Catching up with more lambs

Bit of catching up to do! Here are 5 more ewes with their lambs. The first is Nicola with her fawn katmoget ram lamb relaxing on the bales.

The second is Serena with her moorit ewe lamb

Next is clover with her twin Charollais cross lambs, one ewe, one ram.

Then Billerhowe Moorit had twins, again Charolllais cross but this time they were both black! Both are ram lambs.

Lastly for this batch, Tessa had twin moorit ewe lambs.

Nearly there - 3 more ewes have lambed and I'll put them on the blog tomorrow. 4 left to lamb (if they are going to as I'm not certain they are in lamb).

Triplets and twins x 2

Three more ewes have given birth. Our unregistered Shetland gave birth to Charolais cross twins on Tuesday. They are both mostly white, one ewe, one ram.

Last night we had quite an eventful evening. Two ewes were lambing at the same time on opposite sides of the barn! Our Soay cross ewe needed quite a bit assistance as she had two ENORMOUS Charolais cross lambs, both rams. They are definitely the biggest lambs we have ever had!

The other ewe was April (Shetland) who had been looking uncomfortable and huge for several days. It turns out she was carrying triplets!!!! She also needed quite a bit of help as two of them were coming head first but with the legs tucked back. This was both of the rams lambs(!), the ewe lamb was fine. All three are grey katmogets, the two rams are slightly different shades of grey and the ewe has a bit of white on the top of her head. We are monitoring them to see if April manages to feed them all or if we will need to supplement them with bottle milk.

'Three! that wasn't what I wanted!'

Easter Weekend Lambs - Part 2

Here are the rest of the Easter born lambs.
Late Sunday evening first timer Ginger gave birth to a single moorit ewe lamb. She is being a very protective mother, stamping her foot if you go near and giving you the 'hard stare' treatment, as you can see in the photo!

Almost straight after Ginger had finished Alexandra started so it was a very late (early morning !) before I got to bed. Alexandra had twins, both are fawn katmoget, 1 ewe, 1 ram. The ram has unusually long and straight wool for a Shetland. The ewe lamb isn't really yellow - I just got iodine everywhere in the dark!

When I had got up later on Monday morning Darcey was starting. She also had twins, both rams, 1 fawn katmoget and 1 moorit.

During the day, when I popped home for a couple of hours, Jess had a single black ram lamb who is huge! It's a good job Jess is an experienced mother as I am surprised she managed it on her own.

Last thing that day Gooseberry had a lovely grey katmoget ewe lamb.

That's 25 ewes lambed and 15 (probably) to go!

Easter Weekend Lambs - Part 1

The Easter weekend has been very busy, we have had 10 ewes lambing over the 4 days. This is part one with the first five of those ewes.
Good Friday saw the first of my daughter's three ewes giving birth. Dahlia had twins and they have fantastic markings - it's just a shame they are both rams. However, we might keep the black and white one for breeding. He is technically a black and grey yuglet fleket (meaning he is basically white but with coloured eye patches and coloured patches on his body). The other one is a grey bersugget (meaning he has patches of various shades of grey on his body).

On Saturday we had 3 ewes give birth. Firstly Lavina had twins, both are ewe lambs, 1 black and 1 black gulmoget (black with light coloured belly, chin and eyepatches)

Next was Robyn. Although she is a Shetland we put her with the Charollais tup this year to produce cross-bred lambs for meat. She had two large ram lambs. Because they are cross-bred they are white with slight beige patches.

Last on Saturday was Echo who also had twins, a black ewe and a black gulmoget ram.

Finally for this instalment, Monroe gave birth in the early hours of Sunday morning. She had twins, both rams, one a lovely dark fawn katmoget (fawn upper body, brown belly and legs and chin and badger-like face markings), the other was a plain moorit.

5 more to come in the next instalment!

Playing and Chilling!

There are 5 more lots of lambs to update you with but I don't seem to have managed to take any decent pictures of them yet, they are all blurry. I'll try again this afternoon! In the meantime here are some pictures of the children playing with the lambs, a chicken-ewe face off and a seriously relaxed lamb!

Attacked from all sides!

Cuddles

Chicken - ewe face off!

Chilling out!

Twins x 2

Two ewes decided that 4 am was a good time to give birth today!

Fifi (Shetland) had moorit (brown) twins, 1 ram, 1 ewe. Both easy births and very quick to get up and suckle.

