Shepherd's Blog April

April 2010

1st April Lambs, lambs and more lambs!

We're really off now with lots of lambs born today.

Cheviot x lamb born to Shetland mother.

This ewe has a large droopy udder (she's quite old, it's not a normal Shetland trait). I was worried her twins wouldn't manage so I caught her and fed both of them.

It was extremely difficult to get a photo of this, because you really need two hands. My other hand should have been pulling milk down into the teat but it was instead holding the camera momentarily. My prefered method is to turn the ewe up so she is sitting up and feed them that way. It's a lot easier than trying to see if the lamb has latched on when she is standing upright (and trying to escape).

Three Cheviot x Shetland ewes with their twin texel x lambs.

Last check I saw this ewe was lambing. However she was running around bleating and looking at everyone else's lambs but not getting on with lambing. I watched her for a while and decided I needed to intervene. This video shows Mist and I walking her to the other end of the field. I couldn't obviously video us catching her because obviously I needed both hands! Once my lambing assistants arrive hopefully we'll get some more video footage.

Forget lambing live, this is extreme lambing (when you have to hold the camera with one hand and lamb the ewe with the other!).

I couldn't hold the camera and lamb the second one so here it is shortly after birth. Text book lambing, they are in the shed now with Mrs Droopy Udder until tomorrow.

6th April Weather!

The weather here is horrible. Gale force winds (much to the consternation of my assistants who are caravanning in my field to assist with lambing!) both their awnings nearly blew away last night. Lot of rain and cold weather which means the lambing field is turning into a bog and the grass isn't growing. Addtionally, the ewes are lambing quite slowly. I was expecting to have 20 pairs of twins to take to another field by now, when in fact I've only got about 10 pairs and 5 singles. Some of my own texel cross ewes have lambed and interestingly their texel x (so 3/4 texel) lambs are no bigger and some a lot smaller than the lambs the Cheviot x Shetland ewes are producing. Further proving how tremendous the Cheviot x Shetland ewe is!

New born.

Later on that night with their coats on!

A pure Shetland ewe with a good pair of Cheviot cross twins. Unfortuately more tup lambs. I keep the females from this cross for replacements so I hope we get some more females soon!

Four Cheviot x Shetland ewes.

One of the above ewes with her pair of thumpers. They would be crackers even if they were singles but a pair of twins, wowwee!

18th April Puppies!

Here are some photos of Neela's pups. They look remarkably similar to her last litter!

Blue dog

Blue bitch.

Lilacc merle dog.

Slate merle bitch. Neela likes to keep her puppies very clean which is why they have a bit of an orange appearence. This will disappear.

For comparison, her last litter (also by Ghost).

This is Glen, his little brother is the spit of him!

Cesan, a little mini Cesan bitch this time.

Also very similar, Cloud, slate merle and tan. These pics were of them a bit older and she must have stopped licking them as much!

This ewe has a problem udder. I thought it was a simple case of her lambs only sucking from one side, and took her in to get them feeding properly. However when I couped her I could not get any milk out at all. The udder seems pefectly normal and has no lumps or any obvious problems so it is very annoying. I may take her to the vet to see if he can get it openned up.

The good weather has meant I have been busy with things other than just lambing! These hoggs went to market last week and made £61.80 each which wasn't bad as they weighed 31kgs each. I plan to take some more next week. Trailer repairs dependant, which brings me on to the next thing that happened!

An axel went on the sheep trailer which meant we were stuck on the hard shoulder for hours. I phoned Landrover assistance (like the AA for Landrover owners) and would you believe they wouldn't recover us because we had SHEEP in the trailer. Imagine, someone with a landrover using it to tow a trailer with livestock in it!!!!!!!!! They told me to phone the Police and that they would arrane a specialist breakdown company for us, which was a complete lie, the Police can only arrange to have you towed to a place of safety, and it turned out that their people also wouldn't attend because of the sheep! Eventually I got on my trusty blackberry, found a commercial recovery company and they sent someone out within the hour. So about 5 hours after we broke down we got home. This was on top of a very long day moving my wintering hoggs and of course sorting out my lambing ewes too! There is a silver lining however and my lovely bosses decided a new trailer was in order as this one is getting a bit old, and we have ordered a super douper one which will be much better.

Meanwhile lots of lambs have been born. Most ewes have twins (excellent). We aren't at the half way point yet however, though neither is the forage so no panic so far! Once the trailer is repaired I will begin shifting these ewes to new fields with lovely grass.

I lambed a ewe with a big single the other day and since I had a spare lamb I wet twinned the spare lamb onto her too. To do this I did not let her see her own lamb until I have done the following. First wet the spare lamb in the water trough. Then completely cover the lamb in birth fluids from the ewe. Put the spare lamb and her own lamb in a tub like this one:

This is to prevent the cuckoo in the nest running around and showing he is indeed not new born!

Then let her meet her new babies! The spare lamb will usually jump out of the tub after a few minutes and I had to make sure her real lamb got a good crack at colostrum as the spare lamb was very greedy. She got an injection of anti-biotic as a precaution as she had a difficult lambing. They are all very happy!

Her own lamb is on the left and the spare is a week old! It was a twin, but still her lamb is a really big thumper of a lamb.

Then Ghost's son Marley came to visit. He is camera shy (don't know where he gets that!!) but I managed to snap this before he realised what I was up to!

This is the ewe who had hypocalcemia. She has two good lambs. Amazing what quick action and 50mls of calcium can do!

19th April Busy busy

Had a lamb with hypothermia yesterday. (Yes Alan, Aileen and Marje, that lamb!). I fed him via a stomach tube several times until he decided to take the bottle. Got a good bottle feed into him late this afternoon, he is a rather slow lamb.

