Lamb By The Fire

One lamb hasn't fared so well in the weather last night and I don't hold out much hope.

Got him by the fire warming. My youngest thinks this is incredible and we're struggling to get him to leave the lambs side.

I'm annoyed at myself as I noticed him being a bit doppy last night but when I lifted him and saw he had a full belly I just assumed he was kind of "milk drunk" as he was lay next to his mum and still walking around when I put him back. Noticed this morning the ewe was over the other side of the field while he was still lay where he was at 3 this morning when I did my checks. The constant wet weather has made him go down hill fast. 

Fingers crossed a bit of a warm by the fire might help him. He hasn't got his head back so that's a positive.

*lamb update*

I'm afraid the lamb hasn't made it.

When I brought him in the house I knew his chances were slim. You develop a sixth sense of when something is going to survive or not but you always try no matter how rubbish the odds.

I could hear that rattle on his chest, the tell tale sign of pneumonia. I gave him the right antibiotics and plenty of warmth and comfort but unfortunately I just didn't catch it soon enough.

Now I have to make sure the ewe doesn't get mastitis, as sometimes twin lambs have a side they drink from so the other lamb will only be pulling from the one.

Never sure how much I should share on the blog. But it seems right to share the lows as well as the highs, to save looking at it through rose tinted glasses.

It does leave you feeling shitty no matter how often you deal with these types of things.

I can remember spending hours in the lamb shed trying to get sickly ones to drink or pull through when I was a child.

Ewe With Four Lambs

So looks like I'll be doing a spot of bottle feeding this week. Second ewe has lambed and unfortunatly had four! They've all survived so far but she's not going to have enough milk to feed them all. So I've bought some colostrum and powdered milk.

They've all had a feed tonight and got full bellies, I'll just have to keep my eye on them now.

Must be 18 years since I last reared a bottle fed lamb. Let's hope the next sheep has a single and I can adopt one over!

And So It Begins!

First lambs born in the night. A good sized double, no assistance needed and two full bellies! Shame they found the muddiest patch of the Field next to the brook!

Prepare to be bored of sheep and lamb pictures over the next month! 

Guess What's Back...

So yesterday I picked up the sheep from my fathers farm and transported them back to our smallholding. 

I'm down to 25 ewes now, but hopefully they're all in lamb and they're all proven mothers. I was worried I was going to get stuck getting them in the field, I'd borrowed a stock box from one of my dads friends and it would be embarrassing if I couldn't get it back to him. 

Luckily the truck proved it's worth and got it over the fields no problems, even with the rain the night before, it does make it easier to move sheep! 

We then had to move a few things around for the sheep, setting up troughs and a few other bits and bobs. The girls moved the one, but they did moan about it! 

Feeding time! 

The boy also showed how fearless he is of them and ended up down the bottom of the six acre field herding the whole flock back round to me on his own! He was so pleased to see his sheep back. when he saw them he held his hands wide and shouted "MY SHEEEEEEEPPPPPP!" with a huge grin on his face! A happy little two year old!

So today brings a day of fetching some more stuff back from dads, we even found a old hay rick in the orchard so I'm going to try and do that up to make it usable again as there still isn't much grass on the fields.

7 Tips For Lambing a Small Flock Outdoors

Things have gone well with the lambing this year so I thought I'd do a video show what I've done to try to organise myself and get things to run a little smoother. 

Let me know what you think!

Is there anything else you'd like me to do a video on?

Life And Death On The Homestead

If you've got more than a few animals then having some die is an enviable part of keeping them. 

I know I've posted before about involving the children in every aspect of what I do here and yesterday was no exception. 

The day before we'd had a triple born, the one wasn't going to be a very good lamb, it couldn't stand and faded pretty fast. I could have messed about with it and tried bottle feeding, but you get a feel for when these things will work or not. By the morning it was dead. 

When I picked my eldest up from school I mentioned this and both girls asked questions about what had happened. Then later when they came to help me feed the ewes they asked to see the dead lamb. I got it out from where I'd put it and laid it on the ground. They both studied it very hard for a few minutes before going off and playing in the trailer.

When we came back in they both told their mum, very matter of fact, that the lamb had died because the mother sheep had had three lambs and didn't have enough milk to feed all three. 

I was really pleased with how they dealt with the subject and how they reacted around the dead body of the lamb. I think children really pick up on the reactions of the people around them, around the animals I'm generally very calm, quiet and move softly (unless I'm trying to catch them) and the girls are the same, they make me really proud around the animals. 

They also know they're not people, far too many people anthropomorphise animals, the children can see that they don't have human emotions. A sheep loosing a lamb will forget about it very quickly, sometimes in a few hours, a sheep in a lot of pain lambing will evoke no emotion from a sheep sat next to it. 

