Lambing

Eleanor can't get on the forum at the moment- she's helping with the lambing at Moulton. Did her first night shift last night & didn't get home till about 8am. Very tired!

It's a very tiring job - but so exhilarating!

Yes, and she loves it, but all-nighters are exhausting!

She's young enough! I'm not sure I could do it any more

Sorry, life in general has been so busy for the last few weeks!

Did a day shift last Tuesday and two night shifts this weekend, which were exhausting but amazing. Managed to save a few breached lambs, castrated and docked some more, and delivered a lamb which was born without a skeleton.

The lambing itself was relatively straightforward most of the time. It was afterwards that got complicated! Some of the kayed lambs were nightmares when it came to bottle-feeding. The moment you step into the pen, you're bombarded with hungry lambs, all jumping on you and over each other to get fed. Then when you pick one out to feed, it suddenly decides that it doesn't want to drink from the teat. Either that, or it drinks so quickly that it chokes and spends the next five minutes coughing and sneezing.

It was quite stressful on the Friday/Saturday night shift, as a lot of the ewes went into labour. One ewe had prolapsed and had been sorted out with a prolapse belt and put into one of the pens, but she started having difficulties in labour. Spent about an hour trying to deliver her lambs, as her cervix opening hadn't opened up properly. They were both stillborn, but they'd died in the womb a few days earlier. She was given one of the kayed lambs to foster, but I went to check on her on the Saturday/Sunday night shift and she'd rejected it. When the lamb went to suckle, she head-butted it hard enough to knock him all the way to the other side of the pen. I had to take the lamb back out when she tried to crush him against the pen fencing.

Another ewe jumped a fence to freedom as we were trying to move her and her lambs into one of the individual pens. That was more amusing than problematic, though. Unlike one of the others, who took forty minutes to move into an individual pen, as she wouldn't follow her lambs when we picked them up, no matter how much we bleated or coaxed. In the end, we had to move the lambs into the individual pen and go back for the ewe. Two of us grabbing her on either side and hauling her across the lambing shed, which she didn't appreciate.

There's also an outbreak of watery mouth there, which is awful.

I'll put up pictures later. I'm so tired right now

Tired?

Why?

Have you ever done lambing, Caryll!?!

Lorraine wrote:  Have you ever done lambing, Caryll!?!

That's entirely not the point!

Eleanor's young & fit & energetic, she should be able to take these things in her stride!

My sleeping pattern is so messed up now.