Been at the farm too long now!

I haven't written for a few days. I think that by day seven it was all becoming routine and I wasn't excited about it anymore. As I mentioned, I also got busy with a bit of gardening, visiting West Town Farm, visiting my auntie, singing friday night, and cooking a meal for a few friends on Saturday night. I'll try and do a bit more farming stuff here, but I think I'll have to mostly use pen and paper from now on as typing is just too tedious!
Things are quieting down a bit on the farm now. Only about 6 suffolks to turn out today and son and farm lad loading mules out of pens and ferrying them away, then on with my usual pen bedding/watering/haying. Farmer was at market again today, so the three of us were kind of running the show together. It's quite entertaining to watch the dynamice, because technically son has the most authourity, but he's not really involved with the sheep a lot, so he's trying to organise us to get various jobs done but needs to also check with lad and I what needs doing. They also need the quad bike for various jobs so today I get to tell them where I want bales of hay and straw and they do it for me, so no bale wrestling for me today, well, not as much as usual anyway. When I've finished pens the lad and I go out to the 'singles field' (the one that's full of ewes with one lamb) to drive down the mules with their lambs and leave the suffolks. We do a much better job of it than last time we had to do it. Mind you there are a lot less sheep to move, so that may have made it easier.
Then we go off to round up newborn lambs. The weather has been so fantastic this year that the mules have all been left to lamb outside and have only been brought in if there is a problem or if it's a triplet. This morning son and lad went to check the mules and found five lambs scattered about and four ewes milling about not sure which one was theirs. It's quite common for a ewe about to lamb in the next hour or so to suddenly become very interested in newborn lambs, and some ewes will try and claim any lambs in the vicinity. If the mother of the fresh lamb is involved in having the next one she might not notice baby number one being stolen. Ewes lambing in close proximity to each other will also just generally get lambs mixed up. This morning they had spread the ewes and lambs a bit furthur apart in the field and hoped they got the right lambs with the right ewes. They seemed to have all settled down, nicely spaced out around the field with two lambs each,so our job was to load them in the trailer a ewe and two lambs at a time and ferry them across to anothet field. Some ewes, particularly older ones will run up the ramp into the trailer after their lambs. Younger ewes are much more suspicious and, if they can't be coaxed and cajouled up into the trailer have to be grabbed and manhandled into the trailer. I tend to avoid this if at all possible as at 48 I find wrestling with a large mule jolly hard work! Farm lad is 16, young and keen and happy to wrestle a mule almost as big as he is (he's a stocky lad but not very tall) into the trailer. I stand by, pop the lambs in and shut the trailer ramp. We load and ferry about 5 or 6 ewes and leave the triplet untill last as she will go back to the farm with us and into the shed. When we go back to collect the second to last double she has decided that she'd quite like a third lamb and is milling about by the triplet, enticing one away. Fourtunately the triplets are so fresh that they are all still wet, and the double has dry lambs, so it's easy for us to separate them. Had they both had wet or dry lambs we might have had trouble sorting out the muddle.
I didn't have a camera today, but here is a picture taken yesterday of some of the lambs born two weeks ago. I had a look for 23 but couldn't see her. That's no. 5 on the left so these are pretty much the same age.
They'll be lamb chops in no time, yum yum!

More farm pictures

Life got in the way of me writing up days eight nine and ten!, but I did manage to take some pictures yesterday.
 Here's a little hay rack theme
This ones a freezer basket, and the pen partition it's nailed on to is an old door (cute lamb in the corner there too) These aren't great hay racks as the ewes often pull the hay out over the top, eat some and trample on the rest.

 This one is weldmesh and is in my favourite pens which are built of really chunky oak and rusty corrugated tin

 This is a proper 'brought from a shop' one, and so is the hurdle it's hanging on. I think there are about 6 of these racks on the farm (for 500 ewes!)

 .. and finally another piece of weldmesh nailed to another old door.
Actually these are very effective, quick and easy to fill and waste little if any hay. Oh yes, and of course the obligatory bits of baler string.

 This may look like a normal ewe (below) but, apart from the fact that one of the lambs is a bit small she won't let one of the lambs feed. This happens now and then, there are probably 4 or 5 on the the farm at the moment who are being difficult like this. In this case she has been left in the pen and someone has to hold her still while the lamb sucks. After a while she and the lamb get used to the routine and she will stand still while someone is nearby, hence I was able to back off and take this picture. After a few days, when the lamb is stronger and able to put up more of a fight and the ewe has got used to the idea of letting it suck she may accept it. If she's particularly difficult she will be put in the 'adaptor'. I'm not sure why it's called that, because really it's an 'adopter.

 here are two ewes in the adaptor. The one on the right has a harness on because she had a prolapse after her dead lamb was pulled out. she seems to be doing ok.

 and here's a close up. The main reason ewes are put in these is because they don't have a lamb for some reason and they are having lambs fostered onto them.

There is no way most ewes will allow a lamb that is not her own to suckle from her. The ewes are restrained and unable to move about or see the lambs. They have food and water and can lie down and stand up. Once the lambs have sucked for a few days they take on the smell of the ewe and she will accept it as hers. Amazingly this works in nearly all cases.



Day seven

Lambing is definitely speeding up now. I had about 15 to turn out this morning. Farm lad is collecting up freshly born lambs with their mothers from the fields and filling the pens as fast as I empty them. I have a new problem with my turn outs today. A couple of ewes are the spooky run about kind and won't follow the lambs, so i resort to driving them along with one lamb. But today the lambs don't want to follow they just want to stand there shouting and not moving. So I pick up lamb 1 and put down lamb 2 to see if he'll run, but he won't, so I wave my arms, clap and shout in an attempt to scare the lambs and make them run after their mothers, it doesn't work. The lambs just stand there bleating and looking pitiful. I try gently moving them along with my toe (!). I can't even remember how I finally got the dratted creatures out into the field, but it was some subtle blend of cajoling and coaxing and a bit of brute force and lots of baaing. I used to be a bit self conscious about making baaing noises, now I do it all the time and it is very effective. I have worked out that ewes have 3 primary ways of locating and identifying their young. First comes sound. If they cant see their lamb nearby they will run towards anything making a bleating noise. It can be another lamb, another sheep or a human being making a noise something like a sheep, they are completely indiscriminate about noises. They will often, but not always run towards a noise even if they can't see anything lamb like. Some ewes will stand and shout and expect the lambs to come to her. The second sense is sight. They will run more enthusiastically towards a bleating noise if there is something lamb shaped in the same direction. Once they are close enough then smell comes into play. they will sniff a lamb and if it doesn't smell right they will reject it. They have no compassion at all for a hungry lamb that doesn't smell right. if it's not their own lamb they will simply abandon it, even going so far as to butt it away.

It's now Thursday morning and I've run out of time again, so here quickly are some pictures from Wednesday.
This is the main hay and straw barn. It's fun getting bales down from the top, a bit like soft rock climbing.

 This is my least favourite shed. It's the old shippon where cows used to be kept. it's dark and doubles up as a dog kennel, so it smells horrible!

 here's the quad bike and trailer with two mules and their lambs just about ti be turned out

 and finally, here's a very freshly born lamb. It literally slithered out, back feet first as I approached with the bike. I then bundled them all in the trailer and took them into the shed.

Off to work again now....