Well done, boys

The three tups, Merlin, Charlie and Jarvis have been out with their respective groups of ewes for just over five weeks now, and everything has a coloured bottom of one sort or another, so if there are no disasters, lambing will be a fairly compact five weeks, but it will be quite crowded at times in the sheds! Lets hope for plenty of spring grass and sunshine.

Autumn's new additions

Carlisle Rare Breeds sale at the end
of september saw us come home with 7 new shetlands and a jacob gimmer lamb. Three further jacobs have been purchased locally, and a trip to Newcastleton last week saw the arrival on farm of six blue-grey heifers aged between 6 and 12 months. These are a very hardy breed, a cross between galloway and whitebred shorthorn, and are intended to graze our marsh areas to help with the conservation aims, and then later to breed from.

After the drought came the rain, and it rained for the better part of July and most of August. Further fields of silage were snatched in short dry spells and we now have enough to see us through the winter and also some to sell, despite the lower yields this year. The lambs were all weaned by mid-August, and a couple of loads have gone to market, and one small group sold for breeding. The gimmer lambs we are keeping are all named and double tagged with the new EID sets we have to use. Pebbles and Samson were weaned this weekend too - later because they were so much younger. Most of the ewes look well - fit not fat - but one or two are in the shed on a straw-based diet in an attempt to slim them down a bit before tupping. If they are fat they either do not get in lamb or only have one.
Marty the cat has been in the wars - he was missing last Sunday until teatime, when after an extensive all-day search, Kev found him in an old shed round the back of the farm. He was in quite a sorry state and not able to walk much. A trip to the vet revealed he had dislocated his elbow and had a pad on the rear foot torn nearly off down to the bone. He had the elbow re-set and strong antibiotics and stitches to deal with the pad injury. He is very frustrated as we a are having to keep him in a cage to prevent him going outside and aggravating the problems.

And now a drought......

Who would have believed that after all the water we had only 7 months ago that we would now be in the middle of one of the driest ever summers. With a private water supply, we have been more aware of this for longer than most people - the stream that runs through the field adjacent to the house has been virtually dry for over a month now. We still have enough water and an overflow but have to monitor it carefully and will have to move cattle and sheep away from the house supply if necessary.
All the cows have calved and we have four boys and only one girl - we had been hoping for at least half and half in our vain attempt to breed our own replacement cows. So this year we have booked a limousin bull to hire and we will sell on the calves at the usual 12 months old and buy breeding heifers - we aim to have a half Salers and half Angus cross herd, hopefully about 15 cows in a couple of years.
We have been approached by Natural England and are going to enter Higher Level Stewardship in the new year. This means working to achieve both conservation aims as well as an efficiently run farm.

Pixie's surprise

One of our oldest sheep, Pixie, was scanned as not in lamb in December and because she is such a pet, was allowed to run with Jarvis for a few weeks more - the result is a June lamb, Pebbles. They are in the back field with the pet lambs and Pixie is very protective and constantly butting the pets.

Kev's rescue mission

Kev had noticed that a tawny owl had been nesting in our bottom shed and on Thursday evening, he was working in the bottom yard when he noticed an owlet sat on the ground. A quick telephone call to a local sanctuary confirmed that it would most likely perish if not put back in the nest box - it had obviously tried to fly a little too soon!

All seems well and mum seems to have come back to the box too, so its just fingers crossed now.

The great escape

On a happier note, the six pet lambs were turned out last week having been weaned off milk, and they loved the freedom.

Jazz and her boys, however, have joined the larger group of sheep in the field across the road, so she is back with her other Jacob friends.

Sad news

After looking like she was going to come through all her various problems, sadly this morning little Splinty had died - it was sudden and unexpected, as she had not looked ill. However, Splinty was a victim of nature, as she was conceived during last year's terrible floods when all the sheep had to go in together, and Splinty was one of a couple of lambs that were in-bred due to the Mums running with their own father, Charlie the tup, for a few days. This was probably why she had her leg problems, and was most likely why something caused her to just die. It was a very sad moment, for me and for her mum Cassie. RIP Splinty.

