Lambing Time

April 2003

The lambing season seems to last much longer now, and I took the opportunity of visiting the farmstead of Bryony, who has been looking after cattle, sheep and their offspring for over 20 years.
Bryony has an unmistakable air of energy and enthusiasm about her, which is quite contagious. Here is what she had to say about this time of year.

Lambing time can be tiring, stressful and at the end of it, you understand why lamb is a four lettered word! But it can also be very satisfying and rewarding and it is the culmination of the shepherd's year...this is what you work towards all year. I start lambing at the beginning of March, and because the weather can be pretty rough, I like to bring the sheep in for a few days before they are due to start lambing. I then try and keep an eye on them, checking regularly during the day, last thing at night, and first thing in the morning.

When the sheep have lambed, I take them out ...one sheep with its own little lambs, and put them in what we call a bonding pen; this is a small, well strawed pen made of hurdles usually, with just enough room for a sheep and its lambs, and I leave them together in a little family group for about 24 hrs. and then, as long as there are no problems, I turn out the sheep and the lambs together as a little family unit. This 24 hr. period, gives them time to get used to each other, to get to know each other, it gives the lambs protection from predators such as foxes, in their most vulnerable, early hours, and it gives the shepherd time ...the opportunity to make sure that everything is OK...the sheep has enough milk, the lambs are feeding as they should, and there are no after effects of the lambing itself.

Because my flock is only small, there are various jobs I like to do, before I turn the sheep and its lambs out into the field. I always dose the sheep for worms, and trim their feet. And then they go onto clean pasture, with clean feet and worm-free. As for the lambs, I spray them with a homeopathic remedy, to protect them against ORF, which is a nasty skin disease that affects the nose and mouth; it is a contagious pustular dermatitis, which can be extremely painful, and can stop them sucking, and affect the sheep's teats as well if it gets a hold.
I also rubber-ring the lambs, after 24 hrs. which is quite early in some peoples view, but also seems to get the job done relatively painlessly. It means putting a rubber ring around the tail, which can only get mucky and fly bitten during the hot summer months, and also around the testicles of the male lambs that are not to be kept for breeding, which unfortunately is most of them.
When the lambs are this young, the whole procedure only causes discomfort for a very short time. With the tails, it can be 20 minutes, or less, often they hardly notice; with the males it'll be a couple of hours; they will just lie quietly, and then it's all over and done with.

Sheep immediately before lambing and after lambing, when the milk supply is getting going, need high energy food, and high protein food, so I feed them twice a day, so that they are not eating too much in one go. Their stomach capacity is much reduced if they are carrying twins, triplets or more, and so rather than try and give them their ration in one feed ...I split it into a morning and evening feed. In the last couple of weeks before lambing I like to give them molasses as well, which they certainly enjoy eating, and which supplies them with high energy food.

I was once told that the good shepherd sees every lamb born...this is quite a tall order...whether you've got a lot, or a few it is difficult to be around 24 hrs. of the day, and sheep will lamb at anytime of the night or the day, although I do find that very very early in the morning, just before daybreak is the most common time for lambing.

Most sheep will produce their lambs without any assistance at all...but you never know when there's going to be a problem. These can be... head being turned back, the legs coming out without the head, or just one leg back or the bottom end coming first - sometimes you can be presented with just a tail - and these malpresentations involve manipulation of the lamb inside the womb just to get it all facing the right way, and all the limbs for each lamb, and then sometimes when you've got them manipulated, the sheep will just go on and lamb by itself...but often the sheep will have been trying to push out a lamb that was coming the wrong way, and will be quite tired, and seems to welcome some assistance.
Another reason why the shepherd wants to be present at the birth is because occasionally the membrane surrounding the lamb is very tough, and if it doesn't happen to break as the lamb is born, the lamb takes its first gulp, of what should be air, and ends up breathing in its own birth fluids and drowns, so you have a dead lamb before it's even minutes old. This is exceedingly frustrating, and tends to be known as 'lamb with the skin over its nose'

Once the lamb is born, I check the sheep's teats to make sure that it is milking on both sides, and that there is plenty of colostrum for the new born, and if you are lambing inside, you need to dip the lamb’s navel in a solution of iodine or something similar to prevent diseases such as joint ill: bacteria love the moist bloody umbilical cord, and will track up through it into the lamb’s body, into the blood stream and cause all sorts of problems.

