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Lambing came to a successful end on Saturday with the birth of another set of twins - girls this time - and both arriving at a convenient hour for the shepherdess (the middle of a sunny afternoon rather than the tail end of a long cold night ( Read more... )

Triplets this time - two boys and a girl. The last boy was smaller than the others and later that morning we noticed he was having difficulty walking. Both front legs were knuckling over so he was walking on his wrists. This happens from time to time - no one’s completely sure of the reason but if you splint the legs the muscles can often ( Read more... )

Another batch of sleepless nights as we went through the ‘is she lambing, is she not?’ for two whole days convinced triplets were imminent any second. Our ewe looked enormous. She couldn’t stand without help. She looked ready to explode ( Read more... )

A bit later this year and twice as stressful. We rounded up the first two ewes on Saturday, walked them to the Lambing pens, set up the Lambcam baby monitor TV feed and waited. And waited. Then disaster struck - our first ewe had ringwomb (failure of the cervix to dilate) She’d been in labour for several hours and it was now 2am on a bank holiday. ( Read more... )

Living in the middle of nowhere has one great advantage - we hardly ever get colds. But the downside is that whenever I go abroad in the winter months... the cold germs set upon me the moment I reach the first big town. This time I thought I'd try Echinacea but the combination of train germs, Parisian metro germs, Dublin germs and aeroplane germs ( Read more... )

Lambing officially finished at eleven this morning with ... yet another set of triplets. That's three out of four giving a grand total of eleven lambs this year - enough for a football team (or soccer, if you're from the left side of the pond)

Here's one of the latest arrivals - barely two hours old - learning the joys of a good nuzzle.

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Lambing continues apace. And what a pace. Last year was the first year we ever had triplets. This year we've had two. And in between the triplets came twins so the maternity stables are somewhat full at the moment and we've had to take both stables from the horses ( Read more... )

The lambing season is officially underway. Nice Ewe, who was due yesterday and had been on the point of exploding since Monday, gave birth to triplets at eleven last night. For the interested, she had two girls and a boy weighing in at three tons each (according to the mother - who should know ( Read more... )

Lambing is officially underway. It's due to start Wednesday but as usual no one told the ewes who all look enormous. Yesterday we caught up Nice Ewe - who's due on Wednesday - and moved her into the deluxe maternity stable ward. Today we set up the LambCam so we can monitor her remotely from the house (and, as the camera has a microphone, listen to ( Read more... )