Lots of lambs......

Doing the routine ewe and lamb check at 11.30 last night, I heard a lamb bleat, followed by a low bleat from a ewe. That could only mean one thing, a ewe had given birth to a lamb(s) in the barn. When I looked in the barn I found that Missy was busy licking 2 very newly born lambs. So I put her and her new lambs into one of the lambing pens and went to get her some water and the iodine spray for the lambs navels. Missy sat down in the pen and when I looked again there was a 3rd lamb being born. So I quickly pulled it out and put in front of Missy to clean up.

Here is Missy with her triplets, 2 tup lambs and a ewe lamb

This morning we put Allium into a lambing pen as she was looking as if she was about to give birth, and by lunch time we thought she would lamb, but as the afternoon progressed nothing happend. So we decided to come in and have a cup of tea and to warm up. Tim went out to check on her an hour later to find that she was in the final stages of labour. A quick check and he could feel a head, legs and a tail. None of which seemed to match up. A quick call to our friendly farmer Pete to help out, who happened to be on the top road into the village, so he arrived very quickly and he soon sorted out the head, legs and tail.

Here is Allium with her quads, 2 tup and 2 ewe lambs. Tomorrow we will take the 2 tup lambs off of her and bottle feed them, so we end up with 4 good strong lambs, rather than 4 little lambs if we leave them for Allium to feedon her own.
After each evening feed the pregnant ewes are kept in a small paddock by the lambing barn, this makes checking them on a night relatively easy. As Missy and Allium were in the barn with their new lambs and the temperature has dropped some what, we decided to shut the barn door after the ewes had been fed. No ewes are due for a couple of day and there is a small shelter in the field. I went to feed the Teeswater ewes and Frea in the "new mum's" field when I noticed a ewe at the top of the field the expectant mums spend the day in, with a lamb. So we brought them down into the barn and put them into one of the lambing pens for the night.

This is the first lamb from Gus our pedigree Teeswater tup, if a couple of days late. It will be interesting to see how this little tup lamb turns out. He should be a Masham. We did think this morning that none of the ewes that Gus covered were in lamb, as 2 of this ewes should have lambed on Thursday and Friday and on checking this ewe out this morning, we were not convinced she was in lamb. But like all sheep she's proved us wrong!!!!!
No more ewes are due of a couple of days but one of our Teeswater gimmer ewes was due yesterday, so she is penned up in the remaining empty lambing pen in the barn, just in case as the jury is still out as to if she's in lamb or not.