Tag Archives: Lambing

Children, Crafting, Food, Growing, Livestock, Preserving, Produce

2019 – a Difficult year

22nd January 2020 Dans 2 Comments

It’s been quite a while since I posted here. A year in fact, and what a year. When I last posted, Sam was recovering from his broken foot, I was recovering from the pregnancy and the baby had started taking decent naps. I was feeling very hopeful for the new year and came up with a long list of things I’d like to achieve. Ah the joy of January resolutions.

It turned out to be quite a hard year again. We had a few good months but then physical complications of doing too much too quickly post-pregnancy came up. I need to be very careful these days as to how much I do each day or else I’m wiped out for a few days. Paracetamol, the hot tub and my trusty back heatpad have become so valuable to me. On top of that the baby proved the saying that no two are alike. My daughter was happy outside toddling around, she was very trustworthy in regards to eating anything and would listen in regards to things she shouldn’t do. My son’s a bit more of a free spirit, he doesn’t like being in the pushchair outside, but eats everything he touches and doesn’t listen to much. It made doing stuff outside quite a challenge. I tried using a sling or carrier but the lack of core strength just gave me awful pain. He’s getting a lot better now though and seeing him run around in the polytunnel or outside, shovelling soil and investigating (but not eating) plants, makes it all feel worthwhile.

Sling for lamb checks
They had fun with this
Setting him to work
Bringing in the harvest
Making friends with the ram
A back carry to do some butchery

Despite the difficulty I did get the duck patch cleared and set up (although strong winds have since taken the roof off). I love looking at that grassy area with its very young willow trees and remembering what a mess it was a year ago. We had our first lot of ducks and really enjoyed that. Walking them into the house each evening was lovely and they grew so quickly. We got 10 and raised them up, kept them a bit longer than we needed to but they were a good weight and they tasted delicious. We jointed 4 of them for us and kept one whole. The rest we sold to friends and family and got great feedback on them. We’d like to do the same again this year.

First paddle
Getting their feathers
Free range grazing
Walking to bed
The final trip
Wonderful meat
Before
During
A year on (with a dedge)

We made the decision not to hatch chicks in 2019 as we were struggling a bit and our flock was large enough. I perfected the use of our sin bin and broke broody after broody, but we still had 4 hens appear out of hedgerows with a total of 24 chicks between them! The cockerel chicks have now all gone into the freezer and the hens are set to join the laying flock. In addition to having more chickens than we had planned for we had our first ever encounter with redmite and it was awful. We used DE, smite, redstop and fire to try and get rid of them. I think we managed it, though I saw a couple at the last house clean. This year I think we are sending our two cockerels to the freezer to make sure we don’t get more surprise chicks. I’m a bit sad about Aramis, he is the last of our first animals, but he is 4 years old now and with 30 girls to chase around he is looking quite tired.

Drusilla was the first to have chicks
We had to rescue Daenerys and her chicks in the rain
This hen was our most vicious mother
The chick suite once the mums left
Ready to tackle red mite!

We did lamb in 2019 and it didn’t go as smoothly as we’d have liked. All but one ewe needed help, most were just a one leg back situation but our smallest ewe had our largest lamb who was overdue, stained waters and quite stuck. It ended up being a job for lambing ropes and a bit traumatic for her. We managed to get her mothering in the end but she went for meat in December. I couldn’t put her through another lambing and the vet said with her size it may well happen again. We also lost a lamb at birth, she just wouldn’t take a breath no matter what I did. That one was a bit traumatic for me. The vet says there’s not much I could have done differently, maybe pouring cold water over its face but there may have been something wrong with her. Then we lost one who strangled himself in a fence at a few months old. These were our first sheep losses and although people say ‘where there is livestock there will be deadstock’ it was quite hard. We have decided to not lamb this year, we’re a bit overgrazed and looking for more land. 2020 will be a take it easy year.

Wrapped up cosy
Big lamb, small ewe
All the lambs

On the growing front we managed to build 4 of the 5 polytunnel beds and started planting in the outside beds. The weeds ran rampant though and quite a few bits didn’t get harvested. I didn’t make a single jam or chutney, I only brewed 2 batches of wine and we did a batch of apple juice. It was quite disheartening, the intention was there but we just didn’t find the time or ability or energy to do much.

