Lambs

Six sleepy lambs. We raised the floor of their shelter this year so if it rains they'll stay out of the puddles. This after last year’s mad rebuild during the pouring rain to lift them out of water. The joys of living on clay!
The upturned pot is one of two – easier on the back to sit down to bottle feed.

Learnings:

• Planning ahead and learning from experience – always works.

Lambs in the Sun

The lambs seem very fluffy and bouncy today! Must have been something in their breakfast : :) 😊

Lambs in the Sunshine!

Contented lambs enjoying the sun on their faces. This is the life!

Emergency Lamb Shelter Alterations

Rain, rain and more rain... Shutting the lambs up for the night yesterday we discovered that the shelter was far too damp for them to lie down on overnight. Building an emergency raised floor was the only way, with thick posts laid flat, a sheet of plywood across the top and heaps of straw for bedding and warmth. Only trouble was we discovered the problem once it was dark, so it ended up not being the easiest of jobs – and it was still raining... This was them before the rain!

Learnings:

* Shelter inspections are best done in the daylight, i.e. without a head torch.

New Home for the Lambs

Time to move them to a small pen in the field, still with their shelter insulated. Very inquisitive, they are keen on testing out the grass as well as enjoying their creep. We shut them into their shelter every night by pulling a pallet across the front and securing it with a bungee. 

Raising Lambs

Lambs at 2 weeks old

Today we collected this year’s lambs! They had but a 5 minute journey to get here and within 20 minutes of settling them in we had help from our “smaller” neighbours with their first bottle feed, after permission from mum and dad of course.

The weather here is unseasonably cold at night (and forecast to be cold both day and night next week) so we have surrounded their shelter with extra bales of straw for insulation and covered it with a tarpaulin for waterproofing. The pallet slides across to secure them overnight and the whole thing faces away from the prevailing wind.

Today they’ve been enjoying the sunshine though, and we’ve been enjoying their antics, which is the upside. They are around 2 weeks old on average and will need 5 bottle feeds a day for the first few days, reducing to 4 in a week or so. We now appear to be taking bookings for bottle feeding!

The lambs exploring their new home

Which brings me on to the question of why we do this in the first place.

Some of our friends have said things like “how could you do it, raise them as pets, bottle feed them and then kill them to eat…don’t you get attached to them?” Well, yes, in their early days it could be easy to get attached without trying very hard at all! They are very cute but, and it’s a big but, they are not pets. We do this so we know where our meat is coming from, how it’s been raised, and we give the animals as good a life as we possibly can while they are with us. The commitment of raising them through the summer is one we enjoy. Yes, it is hard to take them on their Final Journey but at this stage it’s a long way off and we can prepare for it.

I remember vividly the first time we took our finished pigs to the abattoir… a farmer was waiting in line with his small trailer. He must have sensed my emotions when he gently said to me, “Is this the first time you’ve done this?”, “Yes” I replied. “It does get easier you know, second time around” he reassured me.

 

Learnings:

Be prepared for April showers, wind, snow and hail.