The boring bit!

Well, here we are, stuck with 16 ewes still in the shed and none of them looking remotely like lambing. This is the boring bit when the workload seems to be slightly less but more fiddly and nothing much happens on the giving birth front....until you dare to go and do something else for a bit and then you come back to find all hell has broken loose!
I was hoping the recent thunderstorms would get them moving but all we had was a rather lovely set of twin ewe lambs a couple of days later. The rest will doubtless lamb when they are ready. You can't rush these things! Meanwhile, the cows continue to produce a calf every few days which makes a pleasant change.

Sadly, Churchill died two days after my last blog post. He had been a bit off-colour the previous night so I put him under the heat lamb in the TLC department. He was on his feet and waiting for his breakfast the next morning, wagging his tail as usual when I went over to say hello but by lunchtime he had died, curled up peacefully where I left him.
Meanwhile, I still have a right old rag, tag and bobtail brigade of about 10 lambs to keep me busy. Some are with their mothers but the ewes don't have enough milk for two lambs and some had to be taken away from their mothers because they had no milk at all. Others were fostered on but are having a hard time competing with the ewe's own lamb who is inevitably bigger than the foster lamb as we foster onto "singles" and single lambs are generally bigger than twins or triplets.
I now have a milk feeder set up in the barn that can feed 6 lambs at a time and I have got them all trained to drink from it. The lambs can come in from the paddock and drink any time which is much more natural and better for their digestive systems, and saves me an awful lot of bottle feeding.
However, some of them are incredibly tame and I can generally be seen walking across the paddock to feed my horses with a small flock of tiny sheep pursuing me relentlessly.There's Stampy (my favourite), Stampy's foster sister, Peachy, Blue dot, Red 33.....

Now lambing has slowed down, we are starting to think of other things (like a holiday!!!) so the lambing bit of the blog is pretty much at an end. However, several people have said they enjoy catching up with what we are doing (clearly there is nothing better on tv!) so I will do my best to post whenever something interesting is going on.
In the meantime, the next big event on the calender is Open Farm Sunday, a national event where we throw the doors open to the public for an afternoon of farm walks, displays, lamb cuddling, plant sales and cream teas. If you care to join us on Sunday 12th June from 1pm to 5pm, we will be delighted to see you. Entrance is free, cream teas are in aid of Tree of Life for Animals Veterinary Hospital in Rajasthan, India and if it rains, we will move it all in to the barn and carry on regardless!