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This month we’ve been doing a lot of routine vaccinating and worming, made more difficult by the fact that lambing was spread out so much. Some of the drugs can’t be used on really young animals so we’ve had to split them up into batches based on age and do a batch every few weeks. As there are 3 batches, and each batch needs 2 or 3 treatments a couple of weeks apart, it feels like we’ve been doing something every single week.

The main event this month was getting our ewes clipped, or sheared. We had to wait for good weather as the fleeces have to be dry, and as we used a local contractor we had to wait for him to have an available slot. He was good though, and fast. We gathered all the sheep ready for when he turned up, and he was here for no more than 2 hours, which included getting all the equipment set up and put away after. The sheep looked quite relieved about having lost their wool, as some of the fleeces were very thick and heavy. We rolled and packed the fleeces into big sacks, and took it off to the wool depot the next day, where it will be sold on our behalf.

The next jobs on the list are to find some new tups and get them settled ready for tupping in November, and weaning the lambs, which we plan to do at the beginning of August. This gives the ewes a chance to rest and get ready for next season. There’s always something to do around here!

First the ewe is clipped…

then we roll the fleece into a bundle…

and pack it in a wool bag.

The Mules (brown & white faces) and Suffolks (solid dark heads) looking much cooler.

 

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Lambing slowed down drastically this month, with a lamb appearing every few days. However, as the older lambs grow, we have to think about vaccinating and worming them to prevent any outbreaks of disease. We vaccinated all our ewes before lambing so that some immunity would pass to the lambs. This only lasts for a short period of time and the lambs need to receive additional vaccine in order to keep up the cover. We have to jab them all between the ages of 3 and 6 weeks, then repeat the jab 4-6 weeks later. They then receive an annual booster, usually before lambing themselves. As the lambs are fairly spread out in age we have split them up into three batches, depending on how old they are. This makes it less of a big job as we only have to do a few at a time, but we do have to take the time to make sure we have the correct lambs, so we have to check all the ear tag numbers and cross-reference to a our records. We weighed them while we were handling them too, to see how they’re growing, and were fairly happy with the results. Our Snowy was around 3kg when she was born, by 6 weeks old she was 20kg. She’s going to be a big girl!

 

Snowy at around 6 weeks.

Now that this season’s lambing is just about over, we are already looking ahead to next year, planning which lambs we are going to keep back, and thinking about buying in new stock to increase the flock. We went to a sheep auction around the middle of the month and picked up 7 Swaledale ewes with a total of 14 Mule lambs at foot, 12 of them being ewe lambs which we will be breeding from. They have settled in well and the lambs have really come on in the past few weeks, so we’re very happy. We also now have 4 pet lambs in the garden…

One of the late additions…

Toby with 2 of our pet lambs.

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April was a busy month for us, with the bulk of the ewes due to lamb. We had to juggle lambing outside, away from home, work, a toddler and attempt to keep some semblance of normality around the house. We were very lucky in that the weather, while very cold sometimes, was generally fine, and we didn’t often have to spend hours huddled in the rain assisting ewes. During the month 46 ewes lambed, giving us a total of 83 lambs. Sadly not all of these lambs survived, some being still-born, some too weak to get going and notably, 3 being carried off by foxes, but unfortunately it’s all part of the job. You can’t win them all, even though we tried our hardest. Towards the end of the month we also found ourselves with a couple of orphan lambs, living in our back garden! It’s not every little boy who has his own pet lambs just outside the back door, but Toby loves them almost as much as our dogs.

A pair of newborn lambs.

Our first orphan, Eric.

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We were officially due to start lambing but nature has her own schedule, and our first lamb arrived on the 29th of March. She is a Mule x Texel ewe lamb, and we plan to keep her for breeding. As she is the first lamb born to us she’s a bit special, and we always look out for her when we look round the flock. Daniel thinks her mouth quirks up a bit at the corners like Tintin’s dog, so she has ended up being called Snowy. We don’t make a habit of naming our sheep apart from the tups and any that particularly stand out (usually for the wrong reasons!) but this one has a special place in our hearts. We hope that she will have a long and happy life with us and produce good strong lambs. You can keep up with her progress, and see what happens over the next year, by checking back here.

Snowy at about 2 days old.

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