You will have noticed I've been pretty quiet about lambing this year of year's here at Struan Farm. 2020, an odd year on so many fronts; lambing is no exception.
This season a young ram from the farm next door breached the border fence. At one point I saw a suffolk ram wandering the paddocks with the ewes, but then Farmer John had told me he'd bought a new, younger ram. I did think it was a bit odd that he'd switched to a black headed suffolk with romney cross (white) sheep, but that was just a passing thought.
Three weeks later when Farmer John arrived with his rams that mystery was solved. The interloper was escorted back home off the property, and Farmer John's rams put out. But we all knew that the job had already been done.
And it had! Lambing happened three weeks earlier than planned, with lots of black and brown faced lambs cavorting around the paddocks. The good news is that most of the lambs born have been big and healthy. And the weather has been mostly perfect. Cold, wet weather is the worst for lambing. John's dad Maurie always lambed early for this reason, but many sheep farmers in the area now wait.
But it's been such a good lambing season here at Struan Farm that we haven't had to rescue anyone. It was looking like a year with no pet lambs for Karen, oh dear. And then the weather changed considerably this past week with some ewes still left to lamb.
At least once each day hubby John goes around the farm on a "lambing beat" to check to make sure everyone is okay. At the end of last week he found a dead ewe down at the river. He looked for lambs nearby but couldn't find any, figured perhaps this was a ewe that hadn't lambed. But the next day when nephew Mike went down to bury the ewe he saw two older lambs hanging around the paddock, seemingly free agents. They were about 2-3 weeks old, and trying to appear nonchalant nibbling grass. Mike wasn't able to catch them, but I sent John back down that afternoon. While lambs can probably survive without mum at this stage of life, they end up as runts without milk for a longer period. So it's better to catch them, which isn't easy to do, and bottle feed them. Even if converting them to bottles from humans this late isn't easy.
"Tiger," a big little ram lamb, is now up in the Pet Pen drinking bottles. He's wary but will now come up and drink when I bring a bottle out to him. It took a few days of me chasing him around the pen, grabbing him and sitting down with him on my lap, followed by a very quiet and cautious day where I held the bottle out without moving to encourage him to come and drink. Hopefully we'll catch his brother or sister in due course so they can be in a paddock together near our house, even if it will be impossible to convert that second lamb to drinking from bottles at this stage.
You will know from previous years that rescuing abandoned lambs is a mission that has both joys and sorrows. Unfortunately here's a sad tale.
We woke up after a very stormy night over the weekend to find a ewe outside our bedroom window with one dead lamb and one very weak lamb. John tends to want to leave these situations to see if they'll right themselves, while I am far more interventionist if it looks like a lamb is going to die. In this case we left her for awhile to see if she'd start standing to feed, which she didn't. Since it was still raining, we airlifted her out to a box by the warm fire, where she was fed a bottle and given time to warm up and recover from all that trauma. After she started standing and seemed somewhat better John decided to try to put her back with mum. It was touching to watch their reunion, I actually got teary watching how the mum knew it was her lamb, and the lamb knew it was mum. But while the lamb was somewhat better she wasn't right, wasn't feeding well. The next day we decided we had to take her off mum again, putting her in the Pet Pen for bottle feeds with Tiger. Knowing she still wasn't right. She curled up in the Pet Palace to sleep, wouldn't stand up, wouldn't baa. The next morning I found her dead.
Rest in peace little one.
The only other news to tell you on the lambing front is that Rosie, former pet lamb and diva of the paddocks here at Struan Farm, looks to be one of the last ewes to lamb this season. This will be her third year of lambing, she's had two sets of twins previously. I suspect she held out for the "proper" rams from Farmer John vs. consorting with the young "riffraff" next door, but we should know either way on that shortly!
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