so sorry to hear you've had a bad lambing year. If its any consolation we have used the words -" lambing year from hell" to describe this year. two weeks ago we seriously felt like we'd had enough of this and would gladly not do it again, and perhaps move to a two up two down in a town with a window box and some decking ,
but then the sun came out , the lambs started galloping up and down the fence every evening and things felt better again.
once the dust had settled what had actually happened was that all lambs actually survived but in the process we lost two of our original and much loved ewes. and had almost zero sleep for 3 weeks plus have probably supported our local vets to send all their staff on a 6 month round the world cruise.
in truth this was always going to be some of our old girls last years lambing but on the plus side each left us with 2 stonking lambs apiece. one of our other old girls, also demonstrated no initial interest in her twins, they seemed invisible to her despite a fairly straightforward birth. she just ignored them. eventually we resigned ourselves to them having been rejected and put them in a little pen overnight after volostrum. the following morning we tried to get them on her, just in case, and she was back in the game and has been fine with them ever since.
whats different this year ? some of our old girls perhaps we went to the well once too often, as our youngsters were fine, also we lambed in feb for the first time ever in order to co-operate with the people buying our ram- we wont lamb in feb again !!!! older ewes needing more energy than they could get- this year we have fed far far more hay, fed far far more cake and got through high energy feed blocks at a ridiculous rate. next year we're back to lambing in April !! but lambing we will be