Lambing Time

Lambing time can be tiring, stressful and at the end of it, you understand why lamb is a four lettered word! But it can also be very satisfying and rewarding and it is the culmination of the shepherd's year...this is what you work towards all year. I start lambing at the beginning of March, and because the weather can be pretty rough, I like to bring the sheep in for a few days before they are due to start lambing. I then try and keep an eye on them, checking regularly during the day, last thing at night, and first thing in the morning.

When the sheep have lambed, I take them out ...one sheep with its own little lambs, and put them in what we call a bonding pen; this is a small, well strawed pen made of hurdles usually, with just enough room for a sheep and its lambs, and I leave them together in a little family group for about 24 hrs. and then, as long as there are no problems, I turn out the sheep and the lambs together as a little family unit.
This 24 hr. period, gives them time to get used to each other, to get to know each other, it gives the lambs protection from predators such as foxes, in their most vulnerable, early hours, and it gives the shepherd time ...the opportunity to make sure that everything is OK...the sheep has enough milk, the lambs are feeding as they should, and there are no after effects of the lambing itself.

Because my flock is only small, there are various jobs I like to do, before I turn the sheep and its lambs out into the field. I always dose the sheep for worms, and trim their feet. And then they go onto clean pasture, with clean feet and worm-free.
As for the lambs, I spray them with a homeopathic remedy, to protect them against ORF, which is a nasty skin disease that affects the nose and mouth; it is a contagious pustular dermatitis, which can be extremely painful, and can stop them sucking, and affect the sheep's teats as well if it gets a hold.
I also rubber-ring the lambs, after 24 hrs. which is quite early in some peoples view, but also seems to get the job done relatively painlessly. It means putting a rubber ring around the tail, which can only get mucky and fly bitten during the hot summer months, and also around the testicles of the male lambs that are not to be kept for breeding, which unfortunately is most of them.
When the lambs are this young, the whole procedure only causes discomfort for a very short time. With the tails, it can be 20 minutes, or less, often they hardly notice; with the males it'll be a couple of hours; they will just lie quietly, and then it's all over and done with.

Sheep immediately before lambing and after lambing, when the milk supply is getting going, need high energy food, and high protein food, so I feed them twice a day, so that they are not eating too much in one go. Their stomach capacity is much reduced if they are carrying twins, triplets or more, and so rather than try and give them their ration in one feed ...I split it into a morning and evening feed. In the last couple of weeks before lambing I like to give them molasses as well, which they certainly enjoy eating, and which supplies them with high energy food.

I was once told that the good shepherd sees every lamb born...this is quite a tall order...whether you've got a lot, or a few it is difficult to be around 24 hrs. of the day, and sheep will lamb at anytime of the night or the day, although I do find that very very early in the morning, just before daybreak is the most common time for lambing.

Most sheep will produce their lambs without any assistance at all...but you never know when there's going to be a problem. These can be... head being turned back, the legs coming out without the head, or just one leg back or the bottom end coming first - sometimes you can be presented with just a tail - and these malpresentations involve manipulation of the lamb inside the womb just to get it all facing the right way, and all the limbs for each lamb, and then sometimes when you've got them manipulated, the sheep will just go on and lamb by itself...but often the sheep will have been trying to push out a lamb that was coming the wrong way, and will be quite tired, and seems to welcome some assistance.

Another reason why the shepherd wants to be present at the birth is because occasionally the membrane surrounding the lamb is very tough, and if it doesn't happen to break as the lamb is born, the lamb takes its first gulp, of what should be air, and ends up breathing in its own birth fluids and drowns, so you have a dead lamb before it's even minutes old. This is exceedingly frustrating, and tends to be known as 'lamb with the skin over its nose'

Once the lamb is born, I check the sheep's teats to make sure that it is milking on both sides, and that there is plenty of colostrum for the new born, and if you are lambing inside, you need to dip the lamb's navel in a solution of iodine or something similar to prevent diseases such as joint ill: bacteria love the moist bloody umbilical cord, and will track up through it into the lamb?s body, into the blood stream and cause all sorts of problems.

Once the first 24 hrs. are over and the sheep seems fine and is eating and the lambs are sucking... you'd think they should go on all right. But lambs seem to have a death wish somehow, they seem to get into all sorts of scrapes, getting themselves stuck.
I had a lamb that quite miraculously managed to climb up into the bath which served as a drinking trough for the sheep. It was far too small to get in on its own and I shall never know how it got there...but we were lucky to rescue that. It meant sitting it in front of the Aga, and drying it off with the hair dryer...fortunately that one did survive.

This year I have had one that got struck by a gate. It was a windy day...the gate was fastened so that it could not slam shut, but it could just swing a little bit...and as I was turning out another sheep with its lambs, a gust of wind caught the gate...the lamb was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it got hit on the side of the head, and was dead! Instantly! This again is frustrating. The first year I lambed any sheep, I left small buckets, half full of water, in the bonding pen with the sheep, because, sheep, after they have lambed, are very very thirsty.

They spend a long time licking all the membrane and blood and fluids off the lamb...they lick the lamb clean and dry, and the birth fluids are actually quite salty, and I think that's what makes them so very thirsty. Also to keep the milk supply flowing plenty of fluids are important. I left this bucket in a corner of the pen, and although there was plenty of room, the next morning there was a lamb dead...Not drowned in this half bucket of water...but sitting in it with its front legs over the side. How the bucket hadn't tipped over I will never know...but the lamb had just frozen to death, died of hypothermia, sitting in this half bucket of ice cold water. How it got there I shall never know, and why the bucket didn't tip over, again is a mystery...but that's the sort of thing that happens in lambing time.

Mostly sheep are very remarkable mothers: every sheep knows its own lamb by the sound of it's bleat and by its scent; and the lambs recognize their own mother in the same way. Sight is a bit doubtful, I'm not sure that a sheep actually recognizes its own lambs by sight.
A sheep will fiercely guard its milk supply, and will violently butt away any lamb that's not it's own, that tries to have a suck from its teats. This has its advantages, in that it preserves the milk supply for its own lambs, but it can also be a bit of a disadvantage, if you're trying to mother on, say an orphaned lamb onto another sheep, you have a very fierce instinct to overcome. It can work if you can get the lamb covered in the sheep's birth fluids, quickly enough; if you can be there just after the sheep has given birth, you can kid the sheep that this strange lamb you are presenting it with actually is its own because if it's covered in the birth fluids it will smell right and is likely to be accepted.