Saturday 3 April 2010

8 more to go and Happy Easter!






















Well, what a three weeks it has been! We can't believe that we only have 10 more of our girls left to lamb, it has been amazing but a steep learning curve and some very late nights and early starts. We are certainly more than a little sleep deprived and now we can see the end in sight we are certainly beginning to feel the effects of only a few hours sleep a night!

We have had some beautiful lambs, most of whom are all outside now, we have been really worried as the weather is still pretty cold and now very wet so we are hoping that we shall have some nice warm days for them and time to allow the grass to properly grow.

Since we last wrote we have had nearly 6,000 people visit us and our girls over two lambing open weekends, it was incredible. If you are reading this and you came and saw us, thank you, it was amazing to see so many people come and be so encouraging and supportive to all that we are doing. Some were lucky to see some live lambing, others had a long wait! On Sunday 21st we had a very sad thing happen, one of our girls having only one lamb was having difficulty, we tried to help her but in the end we had to take her to our vets. We saw a lovely vet called Evan who in the end had to undertake a caesarean, I (Camilla) had to help! It was weirdly fascinating if a little gory and distressing. Sadly the lamb was dead, it was enormous and just too big for her to have had on her own and to come through the birth canal. She is now back home and being given lots of TLC by us and we will be chatting to Adelle our vet about her ongoing treatment. Many of our triplets we have successfully managed to adopt onto ewes who were only having one lamb which has been great to see. We are currently only bottle feeding two...little 'Tiny Tot' who is currently in our kitchen and receiving lots of attention from Jessica and Arabelle and who will be shortly going to stay with our friends Laura and Charlie in Charlbury. The other is Henry (Henrietta) who sadly lost her Mummy but is doing really well from the bottle and taking her chances when all the ewes are feeding from the troughs! So funny, she is so cheeky. We will be definitely keeping her, we have a real soft spot!

Now it is Easter time, what a special time of year, from the longer evenings to the daffodils and birdsong and seeing all our little ones outside, running around and generally getting up to mischief.

Just to finish on a lot of thanks you's to all our family and friends who came to help us over the two lambing weekends it was an amazing 4 days - Chazie, Sarah, Jonathan, Carol, Michael, Dave Whenmouth, Jessica, Zoe, Nel, Melanie, Bethany, Sally, Sarah, Alistair, Rosie, Poppy, Helen, David, Christine, Tamsin, Fred, David Doyle, Stephen, Fenella, Mum, Tetta and of course Meggy, who spent her time getting lots of attention from all the children! and finally the Northmoor Trust who put a lot of work into the publicity and making both weekends run so smoothly.

More soon and a very Happy Easter!

Camilla, Roly, Boris and Meg