Once the first 24 hrs. are over and the sheep seems fine and is eating and the lambs are sucking... you'd think they should go on all right. But lambs seem to have a death wish somehow, they seem to get into all sorts of scrapes, getting themselves stuck.
I had a lamb that quite miraculously managed to climb up into the bath which served as a drinking trough for the sheep. It was far too small to get in on its own and I shall never know how it got there...but we were lucky to rescue that. It meant sitting it in front of the Aga, and drying it off with the hair dryer...fortunately that one did survive.
This year I have had one that got struck by a gate. It was a windy day...the gate was fastened so that it could not slam shut, but it could just swing a little bit...and as I was turning out another sheep with its lambs, a gust of wind caught the gate...the lamb was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it got hit on the side of the head, and was dead! Instantly! This again is frustrating. The first year I lambed any sheep, I left small buckets, half full of water, in the bonding pen with the sheep, because, sheep, after they have lambed, are very very thirsty.

They spend a long time licking all the membrane and blood and fluids off the lamb...they lick the lamb clean and dry, and the birth fluids are actually quite salty, and I think that's what makes them so very thirsty. Also to keep the milk supply flowing plenty of fluids are important. I left this bucket in a corner of the pen, and although there was plenty of room, the next morning there was a lamb dead...Not drowned in this half bucket of water...but sitting in it with its front legs over the side. How the bucket hadn't tipped over I will never know...but the lamb had just frozen to death, died of hypothermia, sitting in this half bucket of ice cold water. How it got there I shall never know, and why the bucket didn't tip over, again is a mystery...but that's the sort of thing that happens in lambing time.

Mostly sheep are very remarkable mothers: every sheep knows its own lamb by the sound of it's bleat and by its scent; and the lambs recognize their own mother in the same way. Sight is a bit doubtful, I'm not sure that a sheep actually recognizes its own lambs by sight.
A sheep will fiercely guard its milk supply, and will violently butt away any lamb that's not it's own, that tries to have a suck from its teats. This has its advantages, in that it preserves the milk supply for its own lambs, but it can also be a bit of a disadvantage, if you're trying to mother on, say an orphaned lamb onto another sheep, you have a very fierce instinct to overcome. It can work if you can get the lamb covered in the sheep's birth fluids, quickly enough; if you can be there just after the sheep has given birth, you can kid the sheep that this strange lamb you are presenting it with actually is its own because if it's covered in the birth fluids it will smell right and is likely to be accepted.

So the daily routine is getting up early, checking that everything is OK. If lambs have been born during the night, you have to check to make sure they get paired up with their own mother. I get them into the bonding pens, make sure the sheep have nuts to eat (concentrate feed that is)..good hay and a drink of water and nice clean straw...(bedding.)
Once they start milking, the sheep's teats are obviously open, and the bugs that cause mastitis can readily gain entry if the bedding is not nice and clean and dry.

When everyone is bedded down with clean straw, and has been fed and watered, you check on the lambs that are about 24 hrs. old. If everything is OK you can put the rubber rings on them, and can treat the sheep for worms, trim their feet, and then I like to mark the lambs with some distinguishing colour mark which will tie siblings and mother together. I can usually identify my sheep, but I can't identify the little lambs always as reliably. So if the lambs are all marked in the same way, once they are out in the field, (if you should have a problem with a lamb...say there's one that doesn't appear to be sucking, that looks a bit thin or a lamb that is limping and seems to have joint ill) then you can identify, and bring that lamb into a nice warm pen inside for special care, along with it's identifiable mother and brothers and sisters.
This is the most satisfactory way of looking after the lamb. The lamb is then not stressed by being separated from its mother, and the sheep are not upset at being parted from its lambs.

