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! 

The Diary Of A Stuffed Animal....

Well my daughter had to take home a stuffed animal,Google, and then write a diary of what it got up to over the weekend.

Looking through the diary there's some stiff competition.

The frigging thing lives better than i do. Lately it's been to Disneyland Paris and paragliding!

Not sure trimming the sh$t off the tails of some mucky lambs will really cut it...

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! 

Pasturella In Lambs

It's not been a great week as far as the stock is concerned. A bit of a disaster in fact, as I've lost some fat lambs to pasturella. 

I am a lucky guy in most things in life but not when it comes to sheep. 

If there's another way for one of my flock to die that I haven't seen yet then I should know it's only a matter of time. 

I vaccinated my lambs earlier in the year against many of the things that can get them as they're growing, one of the things they were meant to be vaccinated again was pasturella but obviously it isn't 100% successful, as I can prove. 

Taken from google:

 "Pasteurella pneumonia is considered one of the most important infectious bacterial diseases of sheep. It is usually caused by Pasteurella haemolytica, a bacteria that is a normal inhabitant of the upper respiratory tract of the sheep."

The main trouble with it is how fast the animals go downhill, I was talking to another Shepard and he said that after a cool evening we had the other night he found 7 dead the next morning and a friend of his found 10 dead in one field. It can happen over night and as I check my animals twice a day it's hard for me to accept that a healthy animal can just die like that. 

I managed to save one with a course of antibiotics as I caught it early enough but a few more have not been so lucky, the worst is I had been planning on selling them as store lambs a few weeks ago but I'd been working on the extensions so much I hadn't got round to it. As they had plenty of grass and they all seemed healthy I wasn't in too much of a rush. 

But, like with all things, I try to keep a positive outlook, but the sheep do make it hard for me sometimes. 

On a slightly crazy note when I've been dealing with these lambs this stupid song has been going through my head, only with the lyrics changed ever so slightly. 

Weaning The Lambs

I weaned the lambs on Friday evening.

Here's a short video of me talking about it! 

Let me know what you think!

Vaccinating Lambs and Tailing Sheep

 Last Sunday I had a fair few working here. My dad and brother had come to give me a hand with all the drainage/clearance work we were doing in preparation for the extension.
Nick, A young lad who sometimes works on my fathers farm, also came to help. He really keen on helping with anything sheep, and has some of his own, so I seized the opportunity and got him to help me vaccinate the lambs as they're at the age where they should have their first stage of injections.

Nick and me - stupid hat optional.

These injections are nuder the skin, I bought a special syringe for the job that automatically fills after each injection and has a cap on the top so it sterilises each time as well, clever stuff but it did take me a little while to figure out! 

Treating feet for scald due to the long grass

Whilst we were doing that we also checked every lambs foot for scald and treated them locally rather than treating every animal en mass. 

 I also took the decision to tail all the sheep. This is a job that Nick was dead keen to do, so I caught and held the ewe whilst he used his battery trimmers to dagg them. 

It's around the time of year when fly strike will become a problem, so rather than chemically treat them with a fly repellent (which I will have to once they've been sheared next month), dagging them removes all the muck they've built up over winter, which in turn removes where the flys will lay their eggs. I like to think it's a fairly proactive approach that reduces my need of chemicals, although I'll still have to keep a careful watch for maggots.

Lambs waiting for their mummies. 

The lambs are looking pretty healthy and they've started to eat their creep feed as well. Hopefully these lambs will finish faster this year than last.

Anyone else been tailing sheep or vaccinating lambs?

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. 

Sheep Prolapse

Ah the joys of spring, 

Crisp mornings, 

The warm afternoons, 

The lambs bleating, 

The sheep trying to push her own insides out. 

Makes you glad to be alive.

It's the second sheep to prolapse now so I'm a little worried. They don't seem too fat so I'm not sure what's causing it really. I managed to push it all back inside her, let her have a good wee (as they can't when it's all pushed out) and fix a harness on to her.

