Full circle

This is a post I have been trying to find time to write since Thursday evening, sunny weather seems to take up so much time…

Lambing was delightful, with almost all of it done and dusted in a week. Why can’t every year be that simple and straight forward? There was a few hiccups and lambs that were too big and so needed help but a week is so less tiring than three weeks.

Flat Lamb with her lambs - 28th March 2010

There are still a handful of ewes who may or may not lamb this year but are showing no signs of being due any time soon, one of these being Flat Lamb’s daughter from last year and on Thursday afternoon she lambed!

She is still only a yearling and so it is not ideal that she was in lamb but as the whole flock run together on the common all year round it happens.

I got a phone call to say that she was lambing from MYS as she is my sheep. She had chosen a cool spot on the edge of the woods, not somewhere any of our ewes normally lamb but as it was so hot it made sence that she would choose a cooler place than on any of the greens.

I arrived shortly after 2pm and after about half an hour it became clear that she was having problems and was going to need help but even though she was straining she was still not happy about us catching her.

Most of our sheep will at least let themselves be caught if there is something wrong even if they don’t go a bundle on us the rest of the time but we have two sheep who are completely wild; Flat Lambs Daughter being one of them. She has every reason to hate us though – we were there when her mum was hurt and then took her away, we then had to chase them all around the village whilst they panicked as she wasn’t there and after we caught them we shut them in a shed (something that they had never been in before) where her mum died and since then she has completely mistrusted us in spite of the fact that both her mum and twin brother are overly friendly.

After a few failed attends to creep up on her whilst she was laid down staining we had to round her up with some of the other ewes and lambs before being able to catch her – all this time the clock was counting down to when me and MYS had to leave for work.

Once we’d caught her mother delivered the lamb who wasn’t breathing and had to be swung around before he sputtered into life; then there was a very worrying moment when it seemed Flat Lambs Daughter was going to turn her nose up and reject the lamb but after one lick it was clear she thought he was the most wonderful thing in the world and she even walked, instead of being dragged, into a shed to finish cleaning him up.

A few minutes old - 7th of April 2011

Flat Lamb's Daughter and lamb Six - 7th April 2011

The lamb, now named ‘Six’ is a big lad, which is why she had such a problem delivering him, and in spite of the fact he was born not breathing was struggling to his feet before even being cleaned.

Up and about at breakfast time - 10th April 2011

All this left less than 5 minutes to give her some water, change and get to work on time!!