Great result
Firstly, she may not have 3 by the time she lambs, and they may not all make it out alive.
Secondly, if she's a first-timer I would take at least one off even if it means rearing it on the bottle. The problem is that they drink less at the start and will take more as they grow. A first-timer (especially if a hogg) will soon run out of capacity, won't have learned yet how to manage their demands to eek out what she has got - a recipe, in my experience, for a ewe with mastitis and trying to get three older lambs onto bottles (which they don't always take to later on.) If she's a hogg I would probably take two off and leave her to do a good job with just one; she'll have put a lot into growing and birthing three lambs and be likely to struggle more with twins than her twin-lambing sisters. (And if they're first-timers, especially hoggs, some of them may struggle too.)
Topping up different lambs sounds like a good plan but may not work - you can't always get lambs that are suckling to take a bottle, plus the lambs will only take bottle if they are hungry, which won't stop them making excessive demands on mum when you are not there with the bottle.
If she's an older ewe who has reared twins successfully before, and is in tip-top condition when she lambs (condition score 2.5 minimum), you could try leaving them on and offering a bottle for topping up (more to get one or more of the lambs bottle trained than because they'll need the extra feed at the beginning.) I have done this successfully many times - but some years there's less grass and hence less milk, and then you can still get mastitis later as the growing lambs make heavier and heavier demands. You would of course give her extra cake - ad lib if you can do it - if she's rearing three.
Fostering one lamb onto a single can work well but equally you can find that the mother does know the difference and never cares for the adoptee as well as she does her own flesh and blood lamb. I have had a lot of fostered lambs come back to the pet pen at a few weeks or even months old - and even when they do well, sometimes you have take them away as they are found to be running round pinching milk off all the ewes. Fostering onto a bereaved mum usually works very well indeed - but of course you'll hope to have no bereaved mums available.
Sorry if that was all gloom and doom - but if she has 3, and is other than an experienced ewe in tremendous condition at lambing, and you can feed her quantities of cake, I would not consider leaving all three on. Personally I would hesitate to foster onto a single - and would certainly keep a very close eye on how - and from whom - the lamb is feeding.
Temper all of the above with my position in the northwest on a just-below-the-moorland-line farm - you'll no doubt have a kinder climate and more grass than we do, which will help a lot.
But apart from the one triplet, that was a great scan
Congratulations.
Topic: Scan results (Read 3567 times)
