Friday, March 28, 2008

Lambing - Day 10

I got dropped off at the farm at 8am this morning.
All of the sheep are now in the old shed, while the new shed is being cleaned and disinfected ready for Johns sheep to come in and lamb.
We filled up all the hayracks and changed waters in all the little pens, and then bedded down all of the pens in the old shed.
We moved all of the bigger lambs and their ewes into a spare big pen which can all go outside at the same time when the weather gets better, we now have room for newborns to go straight into smaller pens.
I went up to feed the triplets in the paddock and up in the top field.
Lois + I went around all the smaller pens and rubber ringed and prepared the lambs and ewes so that they are ready to go outside.
We bottle fed all of the cade lambs and made sure they had enough milk, and then topped up the molasses feeders in the big pens - its so heavy and the ewes try to drink it out of the bottle before it gets into the feeder which makes it even harder to do!
There was a single lamb ewe which had been struggling for quite a while, so I helped her to deliver the lamb because it was stuck. I pulled one leg at a time to make sure it was presenting properly and it also makes the shoulders narrower. I got the head facing the right way - head first out of the ewe - and then pulled the legs at the same time and out it came. I cleared its mouth and scrubbed it with straw to make sure it was breathing and then the ewe started licking it. I penned it up and Iodine and Spectamed it.
Me + Lois then went out into the paddock next to the new shed to have a look at a lamb which wasn't putting weight on one of its legs. It took quite a while to catch and then we gave it 2ml of Engemycin intravenously.
After that we went back into the shed and bottle fed the cade lambs.
We topped up all the hays and waters and penned up some more newborns. We're running low on small pens because the lambs can't go outside because the weather is so bad.
At the end of the day I took home 2 of the weaker cade lambs to bottle feed during the night to. They are called Greg and Bluebelle :D
They are bottle fed with a powdered milk called Lamlac, made up with hot water (4oz Lamlac to 1 pint water), and fed every few hours. They'll go back to the farm with me on Sunday.

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