Ready for planting
Covered in weeds
In full swing
We got some nice carrots though
Plums!
Rhubarb
Harvest time
More harvest time
Even more harvest time

On the upside I did make my first ever soup (butternut squash), I followed it with some lovely broth soups. I also finally braved my Mehu Liisa and made rhubarb cordial which went down really well.

Butternut squash soup
Duck carcass
Nommy duck soup
Mehu Liisa
Rhubarb cordial

I did however manage to get back to my monthly smallholding crafting meetings this autumn. I may not have made any pegloom rugs but I started needle felting which I really enjoy. I also picked up the knitting needles and crochet hooks, getting a few very old works in progress (WIPs) finished. I’d really like to make a felted sheepskin rug and tan my own sheepskins in 2020. Meeting with some like-minded folks really helped to inspire me to craft some more and it is so good for my soul.

Finally a finished object that fits!
Cheeky knitting while waiting for a lift
Needlefelt sheep
Felted from our wool
2D felted decorations

We had a lot of talks in 2019 about selling up, moving to a detached house with a big garden and going on lots of holidays. Smallholding with children, very young children, has been far more challenging for us than we could have imagined. I see lots of families on instagram managing it well but we’ve found it hard. Despite the attractiveness of selling up we do see the joy smallholding brings us, the health benefits and the fact that everything changes each day with the kids (the one constant of children is that nothing is constant!). We’ve decided that we are trying to do too much on our acreage, it’d be great for ducks or geese or chickens on their own. Or pigs, plenty of space for them. The polytunnels are great for growing and you can build on the established fruit trees. The problem is when I really sit down and look at everything about smallholding I find it’s the sheep I love and there just isn’t enough land here for a breeding flock of slow growing sheep (keep until min. 14 months). We’re looking at a larger acreage to better support a similar number of sheep, something that will also justify a bit of machinery as my back and core strength just isn’t what it used to be.

Looking to 2020 we’re not lambing and not having chicks. We’re working on sorting out our grass (quite mossy and overgrazed at the moment), repairing the sheds and polytunnels that have fallen into disrepair, growing veg, raising some ducks and hopefully finally having a holiday or two to ease the stress. I’m hoping to find the time to keep posting here, I do enjoy sharing the ups and downs of smallholding with you all. Hopefully even our struggles will be useful to other people who are smallholding or thinking about it.

Dans

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Crafting, Food, Livestock

Our first mutton, sheepskins and horn

7th February 2018 Dans 2 Comments

Yes we are still here!

My laptop had a slow death and went completely out of use a couple of months ago. Since then I have been limping along with my phone but it was a lot harder to get things done. Now I have a nice new laptop I’m back again. I’ll catch you up with the various goings on as new stuff comes up, but I want to do a post about our first experience of sending sheep to the abattoir and getting the meat and other products back.

You may remember that we ended up getting more breeding ewes than we thought we could have in the long run. We wanted to see how they lambed and then cull down to our final number of breeding ewes (3). Two of the ewes, Anya and Aelin didn’t get in lamb, there was a chance they would if we gave them a second year but we just couldn’t justify keeping them on. They were earmarked for meat once we were certain they weren’t carrying lambs.

Lambing went pretty well for our first time. Alanna’s lambing stood out though. She scanned as a single and had a small lamb with no difficulty. We saw another sack but she showed no sign of pushing. A very small lamb literally wriggled it’s way out of her, it dropped to the floor, she looked behind her and then continued licking the first lamb. I waited a bit to see if she would do anything but then cleared the airways. We gave her 2 hours and still no mothering towards the second lamb. We did finally get the lamb up and feeding, which she allowed after a bit of a fight. She never did ‘mother’ Crais though. She would allow him to feed if he was by her but she never answered his calls or went to him. Both lambs were a lot smaller than any of the others and Alanna got marked for meat once her lambs were weaned. Her not looking after Crais gave us so much extra work.

Crais (right) with a lamb a day younger (left)

So weaning time came around and we booked the ewes in. I spent the week before trying to come up with ways to avoid it. Maybe we could sell them – but we want meat, if we sell them we have no mutton. Maybe we are being too rash in writing them off – but if we keep them we have 12 sheep on the land over winter, far too many. It really was a decision I wrestled with and I am kind of glad I did. I hope I always feel at least a little tug in sending animals off for meat.

