Sunday, April 27, 2008

Lambing - Day 15

I got to the farm for 8 today. There are only 25 of Johns Welsh Mules, and 0 of Louises Mules left to lamb!
Violet has had twins :D
I did the usual and fed and watered the ewes in the big and little pens then started on rubber ringing and preparing lambs and ewes ready to go outside.
When I was done I helped John to load up the sheep into the trailer to take them out into the field.
I took down the spare pens from the new shed and stacked up all the hurdles together onto a pallet.
There were enough spare pens, so I moved the newborn lambs into the remaining small pens and Iodine and Spectam'ed them.
After that I went over to the old shed and took down all the empty pens in there. All of the ewes were in the big pens as I took down the hurdles.
After lunch, John and I injected some thick antibiotics into a lamb with an inturned eye lid. The eyelid needs to be facing the right way as the eyelashes rub against the surface of the eye and can damage it. I held the lambs head really tightly and John injected it. The antibiotics puff the eyelid back out of the eye.
All of the water buckets needed to be washed out to make sure there wasn't enzootic bacteria in there, so I did that.
After hays and waters we fed the sheep and I went home at 4.
It will be strange not going back to the farm, but its been a really good few weeks and I've enjoyed it all. I think I've learned how to properly deal with sheep and lambs (and to some extent newborn animals). Its also shown that animals will and do die no matter what you try and do for them which is just a fact of life. I used to think sheep were boring and that goats were better, but they're not anymore. I love sheep (bah) :D
Hopefully I'll be coming back to the farm to help with shearing in the summer if I am around or if not next year to help with lambing.

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