They also know why we keep them and I tell them when we eat one that we've bred here, they seem to like to know where their food has come from even at their young age!

Wow - What A Morning!

Today was the first day back at school after the Easter holidays. That means that my wife is back at work and I'm back looking after the children, whilst I've still got some ewes to lamb. 

So Sunday night I went out to check the sheep that weer still to lamb just before bed time. There was a ewe struggling to lamb so I managed, after much running around, to catch her and get her into a pen I'd made in the field. 

This ewe was not easy to lamb, it was a single and the size of a small Labrador, I really struggle to get him out but managed in the end (the difficulty lies in pulling the lamb out and hold the ewe down on your own). I then moved her off to the shed to a bonding pen and went to bed around 11.30.

My younger daughter then woke me up at 2.30 and I decided that whilst I was awake I might as well go and check them (I had considered not checking them that night as I have so few left to lamb). When I went out there one ewe had had a triple (no one want triples) and the lambs had wondered away from her as she was going a little crazy not being able to find them. I gathered them up and put them in the shed as well, then back to bed.

I had my alarm set for six but with three young children there is little need for an alarm in our house! I got up quickly (for me), I wanted to check on the lambs born the night before and do my other jobs. 

When I went to check on the expectant ewes there was one lambing - damn I thought (or maybe something stronger). I could do without that during the school run. I managed to pen her up (again with much running around) and I had a "bit of an inspection" unfortunately she wasn't far enough on with her lambing and her cervix hadn't opened up fully. So I then sorted out the sheep in the shed, did the green houses, uncovered certain garden crops, fed the chickens and then went inside to see my wife off and sort the kids out, make their lunch boxes, get forest school kit ready etc, give them breakfast, clean teeth and get them dress.

I managed all that done by eight o'clock (we normally leave by 8.30 to get there with plenty of time to spare) so I got the kids to get their wellies on and marched them all down the field. 

The girls were told to look after the boy and make sure he didn't wonder off whilst I set about lambing this ewe. 

The kids were utterly transfixed as I put my hand inside her and after much effort managed to pull out two live lambs in front of their very eyes, my younger daughter told me there and then that she wanted to be a farmer (and a carpenter)!

Then with time against me I managed to get the sheep and lambs up to the shed (as it was raining), round up the children, get them in the car, change out of my overalls (and then clothes when I realised it had soaked through) and drive them to school. The road was then blocked so we had to turn round and go a longer way to school. 

We got there just as the gate was closing, but to be honest in my mind what they saw and experienced in that hour this morning would be far better than what they'd see or do at school, so if they were late I wouldn't have been very bothered! 

With the eldest dropped at school, the middle one then got dropped off at preschool and the youngest and me then went to the community church in the village where I volunteer at a playgroup to get set up for the mornings session! 

In all it was quiet a full on morning! 

It's funny I've always said I want to give my children a similar childhood to my own and I think I was doing just that this morning! 

A Busy Two Weeks

The last two weeks have been pretty full on. 

The early part of last week I took two lambs and a sheep to the abattoir, I worked a few days for customers, we pushed really hard with the patio (post and pictures to follow), the veg garden is being well looked after and the lambs have been coming thick and fast.

I'm having a much better time of it than last year, I'm not sure what that's down to. The weather has been amazing, the sheep seem in better condition, I'm better prepared & organised and I seem to be having a fair bit of luck on my side at the moment. 

That doesn't mean it's been plain sailing. I'm having to lamb a fair few ewes, yesterday morning I even had to get my bricklayer to hold the ewe whilst I lambed here, not what he was expecting to do when he turned up! Some of the lambs are quite big that I'm having to lamb, it's an issue with feeding as I don't know if they're carrying a single or twins so the sheep have the same amount of food. 

Not sure any sheep likes to see these two items come out...

Unfortunately the Easter holidays are over now so I'll be back to full time childcare from tomorrow and I've still got nine sheep left to lamb. This could mean some very tired school runs and a grumpy daddy, but hopefully it shouldn't be too bad. 

I'm currently assessing the flock before I go to bed at 11 and deciding when to get up based on what I see. Normally I get up and walk round them around 3 o'clock in the morning but if I see any signs of lambing then it could be two walk rounds, an earlier one and a later one (2 and 4) and dealing with anything that happens. If they lamb in the night I tend to take them up to that little shed in the one rented field and put them in a bonding pen for the night (if I've got the space) before letting them out in the morning. 

Wish me luck with the nine that are left! 

Vlog Episode 4 - Homestead Tour

It's been a while since I did a video and with so much going on at the moment I thought it might be good to walk you all around some of the homestead. 

This video is just filmed as it is, very little editing except where I ran out of memory as I was looking at my beetroots! 

Let me know what you think and what you'd like to see in the next one and I'll try to include it. 

