Easy lambing makes lambing easy and all good shepherds blame them self but you wont learn anything from all the success stories.
Who knows why things go great and then go teats up? And if we knew why it would be too late to do anything about it. When I helped my neighbour to lamb his 600 ewes a couple of years ago many were affected by scmelemberg and I was fishing out dead, deformed or decomposing lambs all over the place along with lovely big lambs that just died for no aparent reason. One morning over a cuppa I asked him how many he had lost and he said "I dont know, you never count the dead ones. If you did you wouldn't be able to keep doing it"
Everyone on this forum takes a pride in how they care for their animals and takes it personally when they feel they have failed them in some way. We hate to think that we have had to learn the hard way and at their expence or that our ignorance has caused them pain and suffering. But when we focus on the sick and injured ones we can miss the basic needs of the others and loose sight of all the successes that we have. Dont stop caring or reflecting on what you could do better next time but make sure you use it to broaden your experience and build your confidence not diminish it.
Must dash...the fallen stock man has just called to collect a ewe who was euthenised as a result of nerve damage and pnumonia when she developed TLS a week before lambing, then it will be time to feed the triplets that we fished out of her and give the shivery one another antibiotic before making sure that the one who was born with entropion is now ok, then there is the ewe to check who is due tomorrow but who aborted 3 weeks early last year then the one who is a day late and has to be kept on her own as another ewe stole her lamb last year, then there's the one who usually has triplet but, Oh you get the idea.................,
Happy shepherding!