24 February 2008
A Belated Bleating Update.
Posted by Richard under: Sheep; Smallholding .
A mixture of general mayhem and fatigue has kept us away from the blog for most of the last week. Lambing has moved on a bit further - but it is by no means over yet.
The Evans ewe had a single ram lamb on Thursday - it needed a bit of assistance from Kate, as it had one leg tucked back - but Kate sorted it. The ewe has lots of milk, but the lamb isn’t feeding as much as it should. We are keeping an eye on it but giving it time to sort itself out.
Fatima had twin ram lambs the same day - both real bruisers…unfortunately one has big black patch on its front leg. Pedigree Southdowns don’t do ‘black patches’ - so it is probably bound for the freezer at five months. Fatima has also developed mastitis (which we are treating), but has severely reduced her milk supply. This means one lamb will need to be bottlefed…and old ‘black leg’ has drawn the short straw.
Flora (who delivered a ram lamb and two stillborns back on the 9th) is still suffering an infection. We think it is related to the two dead lambs, and she is being treated with a course of Clamoxyl. However, as a consequence of her illness, her milk has dried up. This means her lamb is having to be bottlefed. Currently both ewe and lamb are not that happy with the situation, with plenty of bleating going on.
So we have ended up with two cade (bottlefed) lambs. If we had a few more ewes or they had lambed closer together, we may have had an opportunity to get them adopted onto other ewes - but no such luck at the moment. Bottlefeeding ram lambs is something we wanted to avoid - you want rams to be a bit cautious of people, but if they are bottlefed then they lose that inhibition can become nasty. Saying that - all rams can go that way.
Well, we still have four ewes waiting to lamb…and I swear they can’t be far off…they are all whales. Fingers-crossed, they will be done by next weekend and we can return to relative normality with sheep in the fields and ponies in stables.
PS: Thanks heavens it has warmed up a bit and stopped raining - the grass is starting to grow!!
PPS: Must get in the greenhouse and start off some seeds.
6 Comments so far...
Jo Knight Says:
25 February 2008 at 10:14 am.
Crikey, mayhem it is!
We still haven’t had either lambs or kids yet; although sadly one of the goats who was due to kid in mid-April, aborted a foetus a couple of days ago; & as she retained the placenta has been very ill - had the vet out twice & her temperature has been up & down like a yo-yo.
It’s heartbreaking & we’ve no idea what caused it - although the carers who looked after the farm whilst we were away the other week didn’t replenish the animals’ bedding at all, & the pens were filthy on our return - so the vet thinks she may have picked up an infection which caused her to abort.
Apart from the heartbreak & the fear that we may yet lose a very precious, special, gentle character, for us on the commercial side there’s a severe financial impact: potentially around £5,000′ worth of milk (when turned into produce); loss of a pedigree kid worth around £200; plus there’s the vet bills (2 callouts so far) & feeding an non-productive goat for a whole year (because we’ll certainly keep her as we may be running a business but we also have soft hearts & heads to match!).
These people were supposedly professional but whilst we came back to an impressively immaculate house & happy, healthy cats & dog, we had a badly lame ewe; a bald-headed cockerel; & apparently starving goats with filthy bedding. This, after we’d left a comprehensive written brief detailing the care of our livestock - along with emergency numbers for any & every eventuality.
So as you can imagine we are pretty miffed; however whilst that was the likely cause we cannot be certain - she could have been butted whilst playing, for example - so we’ll just have to live with it. But I worry about going away again, as you can imagine - & thank goodness nobody decided to ‘pop’ whilst we were away.
Good luck with the bottlefeeding, I know what you mean about ram lambs - apparently one trick is once they are on hard feed don’t be tempted to hand-feed them; & don’t stroke or touch them around heads & faces as it can encourage them to push against you, & that’s when they learn to butt!
colour it green Says:
25 February 2008 at 3:51 pm.
have been watching for an update 
- seems you still have a good outcome, hope those infections clear up soon. Good luck on the bottle feeding.
kate Says:
25 February 2008 at 5:14 pm.
How awful to come back to filthy stalls and hungry animals I’m not surprised your hacked off, it’s enough to put you off going away. Was it a farm sitting service?
I hope your girl starts perking up a bit soon.
I think I’ve got to the bottom of why Milly prolapsed and lost lambs - it appears she’s done it before and the vet thinks Flora the one who had triplets got her infection due to the 2 dead lambs being inside her, but out of the sac, rather than her having an infection that caused the lambs to die; otherwise the one good lamb would have been adversly affected, also her infection/temperature only started after she gave birth. Why or how the sac was affected I will never know, as the other sac was intact I can only assume it was a knock of some kind.
At least I can stop being paranoid about copper in the feed, Toxoplasmosis from cat poo and know Flora is probably OK for next years lambing, she now appears to have made a full recovery and Diddy Derek is piling on the pounds! As for our girl with mastitis she seems to have made some improvements today, so fingers crossed Dweezil (the one lamb we left on her) will be able to stay on her.
On a really positive note the kids got to witness the whole birth of the twins Dweezil and Chop Chop and we had another set of twins this morning Peanut and pumpkin, 2 ewe lambs born before we were out of bed and doing great!
colour it green Says:
25 February 2008 at 8:14 pm.
thats the best way. I am sposed to be helping out a neighbour with lambing.. and they have all managed without intervention! - so much for hands on experience.. but its the best way for them!
David Turner Says:
26 February 2008 at 4:08 am.
Been out of the country for 2½ weeks and just catching up on emails etc. prior to flying home, so your update on the lambing situation reminds me we’ve got to start making preparations for lambing although ours aren’t due until early April. I’m always sorry to hear of others’ problems but, after an initially bad year due to (our) lack of experience and (others’) bad advice, we had three ewes each knock out one of each last Spring without difficulty. I’m minded to think that this might just have been our good fortune rather than an omen for the future…
Jo Knight Says:
29 February 2008 at 8:49 am.
Hi folks -
just wondered if you’re going to take part in tonight’s Big Switch-Off? Basically if everyone, all over the world, turns their lights & as many electrical appliances as possible off, between 19:55 hrs & 20:00 hrs on 29 Feb 08, the energy saving to the planet will be massive - it’s a sort of ‘dry run’ for next month’s big event, where the aspiration is to turn off the lights for a whole hour. Just hope nobody’s lambing or kidding at the time….!
So please participate - & help our planet to breathe.