An update on Splinty

Splinty has done really well and has been out in the back field with Rock and Roll and both Mums for a couple of weeks now. She wore the splints for about two and a half weeks, and when she first went outside we would shut her and Cassie in at night in a little corner that is fenced off so that she had to rest a little, and gradually her legs got stronger and straighter. As you can see from the photos, she looks super, as do Rock and Roll!

Samson

Sooty lambed on Tuesday evening - she has had a cracking little tup lamb and we have called him Samson. She is very proud of him and very protective when the bigger lambs try to have a closer look at him.

I survived!

Both the One Day Event and Lambing!

Lambing was completed (if you don't count Sooty who should be able to manage herself I hope) last Saturday - the final mule had to have a lot of help as the lamb was quite big and had twisted a little bit in its attempts to be born, but all's well that ends well.
Both horses were stars at the One Day Event, especially Fizz who had the best dressage score of the day. They both jumped double clear and were second in their respective classes. It wont be long before Rachel can ride again so she will be stealing him back I guess. Never mind, I get to take him out once more on Sunday at a pony club one day event.

Horsey stuff

Three weeks ago, just after Easter, Rachel had appendicitis and spent two days in hospital, undergoing keyhole surgery. She was quite poorly for a few days and is not allowed to ride horses for a minimum of four weeks. I have, therefore, been given the delightful task of getting Fizz fit as well as Sonny, and the dubious pleasure of competing the Riding Club One Day Event on him. I asked if we could do novice but she said 'No' so we are having to do intermediate - 2'9" jumps and I haven't jumped Fizz for about three years!
First thing was he had to go on a radical diet as his belly was so big it pushed his saddle forward so I felt like I was sitting on his neck - his haylage is now all measured out - evry last little bit and I dont feel sorry for him like Rachel does!! He looks a lot better already but needs to lose about 50 kilos to be event fit, so we are doing endurance training and lots of stretching exercises.
both horses are doing the Riding Club Dressage to Music class at the end of May, so we have also been working out suitable music and a routine for that - it is quite addictive, but Kev doesn't rate my singing along out loud to my i-pod, he thinks I want locked up.

Jazz and her boys, Rock and Roll

Jazz is one of the four Jacob gimmers we bought last September. They have all four had black lambs, and Jazz had twins. They were very weak at first but Rachel and I gave Jazz a radical haircut to show the way clearly to the milk! After a couple of days of special care, they were soon bouncing around as befits their names.

Meet Splinty

Splinty was born very early on Saturday morning 2 weeks ago - it was a very difficult birth as both her legs were back, meaning that they were still tucked back inside the womb whilst her head was well on its way out. I managed to manipulate one leg forward and fortunately the other was totally straight back and not bent, so I was able to pull her out as there was no room to get the other leg forward. Her head was quite swollen for a few hours due to the pressure she had been under, but she recovered well and was soon up and sucking. It became apparent quite soon though, that her legs were slightly twisted and also she was knuckled over on her fetlocks. Often in mild cases this will correct itself but this was too much, so off she went to the vets on Monday morning for a check up and on went the splints. She is actually very nimble on them, and can do all sorts of spring lamb stuff, and even seems quite proud of them! Her mum, Cassie, loves her very much despite the fact that she is definitely different!

Jill's babies

Sprite and Jill

Sprite is a herdwick who is 4yrs old and was hand reared by Rachel. The first time she lambed she loved her lamb but definitely did not want him to suckle her so she had to be very closely monitored. Last year she was fine just having one lamb, all by herself, Lilt. This year however, she has had twins, Dandelion and Burdock, and much as she loves them both only Burdock is allowed to suckle any time he likes - Dandelion is kept at arms length. She seemed to come round a little and acceptm her, but after a few days in the field, Dandelion was looking more than a little hungry last night. So, back in they all came, and Sprite is now in the Dancing Gate version of sheep borstal - a fairly small pen where she can not get away too easily, and she is handheld too, three times a day - she will rear BOTH lambs and lump it!

