Monday, April 13, 2009

Lambing - Day 4

I got there at half 8 today, and the new girl is here, she's called Lucy and is doing an art degree and wants to be a vet, entering as a post-grad.
We bedded down the big and little pens, gave all the sheep hay in their hay racks and then cleaned all the water buckets and gave all the sheep fresh water.
We fed all the sheep with corn and then bottle fed the lambs which needed doing - both the cade ones and the ones who's moms have no milk. John showed lucy how to bottle feed the lambs then went off to feed some other sheep. She was doing it and called me over because it had gone floppy and stopped breathing. Somehow the milk had got into its lungs and not stomache and I remembered when it happened with a newborn lamb that wasn't breathing, John held it upside down and swung it. So I did that and milk started coming out, we pinched its nose and shook it again running it and it coughed and more milk came out. We checked again and it was breathing so we made sure it was ok and put it back in its pen.
All of the newborn lambs born during the night were moved into the spare little pens and gave them a squirt of Spectam and dipped their navels in Iodine.

I told Lucy about what we had to do to the lambs and ewes, and then Louise came over and showed her how to do everything. Once she knew how to do it, we both rubber ringed the lambs and clipping the ewes feet, swapping between ewes and lambs.
When we'd finished, John took us to a field up by the quarry and we set up electric fencing all around the outside. We stuck stakes in the ground every 12 paces, and then fed the wire through the slots in the stakes making sure that you don't cross the wires. The reels of wire are then secured onto a special pole and tightened.
When we got back, we had lunch and a few more ewes had lambed, so we took out those lambs and the ewes and penned them up.

Me and Lucy made sure that all the pens had water and that the hayracks were full, then fed all of the cade lambs with water.

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