It was a fairly wet and cold lambing day – but this little lamb is an orphan and still needed bottle feeding.
When we arrived, he was sitting on top of his foster Mum keeping warm. The ewe had lost her lamb and very unusually didn’t seem to mind adopting ‘108’. ‘108’ means his mother was the one hundred and eighth ewe to lamb. The lamb(s) get given the same number as the mother so the farm can easily match lambs to ewes. Foster Mum is unable to feed him so he is being bottle fed. But they obviously find comfort in each other’s company and she is still acting as foster Mum to him in the field.
He’s doing great and Amy has now christened him Dobby.
Amy took the week off work and volunteered at the farm to help with lambing and in particular, bottle feeding the 8 or so lambs that needed it. The lambs are doing well, even looking a bit chubby now.
At the end of lambing, our sheep were wormed and treated for fly strike and then moved to a new field with a large weeping willow tree. They all cooperated although Champion was a bit of a baby. We had Tim hide whilst we led them into the hurdles and distracted them with food. Meanwhile Tim appeared and closed off the hurdles at one end. The trailer was open at the other end and they went straight in.
They have now eaten all of the leaves they can reach of the weeping willow … it has a natural form of aspirin in it, salicins, which they just love. They were very happy with the long grass and shady spots in the new field.
So all that remains is to say ‘bye’ ..
