Ewe Beauty!

After all the yukiness of the first few weeks of lambing, dead lambs and stuck lambs and badly presented lambs etc) it was fantastic to wake up to this surprise bundle this morning. This jacob ewe had lambed four, yes four healthy lambs on her own in the field. Often when there's as many as this we lose as couple due to sufication of the bag over their nose and the ewe not having enough time to get round and clean them all up quickly enough, but this lovely girl managed. One of them has bad back legs, she couldn't bed or weight bear this morning but this afternoon she was much better. I have them all in a stable and have stomach tubed them all twice now to give them the best start possible. Realisticly we will not be able to leave all four on the mother as she won't have enough milk to sustain four lambs but what I shall do is bring her down to the garden and supplement feed with bottles, unless we get a ewe with lots of milk and only one lamb or a ewe who looses her lambs to adopt on to. You may have noticed from the photo, that not only has this old girl got her hands (hooves) full with four babies but she is blind in one eye too!

Being such a lovely day made being outside a real pleasure, but it does have one drawback. The pregnant sheep like to sunbathe. This morning I had to tip up four ewes who had become cast. Imangine a tortoise on it's back. yep, that's it, ewes get stuck just the same. Only problem is, the daft animals soon forget to breath when thy're that way up. Well, they often just drop dead from the panic. This four were all ok though.

This afternoon I went to check the ewes and there was one who'd just lambed. She was as wild as can be and I had no hope of catching her in a 10 acre field. Soon after I got to her a head popped out her back end. It would have been comical if not so life threatening for the lamb, to see her running along with a lambs head flopping about below her tail. I had no chance of a photo sorry. Anyway, with The farmers help, we finally go her in to a stable and although she presented head first as she should, one of the legs was right back. We couldn't get it forward but managed to lamb with just one leg forward, think 'super-man pose'. Amazingly the lamb was alive and huge, just like it's sister.