Abattoir rolled around quickly, the trailer had been scrubbed out, the sheep dagged and checked over, everything was ready. We got a little lost driving to the abattoir, despite doing a test run a couple days before, we pulled up at the butchers expecting the side road to be a route to the abattoir but it turned out it was further so Sam had to do a u-turn in the trailer! The animals unloaded fine and we had all the paper worked needed to get back our Category 2 animal by-products. We drove back home feeling a bit solemn but not with the tears a lot of smallholders had reported.

I was back there a few hours later though to pick up the skins and horns. It would seem that the abattoir aren’t used to people doing this, they weren’t sure about the paperwork at first and the horns were cut at varying lengths, they did apply an initial salting though which was nice.

When I got them back home the skins were laid out and any flesh removed, in future I think I’d actually ask them not to do the initial salting if I’m going to collect them so quickly (they were still warm), as it seems to make the flesh harder to remove in places. I got them as clean as I could though and covered with salt. A week or so later we covered them again and then about a month later we sent them off to be tanned. I’ll try a do a more in depth post about the skins once I get them back.

The horns I had much less of a clue about. I’d read about burying them, or putting them on a high roof far away. Unfortunately we had neither of those and so we popped them in a dog cage near the back door until I could read more about the boiling method. As it turned out when I next checked on them the maggots had loosened the core on one despite the cold weather. I left them longer and the maggots loosened the core on 3 more, not really much of a smell at all until you removed the core. There are two more and they are now in the conservatory. I should give them a try again soon.

Collecting of the meat was ok. The butchers got a couple cuts wrong which was annoying as I had to drive back to get it corrected, I didn’t want to disappoint the customers. We sold 5 halves in the end, keeping one half back for ourselves. One was collected fresh from the butcher, one was collected fresh from us, two were frozen and then collected from us and the last was posted fresh. The last one was probably the most nerve wracking for me. I pretty much loathe polystyrene so we went for Woolcool packaging which is cardboard boxes lined with a wool insert. We sent it next day delivery via courier and it arrived fine thankfully. I think we’d definitely be open to posting in future.

We ate our first home grown mutton the next night and it really was delicious, just a quick dish of chops lightly fried but the meat wasn’t tough at all. We saved a leg for Christmas dinner and slow cooked it, the meat really is different to lamb, it is genuinely richer. We’ve had lots of positive feedback from the customers which is really nice.

We should have a very limited amount of hogget over summer, so if you’re interested get your orders in, I have a feeling it will go quickly!

Dans

Livestock

Lambing recap

9th June 2017 Dans Leave a comment

Well it’s now been a week since our last ewe lambed. Of course we still have Anya and Aelin but we are now just under 5 weeks from the last possible lambing date for them and they are showing no signs at all of being in lamb. We’ve brought them back across the road and onto better grass so we will see what happens.

Sam and I are so tired it’s unbelievable. I’m not quite sure how people go for weeks lambing hundreds of ewes, I think 4 is about all I can manage! We’re starting to catch up a bit on sleep though, it helped a bit that we took the weekend off to spend time with some friends that we hadn’t seen in a while. Although, of course, now the jobs are starting to pile up again.

I thought I’d do a little recap of lambing.

We started on the 6th when Arya lambed. We almost missed it but managed to watch her have a pretty perfect outdoor birth. It was amazing to watch. Nice and quick, no assistance needed at all. She had a good sized ram lamb, weighing 2.85kg, with well developed horn buds. We named him Crichton. There’s a full post on Arya’s lambing here.

According to the raddle paste we should have had 2 weeks before the next lambing. For a recap on how raddle paste works and what it tells us see this post. In fact Aeryn lambed 4 days after Arya, on the 10th. For some reason the tup must have covered her again, even though she was already in lamb. Thankfully, we now knew the signs of imminent lambing from watching Arya and we kept up the regular checks as we thought Aeryn would be early. We settled down to watch her but after watching her struggle for a while with no results, and a chat with a vet, we decided she needed help and brought her in. I had my first experience of pulling a lamb, well two as the second needed a bit of help too. The end result was good, 2 healthy ewe lambs, not as big as Crichton but still a good size (2.5kg and 2kg). We named them Celaena and Caitlin. There’s a post on Aeryn’s lambing here.

