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.

Our first home born lamb!

As spring approaches, we have been waiting for our ewes to lamb.  We have 3 – an orphan lamb we raised ourselves, Shouty, who is sadly the only left of the 4 lambs we bottle fed.  But then we were given 2 more 'yearlings' last autumn – one blackface, one Cheviot (they have white faces).
Last winter we took all 3 to a neighbour's croft where they were to meet and get to know a handsome fella who would see them right!
As we're not modern or rich enough to scan our ewes, we have just had to be patient and wait to see what nature brings. Yesterday nature was early!
My shepherdess friend had messaged me to say to watch out how much we are feeding the sheep as they are looking pretty fat and this can lead to birth complications. I went up to the field in the afternoon to separate the sheep from the goats and the brightest whitest little darling scampered down to the gate along with our 3 sheep! Adorable, and just so easily and suddenly arrived!

I moved him and Mum into a maternity shed I had luckily been preparing early and left them alone to carry on bonding, have a feed and rest a bit. (I remember how it feels to have just given birth, even withour the tea, jam and toast, it must be similar!)  They got on just fine – phew! No dramas!

But here is the conundrum – when our shepherdess popped by for a look, she pulled us up on the details. Her ram is a cheviot, our ewe is a cheviot and yet the lamb has a black face.... it seems the Dad was not her ram after all...

Our next door neighbour has a collection of rams that he overwinters near the house, on the other side of our fence. I can't remember a day when they got in to our side – they are huge old men with enormous curly horns – not the fence hopping kind. 
But there had been a day that would explain it. Mark and I had been standing at the kitchen window looking at some sheep out on the road and wondering whose they were.  Then we recognised them as our own!  Very unusual that they would break out, but as we went over to call them back in, I'm sure I saw one of them blow a kiss to the next door rams!  Ewes are known to go to the men when the time is right and it would explain why when we took all 3 to our arranged ram, he only fancied one of them – the other 2 were already in lamb and he knew to save his energy.

So now we are waiting for Shouty – who is enormous - to lamb in the next day, we suppose. Then we will have some time to catch up before our final ewe gives birth on what had been the planned date in April.

Thank goodness the sun is shining – I'm sure it has also had a hand to play in pinging the egg timer.

The geese are back

I know I say this too early every year, but I think spring is coming. It is only February, but the goats are frollicking in the field, the sun has been out more than in this week and despite a generous snowfall, I think we are all feeling the power in the sun.  Even the solar panels have started to work their magic.

This year we may get lambs. We have 3 sheep – one our own bottle reared lamb Shouty, and 2 others gifted to us who I have named Sniffy and Pretty – no explanations needed.

They went to see a fine fellow in the next door village before Christmas, and while we were told that they were too fat and spoilt to have been 'receptive' I do wonder whether it is all grass on those bellies or something more.

Time will tell...

Library of senses

I have a collection of memories, stored in senses. A tape of music from a younger me, a moisturiser that reminds me of another place and time, photographs that immediately make me feel close to other people and a kalaedoscope of past feelings.

I keep them all in a box in the loft.

There are diaries there too that help me to pin down a random feeling, memory or thought.  It helps to get rational with this library sometimes – it helps to have a catalogue system, or its all just clutter.

I like to keep my history. Its like a little holiday, to somewhere familiar.

Gertrude & Henry

It being January, we were battered as usual by some pretty fierce storms, wind gusting to 90mph, schools cancelled for 2 days but thankfully no damage to anything much at home.  The met office has a new system for naming storms, so this pair were Gertrude (the name for an underwater phone used by submarines) and Henry (Royal Harry's correct name, who knew?).

In a calm following the storm, the ground looks like a sponge that has drained all of it's water and is left looking a little off colour.  The grass is longing to grow again, but the sun just can't get over itself enough to break through the grey clouds.

Today felt a bit warmer though, there was a tentative glance towards spring as the last of the puddles disappeared and people emerged from their bunkers.

I really do think that when the weather is this bad in the Hebrides we would all be better off living under ground, or maybe in submarines, deep down in the oceans experiencing another world, while ours endures another January weather Drama up on top.

Oh thank god!

We have finally moved the goats into the top field. Oh My God, what a relief!

They had been in their field for over a year and there was absolutely nothing left to eat in it. Of course this was the whole point of having the goats; that they would eat the weeds and marsh grass so that we could make a lush field of grass for the sheep.   Permaculture at work, harnessing nature itself to cut down on human labour.   But it had got to the point where I was sawing down branches from the pine trees to feed them roughage, as well as their bagged feed and hay.

Dinner and a View

All we had left to do was a short stretch of fencing, on top of the hill.  We had run electric fencing all around the perimeter in the summer, but events overtook us as we just didn't complete the job. Immensely frustrating, so really satisfying now it is finally complete.

Their joy at being released into a smorgasbord of space and food variety was obvious.  Even my poor disabled goat suddenly forgot about her poorly feet and hobbled off up the hill.

A much bigger field!

Their shed has also been vastly improved, as the entrance is now on the opposite side and away from the prevailing wind and gales.  Originally revamped by us as a pig shed,  from an old sheep enclosure used by the blackhouse residents over a hundred years ago, the walls are 2 feet thick and there is an entrance area before the roofed enclosure, which should be an ideal sun trap in the mornings.

Poppy, Primrose and Milly will be very happy here, I know it.