Or let me know if you'd like a video on anything in particular.

Lambing problems

I don't dare jinx it by saying things are going okay, but at the moment they don't seem too bad...

The lambs are coming steadily and seem healthy and happy, I've got one inside at the moment who is breathing funny but I've given some medicine and just waiting on that one. 

I have had a couple of tricky deliveries though. 

Both last night. 

One was breach and was coming out the wrong way. I spotted her just as the light was fading, one little hoof sticking out of her. I managed to trick her into a pen with some food before wrestling her to the ground, then I had to try to find the other leg inside her and pull the lamb out once I'd gotten both legs. Because the lamb is the worn way round once you start pull you need to be quick as it'll drown in there once the cord is broken. 

I've never had such a hard one to pull out before, he was huge. I had to put my foot on the ewe to get him out, poor thing. But once he was out I gave him a good rub and he seems fine. 

The second one was from some night time checks last night. I went out at 2am and could see a ewe had started lambing but looked unsettled. I couldn't get near her (a major disadvantage of lambing outside) so I decided to come back in two hours time and see if she'd had the lamb on her own. 

When I came out at 4 in the morning I was gutted to see her running about with just a head sticking out of her, looking all swollen. I thought it's dead for sure but I still need to get it out of her. 

Catching her was another story. I ran round for a bit but decided to get the quad bike out, I've no idea what the neighbours thought to me trying to round the sheep up at half four in the morning, I'm surprised the police didn't turn up in all honesty and do me for rustling!

After about fifteen minutes of her running round and the lambs head making a horrible noise as it slapped her legs as she ran I managed to catch her and pin her to the ground. The the difficult job of lambing her without letting her go! I managed to find a leg a little way back and pulled that and the head, two legs would have been better but the head had swollen and I thought there was no chance of getting that back inside her. Again it took some pulling out but when it came out I was really pleased to see it was still alive.

The ewe tried to bolt at the this point but I pinned her down and checked for any more lambs inside her. I pulled out the twin as well and left her to clean up the lambs as I put the quad bike away. 

By this time I was too fired up to go straight to bed so I thought I'd go and check on them and spray their bellies, it's a good job I did as the one lamb had got up, stumbled ten feet and fell down into the brook, holding it's head just above the water! I rushed in and got it out and then took them up into one of my bonding pens in the small shed I borrow for this month. Rubbed down with hay and making sure they had some milk I then went back to the house. 

It was 5.45 and I wasn't sure if it was worth going back to bed or not! 

Started Lambing

And so it begins! 

I was almost starting to doubt myself as lambing was taking so long to arrive! 

Yesterday I had two doubles, both sets of lambs were healthy and strong and had full bellies when I found them, so I was happy. 

The kids were pleased to see them as well! 

Second pair found on my walk round the sheep at 12 last night.

If it continues like this I'll be a happy man! 

New Lambs Moments After Birth

I had to lamb a ewe this morning. I'd been up in the night to check on her but she wasn't ready until about nine this morning when it took me about half an hour to catch her! (they don't know what's good for them!). 

I got her in because I could see she was struggling. She was a big ewe and the lambs were going to be whoppers. I started to lamb her straight away. 

The first took some serious pulling out, and I didn't want to rush it and hurt her so after about five minutes he came out but a little dopey from the journey! The second was much harder as he had his head back. It took me ages to get his head back round as each time I got near to rearranging him she would push again and I'd be back to where I started. I eventually managed to turn him round inside her enough  to get my hand on the one side of his head to line him up. Grabbing both feet then I pulled him out, checking all the time that the head was still in the right place. 

I think both the ewe and I were shattered afterwards. By the time I got the lamb out I was out of breath and I was sweating, even though the frost was still on the ground and I was just still in a T shirt. 

At least it was a positive outcome to this lambing! Both lambs are up and out in the field now. 

LED Floodlights

I remember the lambing shed that we used to have on the farm. Poorly lit, it used to be a nightmare to do the checks at night, dad had a big blue torch that we used to use and a few bulbs dotted here and there. 

Things have moved on a lot in resent years. These LED rechargeable floodlights are a real game changer for somewhere without power. 

 A couple of these would light up any shed and they seem to last for ages. The only disadvantage is that when they run low on charge they suddenly turn themselves off that can come as a big of a shock when you're not expecting it. 

The magnetic base on them works amazingly as well, the picture above shows one light pointing upwards, plenty for me to work by. 

Anyone else use a rechargeable flood light?

Pictures With Blinkers

The picture below is a great example of looking at a photo and not knowing what is going on in the rest of the scene. 

Two happy girls sat on a bag of corn watching what's going on.

Just out of shot is their dad and granddad dragging a dead sheep out of the shed while they watch onwards!

You can't buy an upbringing like this!