We had some nervous moments surrounding the first 3 lambs getting enough milk and Aeryn’s mothering abilities but we managed to stand back and let them get on with it. We learnt a lot with those 3 lambs about how the early days go and how our breed of sheep manage compared to the commercial sheep you seen on TV.

Alanna and Arha were actually due on the same day, they were tupped morning and night of the same day. I was a bit nervous of managing that but we kept an eye out. Arya had lambed 1 day before her due date and Aeryn 2 days before. I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep at all the night before the due date just in case someone lambed.

Alanna went into labour in the afternoon. We kept an eye on her and she had her lamb on her own outside no problem. Then I noticed a water sack hanging down from her. She scanned as a single but I had joked to Sam that she was looking bigger than Arha (scanned singled possibly twins). I spoke to our vet friend and she also suspected a second. I kept an eye and sure enough a second set of feet appeared. The first lamb was up and feeding but Alanna wasn’t pushing at all. She stayed like that for quite a while, not pushing but the second lamb slowly but surely appearing. It dropped out and it looked as though Alanna hadn’t noticed, then she turned. She gave a little lick, thankfully around the nose, but then went back to the first lamb. I could see the lamb was breathing so stayed back. She wandered away from it a bit whilst it was still down so I ran in and checked the nose was clear, it was so I backed off again. I suspected a ram lamb as I could see the horn buds. Half an hour later, although the lamb had lifted it’s head it still hadn’t stood and she hadn’t properly licked it down. We penned them up in the shade so that the confident lamb couldn’t lead mum away from the struggling one.

The books say you want colostrum in the lamb in the first 2 hours, everything I have heard about Castlemilks says you want to not get involved as much as possible. We decided to wait until 1hr40 after birth then get involved. We made up a bottle of colostrum and went out. Lamb was still down whilst the other one was starting to bounce around. Restrained mum and tried to get lamb to suckle but it wasn’t successful. Turned mum over (and got a headbutt to the chest for my efforts – I’m not very good at turning sheep) and managed to latch the lamb on there. It drank a little which was good but it seemed quite tired and struggling. I let mum go and got the bottle. Offered it to the lamb who had some, but it had cooled a lot in the time it had taken us to get to that point. I went to warm it but when I got back the lamb was feeding and Sam said it was doing well. We left well alone.

Nearly 2 hours later and second lamb not up yet

The lamb was indeed a ram lamb, we called him Crais, he weighed 1.3kg. So small. The other lamb was a ewe, we called her Caprica and she was a bit better at 1.6kg. I think something must have been wrong with Alanna’s placenta, she and Arha had more feed than the first two to lamb and these lambs were so tiny. Crais did better over the next few days but he doesn’t have a great relationship with Alanna. Caprica stays with Alanna but Crais wanders away. When he starts bleeting for mum she sometimes calls back but rarely goes over and he doesn’t respond to her calls. We kept them penned for the longest of all our lambs.

Arha was the last to lamb and decided to break the new tradition of lambing by the willow trees and settled down in front of the polytunnel. I think she wanted to be closer to Alanna. Her lambing seemed to be going quite well, we checked back on her regularly and all seemed fine. The feet and nose appeared in the right position. Everything came out a little more but then things seemed to go wrong. She was pushing and pushing and the legs came out further but the head stopped coming out. I had read about Castlemilk ram lambs getting a bit stuck coming out if the horn buds are well developed so after she started to get a very uncomfortable looking bulged I intervened. Things were incredibly tight but I managed to run my fingers round and use them to help the horn buds out while I pulled. It was a huge ram lamb, the horn buds were well developed and you could tell it was a boy from quite a distance! He weighed in at a whopping 3.2kg and we called him Cisco.

That was us done with lambing. I ummed and ahhed about giving Crais a bottle as he seemed to be so slow to get going but the biggest thing I have learnt from this lambing is to step back and let the sheep get on with it. Obviously I ended up getting involved for three of the lambs so I didn’t stay back all the time but those times I waited a long time before I first felt the impulse to dive in. It’s hard to trust in the process but with them being a primitive breed it’s better that way.

I had felt awful about approaching lambing with my only knowledge being lambing live and my reading. I had hoped to go on a course but it just didn’t work out. The ewes were kind to me, giving us an easy introduction into lambing (no limbs to untangle or lambs to turn around) and it all worked out.

