[juliem]

My tenant lost a large lamb again last night.The ewe had attempted to give birth in the field..perhaps it got into difficulties.Anyway this morning he had to pull out the lamb and something had bitten into the lambs  jaw.
He blames badgers.There is a sett close by.
There is also a buzzard very close by....
Which is more likely ?

[Anke]

During the night - badgers.

[Sbom]

Badgers.
Unfortunately nothing you can legally do about them 

[Old Shep]

But the lamb died in birth anyway - so what's the problem?

[Sbom]

I read it as the ewe had a lamb stuck and in morning he pulled it out of ewe, dead with jaw eaten.

[juliem]

correct....
he doesn't scan his sheep..so we have the problem of large lambs frequently.
Badgers are a big big problem round this part of Shropshire....not seen a hedgehog for years.
It's just unfortunate that my best field this time of year because it's the best drained has a badger highway going across it .
Would the badger have been attracted by the smell....

[Marches Farmer]

Badgers patrol the same route every night, much as a fox does.  I've known one eat the udder off a downer cow so a lamb would be a nice snack.  Our fields have a line of barbed wire running along the bottom of the sheep wire but they'll get under very small gaps - you find tufts of badger hair on the barbs.  I just fill in the gap with rocks and wait for the next one to appear. 

[Old Shep]

correct....
he doesn't scan his sheep..so we have the problem of large lambs frequently.
Badgers are a big big problem round this part of Shropshire....not seen a hedgehog for years.
It's just unfortunate that my best field this time of year because it's the best drained has a badger highway going across it .
Would the badger have been attracted by the smell....

But if the lamb was stuck, and even the appearance of a predator didn't make the ewe push a little more and leg it - that lamb was always going to be dead surely?  Overfed ewes expecting singles having too big lambs, lambing outside possibly without frequent checks (I maybe wrong on this point - feel free to correct me) is a recipe for losses. 


We had a ewe lamb inside and when I did the first early check she had one dry full lamb with her and a dead one behind that had been licked a little but rats had started to eat his nose!!!  I never thought to blame the rats for the death - just the ewe for being so obsessed with one that she didn't bother enough with the other.

[Marches Farmer]

[Overfed ewes expecting singles having too big lambs, lambing outside possibly without frequent checks (I maybe wrong on this point - feel free to correct me) is a recipe for losses. 

Finding a hung lamb dead many years ago was the reason why we always get ours scanned.  It's allowed us to fine tune our feeding regime and we've not had one since.  They can be hung because they've one or both legs back, of course, but regular checks help with that one.

[EP90]

My tenant lost a large lamb again last night.The ewe had attempted to give birth in the field..perhaps it got into difficulties.Anyway this morning he had to pull out the lamb and something had bitten into the lambs  jaw.
He blames badgers.There is a sett close by.
There is also a buzzard very close by....
Which is more likely ?

Without a conclusive sighting or camera its pure speculation as to what, if anything had "bit" the lamb.  It could have happened during the dark hours or early daylight (depending on what time yer man got round to looking) so could have been any preditor or carrion eater.

[juliem]

to be fair to my tenant he does live 3 miles away...is elderly and has kept sheep all his life.He tends to adopt the non intervention policy on most things..so far he's had 35 lambs in the last few weeks...big lambs have been a problem though.Check my post about the vet beheading the lamb to save the ewe a couple of weeks ago.
He actually weighed his hoggets yesterday which is a first prior to sending them off to auction.
How did they manage before scans then ? Did ewes not have twins in the 19thCentury ?

[harmony]

Lots of things were different in the 19th century. Singles were more the norm. Feed wasn't so readily available or used.


Has he been feeding? Maybe he needs to change tup.

[Liz Kershaw]

Last year we found we had an active badger sett on our (small) small holding just before lambing so I moved the ewes into a shed the night before they were due and brought lambs and ewes back into the shed each night for a week until I thought the lambs were strong enough to get away. Hassle but it worked.

[Marches Farmer]

I've seen our ewes when disturbed at night gather the lambs in a small area and stand around them in a circle.  The old ewes, in particular, will lower their heads and stamp their feet to deter marauders.  The problem is always going to be the youngest or weak lambs, which are much easier to pick off.