Lambs and weather forecasts
Posted: Monday 19 January, 2009
We had our three sheep scanned today. We were lucky to get Gillian - most scanners wouldn't come for such a small flock. Dan held the sheep (one at a time!), I held the equipment and Gillian did her stuff.
Jinx is carrying a single, Juno (who was a single lamb and is a bit "chunky" so I thought might not be in lamb) is carrying twins and Jura, who's the nice slim one, isn't pregnant. At least Gillian didn't think she was but it's only two weeks since we bought them out from the tup and they have to be 30 days pregnant for the lamb to show on the scanner. So she COULD be. Gillian said she woudl try and swing by and have another look in three weeks or so. If she's not pregnant, she can be "Auntie", keep on with the lawnmowing and try again next year.
The lambs looked like a weather forecast - but we could see Jinx's lamb waving.
I'm terribly excited and totally terrified. This morning I was reconciled to none of them being in lamb - hey, ho just lawnmowers. Now, I'm trying not to count lambs before they're born. I know things can go wrong still - there's just so much to know.
Still, I've got my lambing course on Saturday, so hopefully I'll be more relaxed after that.
Now I'm off to make them coal, anchovy and banana pizza...
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Comments
Rosemary
Thanks for this. I'm less worried about the actual birth funnily enough than the feeding and preparation up to it. I worked four lambings on a farm in Northumberland, part of a team lambing 600 ewes (it wasn't yesterday but I reckon ewe physiology hasn't changed)but I didn't have to worry about anything else than the four weeks of pandemonium. This feels quite different.
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Denise Newey
Wednesday 21 January, 2009 at 9:42pm
Enjoy the lambing course, when I did mine, I couldn't get the lamb out of the "dummy" used to teach you the lambing techniques, because the dummy was so big I couldn't reach inside to get the lamb out. It didn't help that I couldn't stop laughing, as well as the vet running the course. The following year, evidently, my lambing exploits were part of an after dinner speech by the said vet.
On a more practical note, the best pieces of advice I can give you are - don't panic, the sheep know what they are doing. Get in touch with Crossgates and get some of their homeopathic medication to help with lambing, we use them every year, and finally, DON'T PANIC and enjoy your lambs.