All the lambs are now together and running around. It’s taken me a week to write this so the youngest lambs are now over two weeks old. I’m quite proud of us, ewes and humans, 6 lambs from 4 ewes and no losses. If we can keep that up each year I will be really happy!

From left to right: Caitlin, Crichton, Cisco, Celaena (behind), Caprica and Crais

Dans

Livestock

Twins and an assisted lambing

17th May 2017 Dans Leave a comment

In the end we didn’t have long to wait for Aeryn to lamb. We checked on her before dinner last Wednesday and there were no signs. Went out after, at about 7:15 pm, to put everyone to bed and there was a water bag. I had read that the waters breaking was a fairly quick affair, blink and you miss it kind of thing, but when I checked her again it was still there. You could see that water was pouring from her, but a bag was still firmly in place. She was licking it all up so we waited. And waited, and waited. She seemed quite unsettled.

We decided to keep a close eye on her. When Arya was lambing she stayed in one spot and was pretty calm. Aeryn on the other hand was very worked up and was running all over the place, lying down and standing up. We aren’t very experienced but she just didn’t seem right. After about an hour a foot appeared and I relaxed a little. Over the course of the next 45 mins the foot kept going back in and coming out again, not very far out, just the tip. She kept doing the run around the field and appearing very unsettled. I spoke to a vet and there was the possibility that the lamb wasn’t presenting right and was stuck. We tried to pen her up to have a check but she ended up going into the lambing area with the other ewes (now in for the night as it was getting late). We’d have rather she lambed outside on her own but at this time of night, inside where we can help if needed was preferable.

I gave her a quick exam and could feel the nose behind the foot that was sticking out and the second foot just behind that. We waited a bit longer but she didn’t seem to be making progress. I called the vet and was advised that she may need help. She had been pushing for quite a while so it seemed like the lamb was stuck.

Being our wildest ewe it wasn’t easy getting hold of her but I managed it and managed to pin her and attempt to pull the lamb. I have to say it was one of the most daunting things I’ve ever done. I was worried that the lamb was dead already. Between the birthing fluids and the lube I had covered my hand in the lamb was quite slippy. I pulled the leg that was currently jutting out a bit first, then reached in and pulled the other leg to straighten it up. With both legs straight and out I pulled in earnest. Whilst I was doing so I heard the lamb make a sound which was such a relief! I finally got the head out, but the light had gone by this point and I panicked seeing how big the head was and suddenly thought it was the bum and I was delivering the lamb breech. I briefly considered pushing the lamb back but gave another pull and the lamb was out to about the abdomen. I stepped out of the pen to see if Aeryn could finish it herself but she just ran around the pen with the lamb dangling. It finally popped out but she stood licking the fluids on the ground and ran from the spot where the lamb was, I had to pull it closer, rubbing some straw on it’s nose at the same time, and to her head.

I checked she was licking the first lamb then stepped out. I looked up and saw the second lamb was already half out. One leg was extended out like superman and the head was out past the neck. I rubbed at it’s nose a bit just to make sure it was clear. The second foot was nowhere in sight. I put a hand in and unfolded the front leg (it was bent under the lamb) and it just fell out. Much smaller than the first. I checked that she was licking it as well and that both lambs were breathing before I peeled off my gloves and went inside for a bit of sloe gin! Both lambs had been born by half 9, just over 2 hours from when we first noticed labour.

I went back in later to check that they were feeding, spray the navels, weigh them and check them over. Two ewe lambs, one 2.5kg and the other 2kg. They both seemed to be feeding ok. We named the lambs Celaena (bigger and likely first) and Caitlin (smaller and likely second). Of course, over the next day or so I worried about their feeding. Like Crichton they weren’t doing the big stretches and didn’t have nice round tummies, in fact these girls were slightly sunken. We saw that each lamb was getting feeds, and Aeryn had milk but it was like she didn’t have enough. I attempted a bottle but had no luck. I later found out that the teats have to be cut!

As with Crichton the lambs did seem very active despite the thin look so we decided to leave them be and get them all onto grass as soon as possible.

