Category: Sheep

It’s two weeks to the winter solstice and the snow is falling gently outside as the afternoon draws towards night.  Storm Caroline is in the area but fortunately, the really high winds have passed us by.  It’s just a wee bit cold and blowy, so I thought I’d catch up with the blog.  It has been a few weeks!

Well, tupping time has been and gone.  We are targeting lambing for late April, so tupping was timed for mid November onwards.  Our two young tups (who we raised from lambs) remained blissfully unaware of the treat in store.  Over the year, they have matured and calmed down a bit.  This made raddling them easy, both their tummies splashed with bright yellow greasy paint.  It really helps to know when the lambs are due!

So one chilly but bright November Saturday morning, we began the process.  This was not just a case of throwing the two tups in with the ewes.  We had worked out the family trees and each tup was allocated 6 ewes.  All this year’s lambs plus one ewe with ring womb were to be kept apart.

So, first job, separating the ewes into three groups.  Nicole handled this and in next to no time we were ready for phase 2.  We moved the first group of six ewes into a small field.  Then, it was off to fetch Wart (these were his 6).  Nicole led him down with the halter.  Now, Wart and Wallace have never been apart so we had given Wallace some sheep nuts in the hope he wouldn’t notice Wart’s absence.

As we drew close to the six ewes, Wart caught their scents and was transformed from a reluctant foot dragging ball of wool to an eager beaver and was through the gate in a flash.  He couldn’t believe his luck and wasn’t sure which ewe to approach first.  The ewes were not that impressed to be honest and largely ignored him.  But, Wart was happy and we left him to it.

I nipped back up to Wallace’s field and Nicole went off to fetch the second group of six.  Wallace joined me in looking down the hill as they approached.  He remained remarkably calm, even as they came through the gate.  Of course, the first thing the ewes smelt was the sheep nuts and they were straight over to the trough.  This gave Wallace the chance to check them out, which he duly did.

After attempting to mount Peaches, who was not impressed, we noticed Vi and Vera had made a beeline for Wallace.  In fact, they stood either side of him making eyes and leaning into him.  If you can imagine a sheep flirting, well that’s what it looked like.  Wallace was happy.

We left them to it.  Wallace was indeed a busy boy and within 2 days 5 of his ewes had the tell tale yellow splodges on their rears.  In Wart’s field, a couple played hard to get so while most will be born in the first 3-4 days of lambing next year, there will likely be a two week window which we will have to monitor.

Of course, it’s never quite that simple.  A few days in, Nicole rushed back from the morning feed and check to announce that Wallace had taken his gate off and was in with Wart.  Well, we had to get him back because his mum and sister were in there!  Plus, Wart had access to his mother and grandmother.  So, we sorted them all out and reset the gate and tied it to it’s hinges.  And there’s me thinking only pigs could do that.

After around two weeks, the weather crashed and it became wet and cold.  So, we separated them back out so that they all had access to shelters.  Wallace and Wart were not that impressed at first and there was a bit of biffing.

But all is calm now, until April that is…

Recently, I mentioned I was having to increase the size of the sheep shelter.  The plan was to add a second shelter and also a shed to store some hay.

I had to wait on some replacement roofing sheets for the hay bay.  I was using a type I could cut to size, but they were proving fragile.  Some were broken and had holes in them.  Nevertheless, I got all the planks in place and made the doors for the hay store and fitting them all.

The sheep quite liked the open top “shelter”.  They were often to be found resting and chewing the cud.  I expect it was airy and shady.  Not much use in the rain though!

Eventually, I had the roof sheets I needed.  I chopped them to size and completed the hay store.  Then it was the sheep shelter roof, 12 foot long corrugated sheets.  The sheep were not impressed while I was putting those up.  I’d lift a sheet and they’d take off, but they kept wandering back to see if I had finished.

Eventually, the work was done and within seconds, the sheep were investigating and inspecting.  Verdict, it’ll do!

I wrote recently about how I built a shelter for our sheep.  I thought that at 16 square metres, this was ample space for our 16 sheep to get out of the rain or into the shade, or both.

Not a bit of it.  “We need a bigger shed” they said.  “But why?”, said I. “With 16 square metres, that’s a square metre each.  And it’s not as though you have to live in it, it’s for emergencies, you know, heavy rain or hot days.”

But the sheep were having none of it.  They not only use it for rain and shade, but for sleeping in, for generally lazing around and chewing the cud and also, sometimes, escaping from midges.  And they do like to have a bit of space.

“And while you’re at it”, they added, “can we have a hay store too?  We know what you humans are like, a bit of snow and sleet and moving hay can be a real pain”.

The problem was, Nicole got to hear about this so there was no escape!

And so phase 2 began.  Over the weekend, I put in the support poles.  Now we just need to get all the planks moved up so I can build the walls.

Of course, it has occurred to me, and the sheep, that I have just put in 13 extra extremely tempting scratch poles.  Which wouldn’t be so bad, but I only had a limited supply of fast drying postcrete, the rest are using standard mix.  So far, only one has been knocked out of alignment.  So far…..

