Sunday 14 March 2010

Lambing Live!












Dare we say it...but we think spring is on its way! For the first time today everyone and everything around us seems a little bit warmer! It felt so good to feel the sun on our faces and fingers crossed we hope this weather is here to stay as we need the grass to grow...fast! and to make sure all our new lambs can go outside as quickly as possible.

All our sheep who lambed in January are now outside which is great to see. We thought this would be an easy job, just open the door to the shed and they would all rush outside with a hop, skip and a jump! But oh no....the ewes (lambs mummies) were straight out but the lambs didn't know what to do, they had never seen the great outdoors before and thought actually we are quite warm and cosy here on the straw inside...with much running around, grabbing, catching, falling over we managed to get them outside, we were exhausted! We were so worried about them the first few nights as we were still having some hard frosts, but apparently we are told that the cold is ok, its when it is wet that you need to really keep an eye on the lambs.

We have been glued to Lambing Live the last few nights, we have learnt a lot from the Beavans in Wales and thought the programme was brilliant. We really liked how they covered the whole sheep year from the tup (the daddy) right the way through to seeing the lambs being born. We hope it will create lots more interest in our lambing weekends coming up.

So, we have had one or two early arrivals the last few days, some great little lambs, one that is serioiusly cute who we have named 'Johnny' after Johnny who came to see them last week who is nearly 3 years old and lives in Abu Dhabi with his Mummy and Daddy, Rimps and Jim, our lovely friends who were over for a weeks holiday. We have had some sadnesses too with some being too little and weak to make it once they had been born, we find this really hard, we wonder if it will get easier. Tomorrow is our official due date, the maternity wing in the lambing sheds are looking very expectant but very content. We are so looking forward to our lambing weekends these next two weekends and showing everyone what we have been up to.

We have applied for some funding for a mobile sheep handling system for the sheep which will really help us when the sheep are all outside again. We have also applied for support to help us buy a 'faecal egg counter'. Doesn't sound that glamorous! But it will be a brilliant management tool for us to help us manage our worming system. We only want to worm the sheep if it is absolutely necessary not just routinely. So fingers crossed we will be successful.

We have just had some friends to stay this weekend, Eddie, Lucy and their daughter Roberta, Toby, Bhupi and little Kabir and Ben! Some of them feature in our photos above for this post. A first mothers day for Lucy and Bhupi which was really special that they were here with us and amongst lots of other expectant mummies!

Michael starts helping us tomorrow who is on work experience from Sparsholt College and Caroline continues to be an amazing support and will be helping us run the childrens activities over the lambing weekends.

We look forward to seeing as many of you that can make it over the next two weekends, a time which we think will be really exciting, we can't wait!

Camilla, Roly, Boris and Meg