That happened on Saturday once we had set up the storage polytunnel as an additional shelter. Getting them out didn’t quite go to plan though. We tried leading Aeryn out with ewe nuts (had worked for the Arya) but she was more interested in the grass. Managed to get one of her lambs but instead of following it she stayed grazing as the other one was by her. Popped that lamb down in the area we wanted her and went to get the second lamb. Arya came running over to the twin lamb and nuzzled it. It started feeding, she sniffed it’s bum and then went crazy butting it. We managed to get that lamb away from Arya and get Aeryn and second twin into the area. But I think by that point Aeryn and figured she was down to 1 lamb and just ignored the bleating of the other twin, which ran after Arya who was not happy with it’s advances. Got the twins together and with Aeryn and kept an eye on them. Arya ran over to the twins to still butt the one that had fed from her but Aeryn stood her ground and chased off Arya.

Things have seemed fine and settled since them. We set up a second shelter area and was planning to leave them out Sat night as it was warm, but do regular checks to make sure Aeryn hadn’t abandoned or forgotten one. We ended up rushing Chi to A&E with breathing difficulties and staying in (she is ok now), so the sheep were left to fend for themselves. When Sam came home early hours of Sunday they were all ok. We’ve left them out since and everyone is ok, the lambs have now even started playing together and seem to know who is mum and who to stay away from. I’m really looking forward to seeing them all running around like crazy things.

Dans

PS I’ve finally worked out Youtube, so have a look on our channel for more videos from the smallholding.

Livestock

Our first lamb

10th May 2017 Dans Leave a comment

As it turns out, we didn’t have to wait long for Arya to lamb. On Saturday morning we noticed her vulva was looking really pink and swollen. Then, as I was doing the washing up, I noticed her lying down and standing up repeatedly in the triangle, she was separate from the others as well.

I had however been thinking she was going to lamb the night before, so we weren’t putting much faith in my guesses. We desperately needed to make a trip to the local tip – trailer full of dog rose – so I went out and studied her for a bit. She was very interested in a particular spot and looked like she was licking the ground. I actually walked around her just in case she had a lamb in the long grass but there was nothing there. She wasn’t pawing the ground to make a nest, she had stopped the lie down – stand up routine and she wasn’t raising her head to the sky or showing any other signs of pain (possible contractions). Our plan for lambing was to do 2 hourly checks and the tip run should take us about an hour and a half so at 2:45 we decided it was safe to go. I now know that was a rookie mistake and she was actually licking the ground to clean up from her waters breaking.

We got back at just coming up to 4:15, to get home we drive past the area the sheep are in. I looked out and said to Sam ‘I think Arya’s lambing, or maybe I’m just seeing the tree behind her. It looks like something is sticking out of her bum.’ Sam parked up and I left him and Chi and legged it up to the field. Sure enough she was lambing. Just as I got there she was lying down and doing the classic star gazing. Sam came up shortly and asked if I was videoing, of course not, I was just standing there in awe! Sam got a little video.

It didn’t take her long at all. She put her head down to graze and the lamb popped out. She kept eating for a second and I panicked thinking she might just not notice it, possible with a first time mum, I ran to grab something to clear the nose just in case but she turned around and started licking the lamb. I’m pretty sure I held my breath at that point but then Sam heard bleeting. I have to admit my knees went really weak, it was so amazing to just watch her give birth and this new little life start moving around. I had to go and start getting the pen ready for them and check on Chi (sleeping in the car) so Sam stayed to watch them.

We have a nesting pair of crows who having been scavenging and killing things left right and centre all Spring. One of them got very interested when the lamb was born and came and sat on a fence post right by her. Crows can be really vicious and take a lambs eye or even tongue

Arya was so smitten with licking the lamb she kept jumping over him when he tried to get to her teats. Again I worried, I think it’s my superpower, that she wasn’t going to let him but within about 30/45mins she let him. The other possible danger with her lambing outside is another ewe either getting aggressive with her and/or the lamb or it going the other way and another ewe trying to steal her lamb but not having milk to give it. The other three did approach once the lamb started bleeting but as soon as it moved they scattered. I think they were actually scared of it.

Not sure what to make of the new arrival.

We gave them an hour to bond in the field. We kept watch in that time as the crow was showing a lot of interest. By then it was starting to get nippy for the evening and we had seen him feed so crossed our fingers that the bond was ok. I did my best interpretation of what I had seen on lambing live and dragged the lamb slowly whilst bleeting to encourage mum to follow us.

