OK you’re right, it’s a bucket with teats to feed orphan lambs. To me though it’s the answer to a good night’s sleep. With Rosie not having any milk at all, that means we need to feed her twins every few hours and that means we’re getting very little sleep, exacerbated by almost no sleep on both Monday and Tuesday. Something had to change or we’d be on our knees before lambing finishes.
Rosie with her twins
Rosie’s twins took to the bucket pretty straight away. Spot, the twin with a black spot on it’s front left leg, gorged big time. She was so bloated she went and lay in the corner of the shed for the next 4 hours to sleep off her huge meal.
Well, there are certain heavy jobs that need to get done around Dumblehole; moving plywood pig arks, moving cord word for chopping and picking up large bales of straw. Unfortunately the Massey is brilliant but not always large enough to do everything. So Mike has been looking for a larger tractor and has found an old Leyland which might suit us very well. There was a little hiccup when Mike went out to move the pig ark as it’s so very wet and muddy it did get stuck. After about an hours’ digging Mike managed to free it and so it’s now on the drive waiting for some (lots) of dry weather before we try again.
On Sunday night we had 6 lambs all was progressing well. Working off the tup date we were expecting the bulk of the ewes to lamb during the week. What we didn’t expect was 8 ewes to lamb in 36 hours! Hattie was the start off at 03:30 on Monday morning. She looked like she could lamb at any moment, and having lost two lambs earlier in the week, we were checking Hattie every half hour. By 06:30 she’d been straining for 30 mins but nothing showing, on investigation I found 4 front feet and no heads. After a bit of rummaging around and help from Jackie we got two lambs both fit and well. Just as that was over both Sally and Snowflake started to lamb. Amanda was looking after Snowflake and I had Sally. Both needed some help, both had twins. Not long after Ebony had triplets. Triplets aren’t ideal as the ewe can only rear 2 lambs so the choice is take one away and either foster it or bottle feed. The other choice is to bottle feed all three.
Tuesday 03:00 it started all over again with Rosie who had twins. Unfortunately she had no milk so that’s another set of twins to bottle feed. The maternity was rapidly filling up! Later that morning Jet started. It’s her first lambing and she’s quite small, although she needed a little help, the twins are fine. Jet doesn’t have much milk either so another set of twins that need a top up bottle. That’s 7 that need a bottle every few hours.
The other girls lambed at rather more sensible time of day.
Dumblehole 