Lambing Live and Lost Bracelet Beads

We had quite a busy, yet quite a chilled weekend this Easter weekend. Yesterday, so that was Monday and Sunday, I went with Phil to do some lambing. The sheep are out in the field now, they're not back at the farm, so this is the first time that I've done any lambing outside. Normally they've been in the shed, the pregnant ewes have been in a big pen and then as they've lambed we've moved them into smaller pens and fed and watered them, given them hay and there's been quite a little routine going on. So having them out in the field is quite a different proposition.

I went on Sunday; I have been with him before, but this weekend I went with Phil on Sunday and we did a lot of moving sheep around. Most of them had lambed by themselves in the field. I think we had one or two that we just had to help, but the majority of them were done. The lambs were then ringed and moved into another field through a gate. So there was a lot of walking, a lot of herding a ewe with the lambs through a gate, closing the gate, starting it again with another sheep. It was relatively uneventful. We had some adoptions where we'd got triplets and maybe a ewe with no lamb for whatever reason. There was one ewe who had lambed triplets and she'd ended up with two dead lambs. Sometimes they're just very small and they don't survive. So she had an adopted lamb. We pen them up because sometimes adoptions can go really smoothly and other times the ewe just decides that she doesn't like the lamb or she might even decide she doesn't like her own lamb. So we had a few of those going on, but it was fairly steady. We were out there for about three or four hours.

Then on Sunday we went back again. We'd also done a bit of herding of sheep, moving them around. I'd been driving Phil's Shogun, so that was the first time I'd driven his show gun and just keeping the sheep to one side of the hedge so that we could move them a bit more easily. Yesterday we got there and there were very few sheep. Phil said the sheep had escaped and they'd gone into a neighbouring field which didn't belong to Phil. So we had to go and bring them back. So I drove the Shogun and sort of nudged them up along the hedge line and then we got them up through the gate and down into the field they should have been in. Then we had to go back with the trailer because one of the ewes had actually delivered twins in this other field. So we went and got her. Then we moved some sheep that had lambed into various pens, checked on some of the adopting mums who still were not very happy with their lambs. So you have to hold the ewe, let the lamb feed so that the mum doesn't try and headbutt it out of the way. So we did a bit of that.

Then we went down to the bottom field. Although I call this the field, there's multiple fields connected with gates, openings and the sheep just move from one field to another. Down at the bottom we had a ewe that had delivered three and we had another ewe that had twins. I think that was a Romney and Phil always says the Romneys like to stay in the same spot that they deliver. They don't like to be moved so he tends to leave them alone. We had a ewe who was delivering a single. She needed a bit of help so we had her in the back of the trailer and Phil delivered that and he wanted to adopt one of the triplets onto her. So it's a lot of smoke and mirrors. It's quite hilarious in a way, it always makes me smile. So we got one of the three and had that in the trailer. And then when Phil's pulling out the single, you put the adopted lamb underneath so it gets covered in all the bodily fluids that are coming out of the sheep's back end. And then you persuade this ewe to adopt it as one of her own. So we did that and that seemed to work so hopefully that's all settled and she's now got twins. We did put them in a pen together just to encourage her to look after them both.

So after we'd done that we went back up the hill and there was a ewe that we'd been looking at when we first arrived that just didn't really look right. And I've got better at spotting these sheep that are not maybe quite right. Perhaps they're thinking about delivering and there's something not working, the lamb's not coming out. So I have learnt quite a bit actually because I can spot these things now. Where are we now? Maybe two years ago I wouldn't have had a clue. But this is my fourth lambing session now. So unfortunately we got this ewe on the floor. So Phil does this thing, he's done it a couple of times now, where he's driving along, he drives alongside the ewe. He kind of keeps the car moving, opens the door, jumps out, grabs the sheep. So I put the handbrake on because we were on a bit of an incline and we've got the trailer on the back as well. And he's having a look at this ewe and he said oh this is a dead lamb. So I won't be too graphic but it doesn't smell very nice. So he's trying to get this first lamb out and she had twins. Unfortunately they were both dead and I said to Phil how long have these lambs been dead? And he said well it could be anything, 10 days. So that's not great for the ewe. She's been walking around with these dead lambs inside her. And sometimes you know you think well you might spot it before but they can present quite normally. And this is one of the things that I've learnt about sheep. They can look really normal and have something catastrophic going on. And they can literally drop down dead within 24 hours and you don't know there's been anything wrong with them. They're very good at masking.

But anyway we were part way through delivering the second dead lamb and the sheep just is deteriorating. And ultimately she died which was a great shame. We were planning to take her back to the farm and get her on some antibiotics and pain relief and all the things that you do. But yeah she just didn't make it that far. So it was a great shame but this is all part and parcel of farming. Farmers will often say where there's livestock there's dead stock. So yeah that was my two days of lambing. Phil did ask me this morning if I wanted to go but I've just got a lot of things to do today that I need to catch up on. Work kind of things. And if you go to do the lambing in the field you're out there for about three or four hours depending on what's happening. And of course you can't predict if there's something that happens that you need to deal with. You know if you've got something to deliver or there's a ewe that's not very well. It can well it can just take longer than you anticipate.

So yeah apart from that Chris and I went into Ashbourne which is our nearest town. We had a bit of a mooch. We had tea and tea cakes. I had a latte. Chris went into the record shop and had a mooch round there. He brought a record. And we've just apart from the lambing had quite a chilled out weekend. This morning I went to the farm and cow number four had just delivered her calf. So the calf was still wet and she was cleaning it up. So that's good news. We've now got four calves and four cows that have delivered.

Yesterday, just before I was about to get in the showgun with Phil, it was quite warm and I took my coat off and my bracelet pinged off and all the beads went everywhere and I was a bit sad about it because one of my mum's oldest friends bought that for me for my 50th birthday and I've worn it non-stop for the past 10 years. I've had it restrung once when it was just getting a bit, the elastic had sort of gone a bit slack. I hadn't really thought about having it restrung again. So all these beads went everywhere, I picked up as many as I could and I got them home and there should have been 7 of each type of bead, there were 3, so there should have been 21 beads altogether and I went back this morning and had a proper look. I tried last night but it was a bit too dark. I managed to find, I think I found about 4 beads this morning. Got them home, counted all the beads and I'd found every single one, which I thought was quite miraculous, especially as the yard was muddy, it had rained, Phil had been over there with the trailer so they could quite easily have been squashed into the ground but I found every single one so I've ordered some new bracelet elastic and I'm going to restring those so that made me quite happy this morning, the small things.

So today back to work, getting on with some things that are on my to-do list, a few things for Chris, some stuff, follow-up stuff from the filming last week. So busy day and that brings you up to date. So if you've listened this long which is nearly 12 minutes, thank you very much and I shall be back again soon. Bye for now.