Orchard Down Flock

18/02/2022

Storm Eunuice? Not bothered mate.

17/02/2022

17/02/2022

Its beeb a stressful few days lambing! Sunday night ended up being a late night vet call out, Orchard Down Dinky didn't open up fully and when she did I just couldn't get her substantial lamb out - I've got small hands and wrists and I'm quite good at fishing out stuck lambs. I tried for 45 minutes but conceded to call the vet who still had a 25 minute wrestle but did succeed in getting the big bu**er out.
Monday afternoon was another vet job! A crossbred ewe started lambing early doors. By 3pm there was no lambs and she wasn't showing any signs of being in labour. A quick feel and I found she'd completely shut down. The vet turns up and injected her to open her cervix and start contractions. She had 2 very sickly lambs. When a ewe shuts down partway through lambing its bad news for the lambs and they they can drown or become oxygen deprived as well as be physically squashed by the ewes body. Unfortunately the ewe lamb died. The tup lamb ie still going but he's definitely a bit stupid!
Then last night Orchard Down Dipsy lambed a huge tup lamb which she's not really in love with! I tubed a good dose of colostrum into him and suckled him to give him the best possible chance and she likes him a little bit more thus morning.
And a Charolais ewe lamb scanned as carrying a single decided to lamb on the muck heap in a big wet pile of muck! The one lamb was 3 legs into heaven and the tup lamb was q bit brighter. I managed to warm them up enough to tube them and get some warm colostrum into their belly. I took the ewe lamb home to go under a radiator but I was certain she was going to achieve sheep Nirvana and die. I was gob smacked this morning when she was still alive and up and about in the kitchen!

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13/02/2022

Now I'm not saying I don't trust these 2 (10 and 11)....actually yes I am that's exactly what I'm saying! 10 lay next to her babies without barely cleaning them up and 11 let another ewe clean hers up and was happily going to send them on their merry way with her. They've paired up OK I think and they're suckling their babies but I'm not sure when I let them out if they'll just set sail into the wide blue yonder so they're in the big stable tonight with 1 ewe with a sick lamb and another ewe who's babies I'm having to top up with a bottle because she's not got enough milk - I'll keep topping them up until I finish lambing and then they may well become fully fledge cades and be taken off her, I have 3 other ewe lambs expecting twins so I'll probably have a few to rear anyway.

11/02/2022

More babies! These ones I thought were dead. She lambed out in the field this morning rather than taking herself into the nice warm stable with a big straw bed. I'm not convinced she gave them more than a cursory lick and then got bored because the white one was borderline dead and the other lamb was trying to follow suit. A good rub with some straw got the one going but little wh**ey still fancied dying! I stuck her on the floor in the truck and cranked the heater up to 11 and covered her in whatever clothing Rom had discarded in the truck, after an hour she was warm enough to tube some colostrum into her so I milked 60ml of colostrum off the ewe and got it in to the lambs belly! Came back an hour later and they've both been up and sucked! I'm very surprised the white one made it she was minutes away from checking out.

09/02/2022

When you're a teen mum a new baby can be overwhelming. You know you love your babies but you're not sure what to do with them and sometimes you just want to kick them in the head when they try and have a drink.
At Ben's Centre of Excellence and Accelerated Learning there are many ways to skin a cat....well milk a sheep. They both got a belly full of best quality colostrum and she even conceded to stand and let them suck in the end.

07/02/2022

sitting in a draughty shed at closer to midnight than you'd like to admit pinning an errant mother to a wall so her hungry, if not a little stupid, baby can get a belly full of colostrum. And then setting an alarm before you even leave the lambs to convince yourself you're definitely, absolutely, positively going to get a solid 5 hours sleep...maybe...probably not!

03/02/2022

This is Jeff. Jeff is a girl! Jeff is a legend of a sheep. You might notice her longer legs, larger stature and bald head and you'd be dead right in assuming she's not a Southdown. Jeff is a pedigree (but unfortunately unregistered) Charolais. Undoubtedly one of the best bred Charolais in the country. Jeff was a triplet that I got from the breeder and I reared her on a bottle on whole cows milk but that's a different story. I've got her and 3 others, Yorkie and Mrs Todd to lamb as of a week on Saturday and Sweetie to lamb as of 17 days after that! Don't let a 2yr old name your lambs! At evening checks she was obviously starting to lamb and 2 hours later she'd had a good sized ewe lamb with no trouble whatsoever!

Now the reality of isn't a massive, clinical shed with viewing galleries and teams of staff and Adam Henson conveniently having a bad back and having to unfortunately leave it to his managers. Its sitting in a draughty 12x12 stable wedging a ewe lamb in a corner of her lambing pen and making sure her lamb has had adequate colostrum because she's so proud of her baby she won't stop cleaning it up and give it a second to suck!

or

02/02/2022

Another one made an appearance this morning. A grandson of founding ewe 'Tickle me chin' Mandy. His grand father is one of the top 10 Southdown sires in the country on Estimated Breeding Values. EBV's are based on everything from growth rates and lambing ease to muscle eye depth and a hundred other things. High EBV sheep aren't necessarily the best looking sheep and might not win rosettes in the show ring but often come into their own as a finished carcass.

31/01/2022

Another one that required a bit of a pull this morning. A handsome tup lamb.
The blue mark on the ewes shoulders means she was scanned as carrying twins.
We've had trouble with twin lamb disease in previous years even though our ewes tend to be a little bit on the curvacious side - they break down their own body fat faster than their liver can process and enter a state of ketosis, if you can catch it soon enough and close enough to lambing you can reverse it and once the lambs are out they usually perk right up - so this year we scanned and fed according to the scan results.
Twin carrying ewes got more to eat than singles...which is fine unless your scan results are not quite right then you end up with very big lambs!
This ewe is one of our golden oldies and is one of a set of triplets we had 6 years ago. Her sister is also trying to lamb right now. Not quite as well bred as some of the others both her and her sister have been very prolific for the flock and bred 11 lambs in 4 years with us retaining females from one or both of them.