Occasionally, if a lamb has not been feeding for whatever reason, it can get very cold, and you need to be able to warm it up. Sometimes they can be barely conscious, but with a bit of warmth and with some milk fed through a stomach tube...they can make a miraculous recovery.
Feeding through a stomach tube sounds pretty awful, but in reality it's fairly straightforward, so long as the lamb is conscious, it can be fed this very soft rubber tube down it's throat, pour the milk in at the top end and let it gently dribble through...and the lamb ends up with a nice full stomach of warm nourishing milk, and it is amazing what milk will do...they can recover within a matter of hours, and so long as you can identify the initial problem, you can turn the lamb back out with it's mother, usually quite quickly.

At times you will be unfortunate to lose a lamb if the weather turns really cold and wet, and the sheep doesn't have an awful lot of milk, the lambs can die quite quickly of hypothermia.
Foxes can be an awful menace as well. If the sheep has lost its lamb you can, if you do it fairly quickly, skin the dead lamb, and if you have a spare lamb for any reason...you can put the skin of the dead lamb as an overcoat onto your orphan lamb, and put it in with the sheep. If one of the sheep has no lambs...you can put this disguised foster-lamb with it.
Very often they will take the lamb quite readily. Sometimes you have to keep the sheep tied up for a day or two, until it gets convinced that this is actually the lamb it has lost...but if a sheep has a lot of milk...as any mother will know...it's quite anxious for something to relieve the pressure in it's udder, so there is a good chance that the mother will accept the foster lamb quite readily. If it already has a lamb, you've much more of a problem fooling it into accepting this little foreigner!

Whilst most sheep are really good mothers, those that are lambing for the first time can be a bit clueless! You will always find the odd sheep that drops its lamb, and then recoils in horror at what has appeared on the ground beside it! And will have nothing to do with it. So it may wander off and leave the lamb to the elements, and you can lose lambs that way.
If you are there in time, you can catch the culprit and bring her inside with her own lambs, and you just have to tie the sheep up, and insist, and wait till it does accept its own lambs.

Other young sheep can be very maternal, apparently: they can lick their lambs with great enthusiasm, and call to them, talk to them, bleating gently...seem to be getting everything right...until the lamb gets on its feet and tries to suck.
But this isn't in the script as far as some of these young sheep are concerned...they just want to turn round and be nose to nose with their lamb. They seem to think they are going to lose sight of it if it goes in at the 'udder' end, and they just keep swinging their hind quarters around, so that they can carry on licking the lamb. The poor lamb gets desperate to suckle.
If you just stand holding the sheep...holding it fast, so it can't move, and let the lamb suck, that usually solves the problem. The young sheep will get the idea...sometimes you have to be more persistent.
Whatever...it is vitally important that the new born lamb should have a good feed of colostrum, from its own mother, preferably...or...in an emergency, from a substitute within the first six hours of life; if a lamb does not get that colostrum, full of antibodies, in those first six hours of life, you will struggle to keep it alive.

If the sheep has adequate milk supply and the lambs have a nice round belly full of mother's milk, they will survive most weather conditions...they won't grow as fast as if it is mild and dry...but they will survive the roughest weather, just so long as the milk supply keeps going.
It is quite remarkable what milk can do: when you think the sheep have a big thick heavy coat of wool...the tiny lambs have so little to protect them, that the mother's milk seems to give them all the energy and nourishment they require, and all the protection they need against the elements.

One of the nicest times for the shepherd is two or three weeks after lambing has begun. The end is in sight, and the lambs are at the delightful stage where they behave like youngsters, they like to go around together in gangs. They will charge up the field in one direction, and then charge back down in the other direction. Springing like Zebedee...off all four feet...all four feet in the air! They just play like...Madmen!!!...

They really are very entertaining at that stage, and on a nice warm sunny Spring evening, it's a pleasure to watch them gambolling. It makes all the tiredness and frustration of what can happen during lambing time, feel worthwhile. It is a pleasure that only lasts for a few short weeks...and then you have to wait until the next year...

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