First time mum Greta (Shetland) also had twins. The ram lamb is white with brown hocks and a few other brown spots. The ewe lamb is white and is very skinny, so we are keeping a close eye on her to check she is getting enough milk and keeping warm.

More lambs

Eden (Shetland) lambed on Saturday late afternoon. She had twins, both rams, one is a fawn katmoget and the other is a moorit (brown).

In the early hours of Sunday Bronwen (Portland) lambed a single ewe lamb.

The next two ewes lambed on Monday, Dahlia (Shetland) at breakfast time. She had a single white ewe lamb.

Then in the afternoon Ebony (Shetland) lambed also had a single ewe lamb but this one was black!

That's all up to date with the lambing so far!

Next instalment of lambs

I am slightly behindhand with updating the blog, been a bit busy in the lambing shed over the weekend and not got to the computer. Saturday saw 2 ewes giving birth. Dawn (black shetland) gave birth to twins, 1 ewe, 1 ram, both black.

'Leave me alone!'

In the evening Galina (portland) gave birth to a very small ram lamb. She wasn't due for another week and I think that is why the lamb is so small. It took quite a lot of help to get it to suckle for the first time and was quite shivery. It now seems to be ok thankfully.

40 winks!

In the early hours of Sunday morning Clarissa (Portland) gave birth to a ewe lamb.

Contented.

More lambs have been born yesterday and today so will update those when I have had a chance to take photos and can get to the computer!

Ladies-in-waiting

No new lambs today, so here are a couple of pictures of very pregnant sheep!

Distinctly pear shaped!

Caution: Wide load

Latest arrivals

Two more ewes have lambed. Typically, I left them for 3 hours and came back to find a bit of a muddle. Out in the field (where the ewes who aren't supposed to lamb until Easter or after are!) there were 2 lambs and 2 ewes with them. However on closer inspection only one of the ewes had actually lambed, the other had stolen one of her lambs. Fern is the ewe who gave birth and had a grey katmoget ram lamb and a black gulmoget ewe lamb. Unfortunately, because the other ewe tried to steal it, I think she is rejecting the ewe lamb. She will let it feed if I hold her head but otherwise is headbutting it all round the pen. I have tried smearing the afterbirth on it but she is still not mothering it. I will persevere today but suspect it will end up being bottle fed.

The other ewe to lamb is Portland Fudge, she had a ewe lamb with no fuss or bother.

4 more lambs

Due to a technical hitch (my computer wouldn't read the camera memory card!) I didn't blog yesterday. Having retaken the photos today here are the latest lambs. In the early hours of Sunday morning Gloria (my Countryside live champion) gave birth to twins, pretty much unaided. Both are boys, one jet black, the other a grey gulmoget. The grey one just wouldn't keep still for the photos!

Then in the wee small hours of this morning Gloria's mother Pepper also gave birth to twins. The first was quite a chunky jet black ewe lamb. The second one I had to help as it was a breech delivery, a white ram lamb who is definitely not as big and bossy as his sister.

Hoping for a bit more sleep tonight!

Lambing has started!

Today we finally started lambing having been on high alert since last Sunday! The day started at around 7.15 am when I crawled out of my tent to find Belle (one of the Portlands) starting to strain. She got the water-bag out about 8 but then nothing else seemed to be following. I had a feel around and found the lamb had it's head twisted round and lying against it's side - a position that means help is definitely needed. I tried to correct the head position but there was not enough space for me to hold the head and draw it forward. So we had to get the vet out and even she had difficulty, finally resorting to ropes to get it out. It was a very tight fit. We all thought it would probably not be alive but much to everyone's astonishment it was giving things a go. Below is pic of mother and son after a bit of a clean up!

Although he is a purebred Portland he has come out with a huge black patch over one eye so he won't be being kept for breeding (black patches are not allowed under the registration rules). We will probably castrate him in case we want to keep him for his wool.

The second lamb was born after lunch and was a bit of a surprise. Shetland first timer Grayling wasn't due until Monday but out popped a lovely ewe lamb with no problems at all. The only problem now is to get Grayling to let her feed. Currently we are having to hold Grayling to stop her turning in circles round the lamb. This lamb is a great-granddaughter to one of our first sheep Gyspy who is still going strong at the age of 14!

She is a very cute lamb with a white patch on her head, a white tail and white socks on her hind feet in addition to her underlying grey katmoget pattern.