In Rememberance

Oh dear....
Poor little girl lamb died this morning.

This time we gave her all the care and human attention that the other one didn't get, and yet when Mark when down to her this morning she wasn't breathing and was stiff when he picked her up.  He came and told me she was dead, then 5 minutes later was back 'False alarm - she's alive!'  She had started breathing again, perhaps brought back from the brink by being lifted and hearing him. He put her on the floor to cool her down and recover, but she slipped away again and we buried her on the croft.

As we were digging the hole, I could smell the sea air, the sun was shining and I thought what a nice spot it is to be buried.  It is on the same bank of the Loch as the cemetary for the villages in our area and has a lovely far away view - you can see for miles which makes you feel big, as though you are actually breathing in the landscape.

When we first moved into Kershader, our neighbour proudly told us the extent of his family's croft, 50 odd acres in Kershader, another in Habost and one in Lemreway.
'I've also got a plot in Garyvard' he said.
'Oh, are you building a house?' I asked,
'No, it's 6ft by 3ft' he said with a twinkle in his eye.

Co-incidentally while it feels like we have the blanket of death around us here this week, it is my Aunty's memorial service today.  My Dad's younger sister, she moved to America with her husband Bob when they were young and had 2 strapping boys.  As they lived in Colorado Springs the boys grew up very outdoorsy and we would often hear in Aunty Midge's letters to Mum of their adventures.

By the magic of the World Wide Web, we have been able to be instantly in touch with our far away cousins to send our wishes. They are having a memorial service later today and asked if we had any old family photos they could share of their Mum. Happily we did and between us and our other cousins from my Dad's older sister's side, we found these and passed them around amongst us.

Aunty Midge and Uncle Bob are centre front, with my Dad at the back left.  They were all watching a golf match, the course at the time being next door to the farm my Grandparents and later My dad had a tenancy on.  They must be about 20 - still in the post war era of heavy woolen clothing and flat caps!

This is an earlier one outside the farmhouse we all loved so much, grandly called Hepworth Hall.  My Dad had to give up the tenancy of the farm when I was 8, but how similar to here on the islands, that he grew up and was married in the same house.  My Grandad, or Boppa as we called him, has a fag on the go and Granny is in the white dress.

I love these old photos - what a perfect way to think of people who have gone now.  My Dad, Bill, died when I was 18, and his older sister, Shelagh, passed away a few years ago too.  But when you see a new photograph suddenly they are alive again - in the present with you.  Their smiles are contagious and they are looking right down the lens at you again, not gone, not forgotten.  Still around us, still here, just for a moment more.

You can't stop trying

Ok, after yesterdays upset, another girl lamb has arrived and this time I'm keeping her isolated for a few days to give her some individual human attention before I integrate her with the rest of the polytunnel flock.  She has all the luxuries this time, light feeds but often, lots of talking to and neck rubbing (they seem to like this) blankets, and a bedroom next to the radiator. Hopefully I wont lose this one.

Grief...

2 weeks ago I watched a life come into the world, but yesterday I watched 1 leave.  It wasn't one of the 4 orphans in the polytunnel, it was a little girl lamb that I had only just been to pick up that morning. She seemed hollow and underfed like the others, but Murdo Garyvard (who gave us lambs 2 years ago) had fed her before we left so i thought she would be fine to go straight into the polytunnel with the others.
They didn't bother her, she had a little toddle around and then found a quiet corner to go to sleep in.  I kept an eye on her over the next few hours and she was sleeping comfortably, but when I went to try her with some milk, I picked her up and she was definitely not alright. Her head was curling around and she generally felt a little stiff.
I have seen this before with our 1st orphan Dolly, and with her I just sat her on my lap and rubbed her and she came back to life.  So I tried this with the new lamb.  Her breathing was really laboured and with hindsight I think I should have just left her to die while she was sleeping.
I tried to coax her back to the land of the living for about half an hour and then Mark came home and tried all that he could think of too.  When we laid her down she stretched her legs out and pushed her chin up - at one point her eyes were making Rapid Eye Movements and she was kicking her little legs as if she was dreaming.  In the end we thought it might be too hot for her so we moved her into a straw filled tub in the kitchen.  Once there she started bleeting out and rolling around, but her eyes were tightly shut now. Then she stopped moving and breathing and died.

I know nobody can tell if its the case, but with all the sudden calling out at the end, I really think she was saw a bright light at the end of a tunnel...

At least I know what death looks like now, so I maybe I can make it more comfortable for the next one....

Poor little lamb....

Sharing is Important

There has been an amazing turnaround in O3's demeanor! He has suddenly taken to the bottle with gusto, sucking perfectly to drain his own and often most of the others' milk bottles! He is ALIVE!

No longer the lazy boy, skulking in the corner he is the first to the door when humans arrive, he mountaineers accross bodies lying on the floor and is sniffing everything that arrives to drink in his experiences of the world!

Meanwhile O4 had an adventure last night - he was borrowed - abducted by aliens it must have felt like - who took him away in a car to a sheep somewhere far off who wanted to be his mother.  Unfortunately for the sheep he was too well bonded to his mates in the polytunnel, so he came home in the morning and is now wondering whether it was all just a dream.

