[agri293]

hi there i am looking forward to our first lambing hopefully in april looking for advice on when to scan and who can i use in the lothians,secondly what i need for lambing ,and can you buy the medical equipment you require ,and where to buy cheers

[TheCaptain]

,secondly what i need for lambing

Get on a lambing course ASAP, or get some lambing experience if you don't already have some - mine was the best thing I've spent money on to do with my smallholding!

[agri293]

hi thanks for the advice i was going to ask one of our local farmers do you know if there any lambing courses in central scotland cheers

[Rosemary]

Central Scotland Smallholders are organising a lambing course at Oatridge College in West Lothian on 11th February. Contact doganjo on here for more details.

[agri293]

thats great not to far away from me cheers

[Dougal]

You look like you'll get on a course, all the best with that.
As for scanning,if you only have a small number (less than three hundred!!) then most commercial scanners won't come to you. They are too busy else where. The vet will do it but charge you the national debt of italy for the privilige and even then just tell you whether you have a ewein lamb or not! they are not practised enough to get any better. Your best option is to try and find another sheep farmer who lambs at roughly the same time as you and scans. Take your sheep there on scanning day and the scanner will run them through for a wee bit cash! Failing that, don't scan. Start feeding your ewes a small amount of feed now and feed them that limited feed all the way through. That will at least support the multiples without giving monsterous singles. Not perfect but worked for shepherds for a long time before ultra sound!

[VSS]

Our scanner will do small groups - we have 160 and he does a lot of flocks smaller than hours. He charges the same amount for all flocks, large and small iro 50p per ewe.

He is so fast and so devilishly efficient that he can make it pay at that price.

[agri293]

thanks for the advice

[robert waddell]

ian magillvery at falkirk   he does scanning 

[Small Farmer]

Our local scanner charges £65 to visit: we've never had enough to find out how many that could cover.  Round here all the flocks are under 100

[lee.arron]

Hi agri293.  Its also my first lambing im in the same situation as you i got on a lambing course for next week. as for scanning im doing without as i only have a small flock for now. Im told the best thing to do first time is check on the ewes as much as possible especially closer to the time. keep an eye on their body scoring and most of all  learn from it for next year .  i was advised to have a stock of iodine , tail rings, gloves, lubricant, and make sure the ewes are given a high energy lick  , good luck with it

[lee.arron]

also milk powder heat lamp and bottle feeders for any cade or lambs that mum cant cope with.   

[SteveHants]

Something that people may not have thought of:

Always useful to have an outlet for orphan lambs, I give mine to our local community farm where it is lovingly bottle fed by volunteers and ends up being clucked over and generally having the life of riley. That way you don't waste precious time and money at lambing bottle feeding (by the time you have paid to hand-rear a lamb, you wont make any money from it).

[SallyintNorth]

(by the time you have paid to hand-rear a lamb, you wont make any money from it).

Our last five pets just went off and fetched over £85 a piece.  They were fed predominantly on Jersey milk then creep for a short while then a lamb pellet.  Even if I'd used lamb replacement powder, I would still have made a profit.

Like most farmers, we do not expect nor want a 'reasonable hourly rate' for our time.  Running a sustainable business, making a living doing something fascinating and highly enjoyable that keeps us fit seems to us to be a pretty good return for our labour.   (Check my tag line.  )

Having said all of which, I think it is a very good idea to have an outlet for orphans - even if you have a setup where you can rear them not at a loss, if you have a bad lambing it can leave you short of time to manage everything that is needed.

[SteveHants]

Okay sally, maybe I should have put in a disclaimer about 'current trends towards sheep actually making good money notwithstanding'