LambMetrics is our lambing blog which tells some of the tales of farm life at lambing time.
Also contains pretty lamb pictures – and maybe a few confronting ones too.
Lovely spring day today after the rain of the last couple of days.
The morning was quiet – which was good because I needed to go off into town for part of the day.
Trying to catch up on the ear tagging and managed to get a bunch of the twins done so am nearly caught up.
Including this lovely set of twin Drysdale ewe lambs, sired by Gilbert.
This evening though, just as we were about to give the pet lambs their bottle, we noticed something odd in the Twins mob. Two ewes and two lambs… and then we realised that the lambs were a couple of days old and the ewe that looked like she had “just lambed” was actually a ewe who had not lambed. She was desperately trying to get a lamb. One of those “Things that make you go hmmmm”. I can’t recall actually seeing a Merino ewe thieve – although I have suspected it on occasion – so decided this was probably an urgent situation to rectify.
Sure enough, there was a lamb attempting to “exit the building”. But I couldn’t extract it. The lamb was alive and she was just a little tight in the cervix (my fingers hurt now) and despite getting a head and a leg I couldn’t get the second leg to come fully. And it was difficult to feel further in to find out where the sticking point was. Finally, in desperation because the lamb was in dire straits, I wondered if the second leg was actually a leg from the second lamb.
Changed tactics slightly but by the time the lamb came out it was almost dead and we were unable to get it going.
The second lamb was positioned in the same way – one front leg forward with the head and the other leg back – and unfortunately it was also expiring as it came out. 🙁
The poor ewe was calling out and running around trying to steal a lamb, any lamb. I wondered if she would consider one of the pet lambs if she was that keen…..
Well, she was kind of interested so she is currently penned up with three hungry lambs “looking for love”. Not sure it will work but in the realm of “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
The situation is a bit sad so we’d better finish on a more cheerful note:
