Lambing 2025 commences

The first lamb has been slow to arrive this year. The theoretical start date was 6th March but the ram seems to have been slow to get going. As it happens it was yesterday, Sunday 16th, that we had our first delivery. It was 6:30 in the morning just before I start the morning tasks feeding and watering the livestock. I managed to complete all I needed to do, pen up and check all was well with the newborn lamb and its mother, assist Janet to get set up for the morning following her hip replacement surgery and I still got to 9am Mass in time. 

About mid-day twins arrived from another ewe. She had difficulty with the first one and I had to intervene to deliver it. She was a first time mum and her cervix was a bit tight and the birth was not progressing. I also had to do all the usual things you might have seen on farming programmes to get the lamb to take its first breath. The seccond of the twins was unproblematic. Mum is very attentive to her newborns which is always reassuring. In the photogragh the lamb (a ewe lamb) is stained with meconium which is a typical sign of a difficult delivery.

Another set of twins today (so far - I'll check again at midnight). It looks like the delayed start by the ram means that the lambs are all arriving in quick succession. 

.