[maddy]

Last night my rather small ewe who last year miscarried twins has had tiny triplet girls.  They seem fine and I made sure they had colustrum.  When I checked this morning all are up, warm and feeding.  My question is what is the chance of the ewe managing to feed 3?  Should I just top them all up once or twice a day?

The other question is last year my 3 year old ryeland had a bad time with triplets all twisted up inside.  A farmer helped and managed to get only one out alive.  This year I don't think she is in lamb.  Should her udder be full if she was due to lamb in the next week as she has nothing or would the internal last year made her barren?

Apart from that I have a total of 7 females and 1 male lamb and all seem to be well.  I am so relieved as had very bad year last year. 

[Rosemary]

I guess it depends on the individual ewe. We had a Ryeland successfully raised triplets last year with no help and I have two sets of triplets out in the field this year, with both ewes coping fine. I have another two due to have triplets still in the shed. I am feeding the ewes cake and will until the lambs are four weeks old or so. Some of thelambs that are a week to ten days old are starting to nibble at cake themselves but they never seem hungry.

Again bagging up depends on the ewe; I have some bag up early, some almost at lambing.

Sorry, that's not much help but I'm glad your lambing went well thsi year.

[Buffy the eggs layer]

I would supplement the triplets and give them a all a fighting chance but if they are all used to the udder you may find difficulty getting them to take a teat. Defiantly feed the ewe and conciser a twin lamb bucket if you dont already have one as it contains protein and calcium which she will need. You could aim to introduce the lambs to creep by about 5 weeks which will take some of the pressure off the ewe.


With regards the other ewe, its common for a ewe to be barren the year after such an experience and many commercial farmers would cull on that basis rather than carry an empty ewe through the year. But my commercial neighbour tells me that they lamb the year after ( he dosent cull in that instance but gives them a second chance )and my ryelands who have had the same experience have lambed well the year after being barren.


 Good quality ryeland ewes are expensive and can be hard to come by so if she were mine I would run her through to next laming even if she is barren this time. Its not so much the fishing inside her as the dead / decaying lambs which seem to be the cause of a barren ewe the following year. So she should lamb fine in 2016.



[/size]The udder development is certainly a sign of pregnancy but it can be hard to spot a small udder on a ryeland and the lack of much udder dosent neccesarily mean she isnt pregnant. If you are sure of your tupping date and she goes over 152 days then she is just chubby. If she dosen't lamb this year you will need to work on getting all that extra weight off her this summer and get her fit for autumn. [size=78%]

[/size]Fingers crossed she will lamb this time [size=78%]

[maddy]

Thanks for both of your replies.  It does help x