Lambing is over for another year.  We have three lovely lambs gamboling happily around.  But, as ever, lambing was full of ups and downs.

As you may have read from another post, we had purchased 3 ewes in lamb.  We couldn’t breed our own sheep as we were moving and it would have been a logistical nightmare.  We thought 3 ewes, should be less work than last year when we had 10 ewes in lamb.

Well, that’s not quite how it turned out!

The lambs were due around 21 April, but about a week before, Ursi (with triplets) went into labour.  However, not only was she early, the lambs were not coming.  We called in the vet.  He delivered 3 lambs, all tiny and all unable to stand.  Premature lambs are not fully developed and so are difficult to keep alive.  We clicked into gear – we monitored them for the next 48 hours administering colostrum, milk, heat, anything we thought they needed.  We didn’t sleep for two days.  Unfortunately, only one survived.  The youngest slept all night in our living room in front of the fire but sadly, he never even managed to stand up and only opened his eyes once.

Lambing can be quite hard.  On the good side, Pinkie pulled through.  She adopted the name Pinkie because of the little jumper she wore to keep her warm.  She was born slap bang in the middle of a really cold spell.

Then, about a week later, bang on time, our second ewe started showing signs of imminent lambing.  However, again, something was wrong.  There was no breaking of waters, the labour was not progressing as it should.  So, out came the vet (again).  Sadly, this lamb had died in the womb and so the vet had to perform a C-section in order to save the ewe.  Thankfully, she (Vi) has survived and integrated into the rest of our flock.  It was sad for her because she had shown real interest in Pinkie.  She seemed quite maternal.

Anyway, one to go.  Well, we had a bit of a quandry.  By now, Pinkie had been turned out with her mother.  Vi was in with the other ewes.  So, where should we put the remaining pregnant ewe (Vera)?  The lambing shed or the field?  The lambing shed was better for us (closer so easier to keep an eye on her and warmer – it was freezing outside).

However, Vera had other ideas and after some quite insistent conversations with her pal Vi (in a nearby field), she hopped over the hurdles and wandered off.  Having escaped, she wasn’t quite sure what to do next.  So, we led her into the field alongside Ursi and Pinkie.

For us, this meant a half mile walk every 2 or three hours to check on her.  I did the night shift up till 2am and Nicole took over at 5am.  And the cold weather persisted, and persisted and Vera waited and waited.  And we got more and more tired!  And we didn’t have an actual due date for Vera, the ram had not been raddled.  We just had the start date and the 18 day window.

Out of desperation, we pondered what else we could do.  Was there some sign that could let us know one or two days before the lambs were due?  Then Nicole remembered something she’d read; something about the ewes changing shape.  A quick bit of research and she had it.  Ewes do change shape up to 3 days before lambing.  This is because the lambs change position to get ready to come out.

This was really helpful, we reduced the inspections to 4 or 5 hours but remained ready to increase the frequency once we spotted Vera changing shape.

Nicole noticed this shape change happening on the May bank holiday weekend.  At first, it was subtle, but by Monday morning, Vera was much thinner on the sides and much fatter underneath.   And, yippee, the weather had improved – it was sunny.  Not much happened in the morning so Nicole headed off to work in the afternoon and I settled down in the field with a book.  I kept an eye on Vera.  Shortly, Vera started returning to the shelter and pawing at the straw.  This could be a sign that lambing was imminent.

Then around 4pm, I inspected her more closely.  There was a tiny trickle of water, just droplets really, coming from her.  Not your usual waters breaking, but it could be.  I called Nicole and she rushed back.  About 5 I went back to the house to make us some tea and when I got back, Vera was starting to deliver her first lamb.  We put her on her side, I kept here there (gently) while she pushed out Iona with Nicole’s help.  I know that this year, they are supposed to be named with a name starting with an ‘X’, but really, ‘X’?  Anyway, as a first time mum, Vera was brilliant and set about licking Iona dry.

Iona was standing within 10 minutes and attempting to suckle.  We watched as Iona attempted to suckle, Vera carried on licking and lamb number 2 (Ethel) slowly edged into view.  In fact, Ethel came out all on her own with no help.  Now Vera had two lambs to lick, she wasn’t quite sure which to lick first.  We helped dry them off, then took them into the shelter (warm and full of straw).  Nicole started teaching the lambs how to latch and to our relief, they were good at it.  These two were going to be OK.

Now, three weeks later, all the lambs are healthy and full of fun.  They enjoy nibbling at our clothes and even enjoy the odd cuddle.

Pinkie did need much ongoing care but we have nursed her carefully and now she is big and strong.

We are going to keep all three.

Sorry about the delay in stories, we’ve had a bit of a technical nightmare.  Web company migrated the site and broke everything.  It’s taken me two weeks to sort it out, and I sorted it by moving to a new web hosting company in the end!

Anyway, about 4 or 5 weeks ago, we had our 3 pregnant ewes safely tucked up in the lambing shed.  We had kept them away from our resident flock as, although sheep are on the whole pretty peaceful creatures, they can can get into head butting contests when new sheep appear.  We wanted to keep our pregnant ewes safe and stress free.

