We've had our sheep now for 8 weeks... a few have had scald, they've been pretty wild, one had maggots in 1 foot... a real baptism of fire. The farmer we bought them from said they hadn't been handled much... it wasn't till we bought them home we realised just how much work we had to do
handling them has improved but I'll never forget the first time we penned them up in the field- taking us 4 hours to do so
All of them are sound now and looking pretty sweet. They come running for a bucket every morning and their characters are developing... 452 is by far the friendliest.
We borrowed a friends ram who has been running with them for 13 days now- he's tupped 2 of them (including 452 and the ewe that had the maggoty foot). He's seemingly interested but the girls aren't that fussed and walk off. I'm wondering if they aren't cycling yet? Either way they are taking a while- there goes our mid-late February lambing. Next year I wonder if it might be worth sponging them- something to look into for sure. His crayon is due to be changed next week so I'm hoping we will have a little more action in the coming weeks. I'm not the most patient of people! Unfortunately over the past few days he's not quite been sound on his front foot, we caught him yesterday and it seems he has a little scald, so sprayed his foot up and given an anti inflamatory. If he's no better by tomorrow we will catch him again and have another look. He's still bumbling around though.
A total initiation of fire this year and even our tame lambs have not gone without problems. Pneumonia caused us a lot of problems in the mild wet winter earlier in the year, and we put one down fairly late on in May with suspected white muscle disease. Last week we lost a nearly fit ewe lamb found stuck in a hedge but didn't look quite right in her head- we thought possibly shock. It wasn't until another showed the same symptoms last weekend that alarm bells started ringing, the vet treated for Vitamin B deficiency (CCN or polioencephalomalacia) and luckily she survived. Just goes to show it doesn't rain but it pours, we were lucky not to loose the remaining lambs although it doesn't make you feel much better about the one we couldn't help.
We've had tame lambs now for 5 years and never had problems like we did this year... hoping lambing in the Spring won't be problematic as I'm not sure how much more bad news I can take !