Lambing is in full swing and apart from a couple of problems we have already turned out some beautiful lambs in glorious spring sunshine. Not too many singles or triplets which is good and plenty of healthy twins.
Unfortunately, we had a problem with a greedy ewe and it wasn’t hunger! It was late at night and I went down to the barn to check on the ewes and one had lambed and was cleaning up 2 beautiful black welsh lambs. They were both suckling away happily.
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All looked fine. She then went down and started lambing again and seemed in distress and was struggling. This didn’t seem quite right since the other 2 lambs seemed fine. Maybe the 3rd was huge? We ended up lambing her and she had 2 big ram lambs – both healthy and she seemed fine. Something still didn’t seem right as the first 2 lambs were quite small and the second 2 quite large. Quads – the first time ever. It was definite that 2 would either be fostered or on the bottle. The next problem was more serious. The ewe had no milk what so ever. We penned all 5 of them up and I rushed off to get some colostrum ready.
It was then that Miles called me over to another ewe in the same pen who was just quietly shedding her afterbirth and was not at all distressed. It all suddenly clicked into the place. This ewe had had her lambs stolen by the other ewe. We quickly got the first 2 lambs and did everything to get them back to their rightful mum and accepted. It all turned out fine in the end but we did have to put 2 lambs onto the bottle.
Oh the joys of lambing. It has been lovely to welcome local people to the farm to see the lambs. You are all very welcome.
Janet