Sharing livestock is quite common here - there is a bull share scheme for the islands to cut down on the cost of having your own bull. Unfortunately the fella who arrived last year, has not produced the goods now spring has arrived. He was apparently young and inexperienced and now at calving time the crofters have been left with not a lot of bang for their buck. :/

Back in the polytunnel , while sniffing is still popular, licking is now also the done thing.  The lambs will toddle around, investigating their surroundings, often with a little pink tongue poking out to catch any scents in the air, or perhaps at the ready for closer inspection of things.

A Murmuration of Starlings

There is a startling amount of starlings around the croft at the moment, hundreds and hundreds of them chattering and calling, preening themselves and calling out to the greater group.

The noise from the trees by the house is eerily similar to Hitchcock's 'The Birds'. 

Having a huge amount of feathered friends round also means having to provide a huge amount of food while they are staying with us. It seems that every part of grass on the croft has been pock-marked by a sharp beak, which in turn is doing a fabulous job of aerating the soil, but is unusual to find afterwards.

But for being hosts to this concert audience, we are rewarded with a hypnotic display, especially magical on a sunset evening, when they are spooked from their roosts and they curl into the sky to make enchanting patterns. Truly one of nature's simple pleasures.

Spring lambs

The weather has turned nasty again. Shouty and her twins are managing very well though and Pretty's lamb is so huge now nothing will bring him down.

The polytunnel is nicely wind and water tight, but the orphan lambs are obviously feeling the cold a bit. O2 was shivering after the 5pm feed, so I picked him up and put him on my lap under my coat for a while. He nodded off quite peacefully with some added body warmth, and I love a cuddle!

Little girl lamb O1

O1, the girl, is super super springy today! She does not walk anywhere, she bounces, sometimes sideways, mostly at high speed.
As for slow coach O3, he has woken up more today and is sniffing everything that comes into the tunnel with great gusto. At one point as I lay down in the corner he climbed all over me with his big calf-like limbs, methodically smelling everything, then finally lay down accross my neck like a scarf and had a snooze.

I have found my calling as a sensory lamb armchair.

Say Hello with a Sniff

Adorables

Having waited and waited for our own bottle reared lamb (who is now 2) to have her lambs, we are suddenly over-run with them.

Shouty managed to have 2 beautiful little girls lambs all by herself last weekend. I like to think she waited for me to be there as she had them on my afternoon off work. I had just been up to feed all the sheep and goats as usual, but after she'd waddled over for a feed I kept an eye on her as she was hanging out amongst the trees.

She had been spending more time lying down lately because she is just so huge, but the longer I watched I realised the day had come at last.

So wonderful to be able to watch all the stages come - and finally see a jet black headed lamb shake its ears and within 5 minutes be up and toddling around looking for food.  Shouty cleaned her lamb and put it safely in some shelter, then got on with having the other twin. Both so strong - what a relief!  I have been reading and re-reading 'A manual of lambing techniques' by Agnes Withers & Cecily Hill, but some of the mis-presentations and awful complications explained in there are just plain scarey.  At one point I did wonder whether Shouty had been in labour for longer than I had been watching, so tried to lend a hand, but to be honest I think I just put her off her stride. She got up and walked away so was obviously ok and within 10 minutes she was straining from the contractions and doing everything herself just fine.

Then the next day this lot arrived:

Our friendly school bus driver Peter had developed an orphan situation where 6 lambs were feeding off 2 Ewes. As sheep only have 2 teets, this was clearly not sustainable. But knowing that we are always keen to take on bottle feeding lambs, he gave us 4 - 3 boys and 1 girl - and we have partitioned the polytunnel to accomodate them. This way if anyone else wants to offer us more orphans we can just add them into the pile!

 I have to say I am completely smitten with them and I'm getting to know which is which now too.

We have numbered our home born lambs, to match their mothers numbering. Then the orphans are 'O' and a number to identify them:
O1 is the girl, she is a blackface and even though she is the smallest she drinks the quickest and sticks up for herself when they're jostling for sleeping positions.

O2 was my first love - he was the most alive at first, trying to feed from our armpits and jumped up at us in excitement.  He was the first to start the sniffing...!

O3 is the biggest and slowest and on day 4 he has only just learnt how to suck from the bottle. But finally he is keen to sniff...

O4 is the smallest boy but like O1 he is cheeky and sprightly.

The blackfaces (1,2 & 4) have such little black triangular heads, with a big forehead and little black nose.
They have first experienced the world through smell and taste with little tiny licks and nibbles. To be set upon by a 4 headed sniffing machine is quite an experience, the boys have taken to calling them Hydra!

Today at last O3 has come to life a bit and is joining in the sensationing - the crofters here say Cheviot lambs are 'lazy' - he has definitely been slower than the others and he is a Cheviot/Blackface cross so there must be some truth in it.  The sniffing was like a craze that they have all gone through, getting to know us and becoming confident we are friends.

Their sight doesn't seem to have developed completely yet, which is all quite like human babies when they first are born.

I don't thinking giving them numbers instead of names has helped to de-humanise them though, I am still smitten.  From the 4 orphans we had last time, only Shouty is still alive, so I know they have a habit of dropping dead for no reason - I guess this is why they are orphans, nature selected them to be rejected.
But while we have them they are adorable, so we'll just make the most of that.