she established her Cornist flock (the prefix named after the lane where their farm was situated), winning prizes at major agricultural shows.
She joined the Wensleydale Longwool Sheep Breeders’ Association in the mid 1970s and became honorary secretary and treasurer in 1977, steering the breed through its darkest period when it came close to extinction, with the lowest numbers of breeding stock since being established in the mid-19th century.
After some years away from academia, she returned to Liverpool University and embarked on a doctorate researching the effects of feeding cow colostrum to new-born lambs. On gaining the PhD in 1995 she continued to work at the university, first as lecturer, then senior lecturer and ultimately as head of veterinary clinical sciences until her retirement in 2008, when she was awarded an honorary professorship.
Agnes’s academic career was marked by some 10 co-authored books on sheep veterinary issues, mainly aimed at students and farmers, and various awards including the British Veterinary Association’s Dalrymple-Champneys cup and medal in 2009. She became the Wensleydale Longwool Sheep Breeders’ Association’s first female president in 2009 and a fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 2016.
Following retirement Agnes moved to York and developed an interest in history, becoming a volunteer guide at the Georgian townhouse Fairfax House and a patron of York Minster. Her commitment to Wensleydale sheep never waned and she continued to attend events until her final illness.
Tom died in 1998 and her youngest sister, Laura, in 2021. Agnes is survived by her other sister, Ruth.
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