#LAMBMETRICS for the day
Drysdale & English Leicester Flocks
Born today: 5
Total Lambs Born: 65
Drysdale lambs (live total): 33
English Leicester lambs (live total): 20
English Leicester X lambs (live total): 8
Total Sets of Twins born: 20
Total Sets of Triplets born: 1
Total ewe lambs: 34
Total ram lambs: 31
Ewes lambed /76: 43 (56.7 %)
Lamb % : 142 % [live]
Assisted/Dystocias: 6
Losses: 4 [lamb]; 0 [ewe]
Notable Midwifery tales:
Well, we’ve had the ups and downs today.
Day started well with Panda, our superfine, coloured merino ewe, presenting us with her twins. 🙂 The greyer one is a boy. Both have frosty ears and were sired by the silver English Leicester ram, Sterling. Hopefully they will both have wonderful fleeces to spin!
Then on the morning walk around one of the Twins paddocks (Merino and Castledale ewes) there was this little lad…. Loud voice to no effect. Everyone seemed to have twins or not interested. There was a ewe that looked like she had twins very similar to him so I decided not to muck about and just presume he was a triplet or an unwanted twin and brought him home to join the tribe. Out there with the ewes I reckoned he had a greater than 50% chance of being dead tomorrow.
And yes, he’s wearing the XS size coat. LOL
The other Twins paddock revealed a Merino ewe who had delivered a dead lamb and was possibly in trouble. So, spent a fair bit of time extracting her next lamb which was tough going as her cervix wasn’t dilated properly. No idea how she managed to get the other one out!
As is often the case in a traumatic birth situation the ewe didn’t want to hang about after the lamb was presented to her. She jumped up, over the top of the lamb and I had to wrestle her down again. Usually when they have “calm” time they start to register the lamb in front of them and then the hormones settle and they are okay. I left them as she was starting to lick the lamb a bit.
When I went to check on them about 3/4 hour later I was dismayed to find the ewe disinterested and the lamb very very flat – it had been up and talking to its mother when I left.
As a result, I gave up on the ewe and scooped up the cold lamb. The weather wasn’t super bad but the lamb was in a bad way. It then went into a warm water bath and then towels and a box in front of the heater. It was very dull. 🙁 It was warming up but I was really concerned it wasn’t acting “normal”. It only lasted an hour or so and then it passed quietly away. 🙁 The only explanation I can think of is that the mother had stood on its belly when she jumped around and there had been internal bleeding which had brought on shock, which precipitated the rapid hypothermia and then the lack of response.
Sometimes we win but unfortunately, sometimes we lose.
The death of the merino lamb cast a bit of a pall over the afternoon but there were two new Drysdale lambs this evening to cheer us up. Very sturdy with attentive young mothers.
And let’s finish up with a more cheerful picture of the English Leicester ewe lamb born yesterday. 🙂 She certainly likes posing!