The harness or trusses give the ewe some extra support and help to keep things where they should be, although it can still pop out now and again. The one in the picture above had damaged her insides slightly (or reed as we call it) so I'll keep a close eye on her now and make sure she gets any medicine she needs. 

The lambs keep turning up though we've had another double and two more singles so far. Pretty poor average (two lambs a sheep would be perfect). But all healthy and happy and lambed themselves so that's all that matters. 

First Lamb

Well the first sheep has had a lamb. 

Just a single but a good size and I didn't have to help. It's got a full belly and an attentive mother so I'm pleased.  So are my girls to finally have skme lambs.

Last Years Lambs

Now I haven't mentioned what's happened to the lambs from the ewes last year in a while. 

Unfortunately they hadn't put on enough weight by the autumn and I had two options. Either fatten them up over winter or sell them as "store lambs" which means someone else fattens them up and makes a profit on them. 

The price was at a low when I was thinking about selling them as stores so we decided to hold on to them for a little while longer to see what the market did. 

Covered in Briar's 

 The market is a little better than it was (in fact last week was even quite good) but when I got the lambs in yesterday I could instantly see they hadn't put enough meat on. One or two could have gone for fat (meat sale) but the rest didn't have enough when I felt their backs. 

It's been wet for a few months and it's pretty hard for them living out in it the whole time, not much extra energy for growing meat. We've been giving them some extra corn (wheat and oats) but I think it's now time to up their rations and hope the weather improves to allow some easy living. Hopefully in a months time I should see some improvement and have plenty to sell.

Looking a little better but they still need to grow some more meat on their bones

 One of the reasons I think they didn't put on much meat last year was a lack of minerals, something must have been lacking from the grass. They seemed to get to a stage and then not move on from there. With this years lambs I'm going to creep feed them (give extra feed) early on and try to have them sold by the end of the autumn. I don't want to have to winter lambs again if I can help it. 

A steep learning curve with these animals, I think the 8 years I spent away from sheep I forgot more than I realised. Having focus in other areas hasn't helped this first year and I think I should have been more organised and I got rid of some lambs in the summer when they would have graded but the price was low. 

I'm also planning on killing two lambs myself for home and butchering them here, but we'll see if I find the time for that (best laid plans and all...). 

The ewes are looking good though, great condition, just need to find somewhere to lamb them in April. Currently thinking a quickly erected poly tunnel for a month might be the answer! 

For The Love Of Baler Twine - A New Pen

I managed to get the tow bar fitted on my van last week, so hopefully I'll be selling some lambs soon! In the meantime I'm trying to find as much grass as I can for them. I got offered an extra 2 acres of grass last week but as they're digging some of it up in the next week or so (they're building a house) it won't be available until next year, so I'm trying to make sure we make the most of what we have.

The over grown pig pen - no pigs till next year though!

 One patch of land that's been underutilised is the pig pen that I fenced off. We didn't get any pigs this year so it's been sat there just growing grass, it's a good size, under the oak trees. So I've made a path out of gates, an off cut of wire and plenty of baler twine. 

The track between the fields - this little pass was planned so it can be an easy pen for the sheep

Make shift pass for the lambs to get in the pig pen 

Didn't take long for the lambs to find their way in! 

It gives them an extra bit of grass and keeps another area tidy, hopefully next year we'll get some pigs and they'll keep it tidy instead. 

Anyone else go mad with baler twine to block off areas? I'm not happy unless every gateway has at least a bit of baler twine on it!

Juggling Fields

Still trying to juggle the grass we've got left. I've had to keep the lambs longer than I thought as I've had no means to get them to the abattoir or to market.

 So I've moved the lambs back to where the sheep were last month. Ideally I would have liked to leave it a little longer to let the grass grow back but they've got nothing left where they were. Trouble was I had to get the lambs through a field with the sheep in, I decided to shut them in the neighbours shed briefly and run the lambs past. It worked surprisingly well.

The lambs are better off near to the house as hopefully next week we can start to lessen their numbers, some killed for us and some sold at market. I managed to fit the tow bar on the van yesterday so there's no excuse now, just need a trailer!