However, about 2 weeks before they were due, they suddenly stopped eating.  Not all at the same time, but over the space of about 24 hours.  And this is where it gets tricky, what’s wrong?

We had been careful with the sheep nuts so as to avoid acidosis (too much protein too quickly can kill a sheep).  We were also aware that not enough nutrition can lead to twin lamb disease.  So, after much thought, it seemed twin lamb disease was possibly the problem.  We consulted the vet and went ahead with the calcium injection and a glucose/glycol based drench.  This had some effect but over the next two days, they were still off their food.

The problem is that the symptoms for acidosis and twin lamb disease are very similar, the main difference is that sheep suffering from acidosis tend to have bad diarrhea. And there were no signs of that.

At a bit of a loss as to what to do, we turned them out into a small paddock with a couple of small shelters.

They immediately started tucking into grass.  Our relief was huge.

It was, in fact, acidosis.  Fortunately we had spotted the symptoms early.

Of course, that wasn’t the end of it, sheep being sheep.  The ewe with triplets went on to develop hypocalcemia.  Again we caught it early and gave her a calcium shot.  The effect was immediate and remarkable.

A week before they were due, we moved them back into the lambing shed.

The next day, lambing kicked off, but more on that later.

It has been a while since I have had the energy to write anything in this blog.  In that time, our lambs have grown and grown.

Since our last post, we have sheared the sheep (well, we had help, but next year we plan to shear them ourselves again).  We have been looking after our flock and dealing with outbreaks of various things sheep get.  Whisky even got a ride home in a bicycle basket when he fell ill.  But a wee antibiotic jab and a morning in front of the fire soon had him up and raring to go again.

And we have built another paddock, a small one, to help with winter grazing.  We’ve run drainage pipes under it as it can get a bit wet here.

Last week, at this time, we had 21 sheep out in our field.  Morning and evening feeds were tricky as we were surrounded by excited lambs all gathering round the creep feeder.

Anyway, weaning time arrived and last week we moved them down the lane to the paddock by our house.  It’s the first time we have moved so many sheep and also the first time we have moved lambs (we used the trailer when they were small).  It’s only a bout 400 yards, but there are a few tempting openings, tempting to sheep that is.  So we drafted in help from our neighbours.  20 out of 21 made it but one panicked and just stood there in the lane refusing to move.  So we had to carry her, all 34kg!  The next day, the 6 mums went off on their holidays to a pasture a mile or so away.  After a short panicked look around for their lambs, they were soon munching away happily.  To be honest, I think they needed the rest!

During the week, our lambs have been moving to their new homes.  6 ewe lambs and 2 ram lambs headed off for pastures new.  One lucky ram lamb is off to Wales to breed this year!  It was both kind of bittersweet to see them ago, but they have all gone to great homes and will all be looked after really well. But we miss them too.

We have also been halter training Wart, our best looking lamb.  We plan to show him at Frome Show in September – another new experience.

Today, we separated out the 3 remaining ram lambs into our new paddock.  It’s quite a des res with new water trough and new shelter (which I built yesterday).

So now, in the main paddock, there are but 3 ewes and the remaining ewe lamb Witchy who we have decided to keep.  They’ll be reunited with the 6 mums in a couple of weeks, once their milk has dried up and their condition is improved.

All in all, our first year of lambing has been a fantastic experience.  You’ll never catch Nicole or myself working in an office again!

There is no time to rest with young lambs around.  And it’s not just about keeping a constant eye on our lambs to ensure they are getting enough to eat.  The lactating ewes need plenty to eat as all of their resources are going into making milk.  And the lambs like their milk!

And this is complicated by the fact that those ewes that lost their lambs need to be underfed to avoid mastitis.

Anyway, the lambs are doing well but one or two of the ewes were beginning to suffer.  This is despite twice daily high protein sheep nut supplements.  They had pretty much eaten all the grass in our paddock, so we decided to move them up to our other field.  This hadn’t been grazed since last summer, so there is plenty of grass.  It’s also much bigger and has two fallen trees (courtesy of the winter storms).  Great play areas for lambs.

We decided to move them by trailer, the prospect of keeping the lambs from disappearing through hedges a bit too worrying.

We also took the opportunity to spray them to prevent fly strike, fly strike being a horrible thing to happen to a sheep of any size.

All of the sheep and lambs wouldn’t fit into the trailer.  Even with two trips!  So some lucky lambs got to go by car.  Driven a few hundred yards in the lap of luxury, well the back of a Freelander!

Well, they all love it up there.  There’s lot’s of space, lots to eat and lots to do.

And we quite enjoy the short bike ride when it’s bottle and nuts feeding time :).  As do the dogs, Haribo proving to be quite the expert at loping along beside the bikes.  He’s even taught George, who was scared of bikes, that this is good fun, so they now both run alongside with big doggie grins on their faces.  Even Maxi seems to enjoy trotting along, albeit a few metres back and on the lead!