A Very Wet Weekend

A week since the last post and quite a lot has happened.

We had a bit of a scare at the beginning of the week when our black lamb who to date had been the most boisterous and greedy went off his food and cowered at the back of the shelter. Some research pointed to bloat, a condition often fatal to young lambs. The most common remedy seemed to be 40ml of cooking oil which surprisingly he seemed to enjoy and also seemed to fix him!

The rain continued through the week and the field became extremely muddy resulting in the car getting stuck on Friday (thank you to the RAC for towing out) and a lake forming outside the field.

Saturday saw more wind and rain but a few things needed attending to despite the weather. We moved the bigger lambs shelter and trough out into the main field and closed off their smaller paddock to let it recover ready for the little ones moving in.

Lamb Cam....

Not really a lamb cam, but a link to my You Tube playlist of all the lamb videos.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7850323B74DCEAE6

Rain, Mud, Rain, Mud........!

You've guessed it, the recent rain has turned parts of the lamb's paddock into something resembling a swamp! Looks like the rain is here to stay for a few more days yet too.

I did the evening feed on Friday, first time I had seen the babies for 3 days and could not believe how much they had grown.

Today it was three feeds and a few housekeeping jobs. The feeding area was a complete mud pool so I put together another feeding station to give the area a chance to recover. It will also enable the lambs to have a little more room to feed for their last week or so of milk. A bale of straw was also spread around to try and soak up some of the mud and rain and looked to be doing the job.

Jess did a great job of amusing the lambs while I put the new feeding station together which was quite useful as initially they seemed a bit to keen on investigating the drilling for their own good!

A few new pictures and a video below.

Wide Open Space.......

So a few days since my last post. A couple of days off the early shift as travelling up north for work.

Sunday was a busy day in the field and hats off to those that worked the whole day. The end result, a much bigger paddock for the big lambs, plenty of roaming space and a months worth of grass.

The little ones all seem to be coming on nicely and feeding time really is a scramble, they just can't get enough (I know a song about that). They are starting to have a little creep feed and judging by the fact that even the black lamb is not feeding as frantically before I guess they are starting to get stuck into the grass too.

Looking forward to getting back to it Friday evening. There are plenty of new pictures in our gallery and here are a few of my favourites.....

Tagging

I made the 6am feed a little bleary eyed this morning after a late night  (and slightly too much red wine) chatting about Lambs.

It was then back down to the field with Louise and Elaine at 9 to tag all 20 lambs - a steep learning curve but we got them all done with little stress or discomfort to them. The big ones were first and we quickly got the hang of catching and holding them still. It did become more challenging when we got down to the last few big ones and catching the last one would have made great 'You've Been Framed' materiel!!

The little ones were much easier to catch but more wriggly and harder to hold still. We took the opportunity to check all was OK down below and that their hooves, navels and bottoms were all clean.

The whole process took about an hour and a half and by the end of it, I was well and truly covered in mud, sheep wee and poo and iodine.

Pictures and video of the proceedings below.

Friday the 13th......

The frost was back this morning! Just a quick update this morning - seems the nice chap from Newlyns visited last night and gave the flock a fairly clean bill of health which is great news. The limpers had a shot of antibiotics which should hopefully help them along.

All lambs fed very well and most did walk away before it was all gone.

The babies were loving their new bales and platform - thanks Elaine. Some pics and video below.

Happy Tails!!

Playing with Jess on Their New Toy

My first early feed for a couple of days. Great to see all the lambs happy in their newly extended paddocks. The babies look like they are enjoying having a bit of grass to munch on. Can't believe how much they are growing - even the little ones.

We still have a limper, but hopefully the people from Newlyns will bew able to pop down and give them all a once over today.

Back To It!

So after a day of the earlies for my Birthday, it was back to it today and to be honest I had missed my early morning peace and quiet in the field!!

Over the weekend I have invited the rest of The Hoggets to post to this blog so hopefully the activity will ramp up soon.

Unfortunatley it does look as though we are going to need our firsts vets visit as we have 2 lame lambs. Not sure of the cause exactly but symptoms point to some form of bacterial arthritis which hopefully a course of antibiotics should clear up.

I did feel a bit sorry for them all in the mud and rain but it looks nice and dry and snug in the shelter, hopefully fair skies will return soon....

Good Friday & Easter Saturday

5:45am on Good Friday and it was freezing in The Field........

The lambs were absolutely starving and it was more like a rugby scrum than feeding time. By the time they had fininshed, both Jess and I felt like our fingers had been chopped off.

In stark contrast, when we got back for the 10am feed, the sun was out andf it was almost tshirt weather. Again, the feeding was a frenzy. The great news was the one I call Bambi fed from the bucket rather than a bottle, progress.

Steve and I spent a few hours in the sun reclaiming some fencing and hammering in posts - hiopefully by the end of the Bank Holiday we will have a secure large paddock and can allow the older lambs to roam. During this time, Jess was getting very involved with the little ones as you can see from the below video!!!

TIP OF THE DAY: Put some creep feed out for the bigger ones before walking through their pen with buckets of milk.

The Arrival and Week One!

After a couple of months prepping 'The Field' (kindly provided by George Adams), our first batch of Lambs arrived at the end of March. 9 weaned 2 month olds and 11 babies, some only one or two days old!!

It's 5 feeds a day for the first few weeks. I have volunteered for the early 6am shift and its quite peaceful and calm which is a real contrast to walking up Farringdon Road to work a couple of hours later.

We are settling into a routine nicely and all the lambs seem to be doing well so far. Here are a couple of pictures, and a full album can be found here.

And here is a short video.....