The lamb had not been watching lambing live and was not as placid as the ones on tv, he wriggled quite a lot and I had to pick him up a few times. I did get to see that he was a boy though! I discovered that the ewe gets very confused if you lift the lamb past thigh height. She just starts looking elsewhere. She also got really confused when we went past the other 3, she turned to go to them but when I bleeted again and put him on the floor she came running back. That was the longest it has ever taken me to walk that distance but we got there in the end.

Sam had set up the pen with fresh straw, hay and water and we penned them up for the evening. I gave his navel a quick spray to avoid infection as we had brought him in and had a go at weighing him. I need a better set up for the next lambs as he was a bit precarious in the bucket, but he weighed in at 2.85kg. No idea if that is good or not but it’s the start of our record keeping. I was really happy with how everything had gone. One of the things I had read was that humans jumping in to ‘help’ with lambing too soon was one of the biggest causes of issues to do with bonding and ending up with bottle feeding so I was really proud of myself for keeping my distance. She passed the afterbirth about 5 hours later and all was well.

Of course I soon found something else to worry about. Whenever he went to the teat he would faff about and then you’d see the teat beside his mouth and he would give up. I had heard a couple of tests to check if a lamb is feeding ok so I tried them all. The first was, when the lamb is sleeping stand it up. If it is full it will stretch and have a round belly, if it is hungry it will stand with all four feet in one spot and its sides will be sunken. Well lamb did neither of these. He stood for a moment, wandered to mum and did the faffing then lay down again, and his sides weren’t rounded but they also weren’t sunken.

The second trick is to hold lamb up by it’s front legs supporting it’s back with your legs. Again you should see a round stomach if full and sunken if hungry. But no, his sides were pretty flat. The third trick was to see if he pees when he stands up, like in human babies, weeing and pooping is a sign they are drinking. He peed but it was a drip drip affair rather than a stream. I then checked that mum actually had milk, she had a good sized udder (in my inexperienced opinion) but maybe there was an issue. No hard spots, lumps or heat (signs of mastitis), but I also couldn’t really get any milk out (two spots on my hand) did she have no milk or was I just rubbish at milking?

It was getting late by this point, and I had read that lambs should have colostrum in the first 6 hours so I made up a bottle. I offered it but he flat out refused. I went to bed very worried we would have a dead lamb in the night. We got up and checked regularly, ready to bring him into the house or tube feed him if he went downhill. Morning came and he was still with us but much the same as the night before. I messaged a local smallholder with more experience to come and have a look. He did and said lamb was doing ok. He got lots of milk from the ewe as well. I found out from the lovely people over at TAS that primitive sheep aren’t the same as the commercials I’d have seen on lambing live, they don’t tend to be as rounded with milk and as long as they aren’t sunken will be ok. I probably interfered with them a bit too much at this stage but thankfully the bond seems to be strong with them. I will know for next time and be able to be more hands off.

The polytunnel started getting a bit warm on Sunday afternoon, our main concern with using it for lambing. We decided to close off access to the polytunnel and let Arya and her lamb out of their pen. They would have access to the whole lambing space, including a penned off area outside where they could feel the breeze and cool off. We moved them down to the polytunnel doors and had to go collect some muck so off we went. When we got back it was getting a bit nippy and the lamb seemed a little unresponsive. I carried him back to the pen with mum following and headed inside to deal with Chi. We had a look on the camera and sure enough the lamb had been running up and down the polytunnel the whole time we were out. Not at death’s door at all! I was finally able to stop worrying about his eating.

We let them out into the post-lambing area on Monday afternoon as Arya was getting really depressed and not eating anything but the ewe nuts we offered. She just wouldn’t touch the hay. She got straight to eating and her lamb followed behind. They are out in the day and in at night at the moment as the nights have been a bit nippy but from tomorrow they will be out full time.

We named the lamb Crichton and he is just so wonderful to watch, running around and nibbling grass already. We are looking forward to him having some little friends. No-one else is due until the end of the month, but Aeryn’s bagging up already and is quite huge so she may have been caught on the first tupping as well.

Dans

PS I think I have fimally worked out Youtube, so have a look on our channel for more videos from the smallholding

Our Good Life

Tag Archives: Lambing

2019 – a Difficult year

Our first mutton, sheepskins and horn

Lambing recap

Twins and an assisted lambing

Our first lamb

A journey into smallholding