So when I saw this ewe lambing, I lambed her hoping for a single, and that's what she had. So the lamb was twinned on to a new Mum. I left her in a pen for a few hours but she is in the twin field tonight.

Then a gimmer had this beautiful pair. The one on the left is a ewe lamb and the one on the right a tup lamb. I said I wasn't keeping anything entire this year but this one is very tempting!

This afternoon we tailed and castrated all lambs and also tagged them. The rules in Scotland are that from the start of this year all lambs born must be electronically identified. I have chosen to single slaughter tag everything. This means the lambs are destined for slaughter by 12 months. Anything which does not go for slaughter can be upgraded to "fully EID" which means they have to be double tagged, one electronic and one non-electronic tag. For some reason in everywhere else in the UK people can use non-EID slaughter tags, but in Scotland they must be EID which puts around 60p cost per lamb, more if it loses it.

Last thing I saw this ewe lying on the fence line. I knew as soon as I saw her she had staggers/hypocalcemia. I rushed to get her a calcium injection. Hopefully she will make a good recovery.

You can see how bloated she is.

The very last thing which happened tonight is that I lost a good strong lamb in a freak accident. My neighbour left some builders sand bags in the field I am lambing in. I never thought anything about it until tonight when I found a lamb had got its head caught and strangled it's self. Lambs do get themselves into scrapes like this and I am always very careful not to leave string anywhere, but I just didn't think about the handles on the bags. Very upsetting and such a waste.

23rd April Busy busy getting less busy - sort of

Well we are well past half way now with only about 20 ewes still to lamb. Have had a LOT going on this week as well as lambing.

The first thing that happened was Silk, a pup I just got from a friend of mine became seriously ill with an intussusception which is when the gut telescopes in on itself causing an obstruction. She went into the vets for emergency surgery on Monday and the vet warned me there was a high chance she may die. It was a horrible time, I've waited a long time for this pup and she is an all round lovely pup. We all held our breath until I finally heard at 6pm that she had survived the surgery and was as well as to be expected. The next few days were of course critical with a danger of infection or the wound breaking down. She also had raging diarrhoea so had to stay in the vets until yesterday. Thankfully she is recovering really well, and the vet thinks if she continues on this way she will be fine. The next ten days are still a danger period so keep your fingers crossed. Of course the vets bill for this is astronomic and working dogs are un-insurable but Silk has assured me she intends to win the International to make up for it :)

Silk before she was ill.

Yesterday afternoon we found a ewe to be completely flat out with hypo-calcemia (staggers). She was very bloated, unable to stand, discharging from nose, eyes glazed and breathing erratically. I injected her with calcium but she took longer than I'd like to come round.

After 20 minutes she was able to hold her head up and by the evening she was 99% normal.

This afternoon she had lambed a big single. She got it out by herself but she had had a struggle as it's head was a bit swollen. She was also still lying on her side. Luckily both seem ok and hopefully she will recover now she has lambed.

In SCLU (Special Care Lamb Unit!) was this lamb. It was a fairly big single pure shetland ewe lamb. No apparent reason for it to be pratically dead when I found it other than I think it had probably been starved of oxygen during the birth. She was hardly moving and just gasping and kicking her legs in spasms, none of which is good news! I got the ewe into the small field and carried the lamb into the house, absolutely certain there was no hope of her surviving but determined to do what I could. I got her next to the heater and put the hair dryer on her to warm her up as quickly as possible. If she was hypothermic then she would have had to be fed first then heated but she had literally just been born. I was taking sheep to the market so I left her with my Dad, I was worried about feeding her too early but I knew I would struggle to get back quickly enough to feed her, and she had to be fed with a stomach tube and I am the only one who can do that! So I tubed her and held my breath, she did survive it however and 6 hours later was jumping out the box and frisking around! I got her mother into a pen and she was really happy to see her lamb back.

Here she is out in the field that evening. It's a good feeling when things like this happen and you can turn it around.

Mothering up Cheviot x Shetland ewes with their texel cross twins. New field with some grass, lovely!

24th April Sorting out

This morning brought a pair of twins and a few simgles. One of the ewes with a single I had clocked as going to be trouble as she has a massive balloon teat on one side of her udder. The fact she has a single means the lamb will just suck from one side which isn't too much of a problem, but she may get mastitis if it's not sorted.

You can see how massively swollen with milk it is. The other side is normal. I got her into a pen and inserted a small tube to drain it down. If the tube stays in today it will shrink right down, if not I will have to milk it right out. Hopefully either way the lamb will then be able to suck from it.

I moved all the twins into the bottom field in preparation for the next job. I want to shed out all the ewes with lambs in the lambing field (all singles) and take the ewes still to lamb into a different field. There shouldn't be many left to go, and it's an easy job with a dog, well, if you have a good dog it's an easy job! I will do that this afternoon.

28th April Sorted out

In more ways than one.

This is the ewe from the above photo. Her udder is fine now and she went out to the field later the same day.

The lamb on the right belongs to this ewe, the other one is one I wet twinned on. I had the lamb her as she was running around like an idiot not getting on with the job! She turned out to have a single so I was pleased to be able to add to her family with one from the pet pen.

Later on that evening she had managed to pick up another lamb! The one at the back had lost its mother, and was stealing from other ewes. I recognised the lamb as out of the singles field so I caught her and returned her.

It was a bit odd the ewe wasn't looking for her lamb and I had to actually round up all the singles to find her mother, but they were very happy to see each other when I did!

As I said in my previous entry I went and sorted all the ewes which did not have a lamb yet and put them into another field. There were about 20 left to lamb, but not all of them were actually meant to be in lamb, so quite a few might not be!

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