Guess she wouldn't fancy being Jill, another herdwick, who has triplets, but who cares for them all beautifully.

sleepless nights!

Well, I'm still here but haven't had much time to post as lambing has got into full swing. Six of the ewes having triplets have lambed and so far four of them are coping fine with their lambs. We aim to leave them as long as possible but if a lamb slips back we take it off (pet lamb!!). Toffee lambed a few hours before Pearl who was having a single so I tried a wet adoption where you put the adoptee lamb with the newborn and the birth fluids and rub them well together and hope the ewe is convinced she had two lambs. It is sort of working but she is not 100% sure so until he is really strong to keep up with her and the other lamb, they will stay in an individual pen.
Ten of the ewes and their lambs went out for about a week but because of the awful rain that group has come back into one of the sheds for a day or two, as we prefer the lambs not to slip back because of cold, wet weather and also because their is still not much grass so the less it is trampled in the better.
Most of the ewes have plenty of milk but one or two have suffered with the long cold winter and are taking a couple of days to come into milk - in the wild these lambs would die as they need colostrum within an hour or two or they become hypothermic. We have got through two tubs of artificial colostrum already.
Our busiest weekend approaches with over thirty ewes to lamb between now and next Tuesday.

A trauma for Eve (and Me!)

I got up this morning to discover Eve, who had been fast asleep at 3am checks, trying to lamb but the lamb had not presented his legs and so was stuck with just his head out. Quick work by me and Kev got her tipped slightly upside down to make a bit more room and I managed to get one of his legs forward and deliver him - and despite his ordeal, he was fine. After half an hour, she gave birth with just a little help to his twin. All are doing fine, and after the first day, Eve, Gizmo and their lambs moved into a bigger shed together. They can all go out as soon as there is some grass for them - maybe it will start to grow this week as the weather is a bit warmer and some rain is forecast for Thursday.
All the other pregnant ewes have had their vaccinations (which helps to give the lambs extra immunity to several diseases via the colostrum, the first milk) and there are now 32 ewes in the main shed. Unfortunately one of the shetlands who was having triplets in about a month shed her lambs so she has had to go on antibiotics and be isolated from the others for a short while and I have my fingers crossed that it was just an isolated incident due to improper development rahter than the start of an abortion storm. Our flock is vaccinated against toxoplasmosis - one cause of abortion passed via hay, straw etc contaminated by young kittens/cats. However, we have not yet vaccinated against enzootic abortion, but also who knows what bacteria etc the sheep were exposed to during the floods which is when they were in the early stages of pregnancy.

All has gone quiet again.

Gizmo and her babies are doing really well - she has recovered from the mastitis and I took them to the cow pasture yesterday for a couple of hours but there cant be any grass as she frogmarched them round the field a couple of times at full speed (well, Gizmo's full speed, but it was quite fast!). It was cold in the wind, though so I brought them back in after a couple of hours. Nobody else looks like lambing yet, but on last night's 3am check I found the girls had been 'playing' with the water supply and pulled a joint apart so there was quite a lot of water gushing into the lambing shed so I had to turn off the stop tap until a more sociable hour when Kev could fix it. We brought five more sheep into the shed today, ones having single lambs, although one looks quite enormous so we'll have to watch her in case the scanner got it wrong as she hasn't had much feed and so would maybe struggle if she did have twins.
Mother's Day brought a lunch voucher for Lyzzick Hall including a bottle of bubbly from Matt, and a set of Rachel's beautiful hand-made jewelry, so they are both in the good books at the moment - long may it last.

Little cuties

More pics of gizmo and babies

What a day!

Well, Gizmo gave us our very own 'lambing live' on Tuesday night. We went down to check her just before 8pm and she was just popping the water bag out so we gave her half an hour to get on with it. Rachel was over the moon - in eight years of lambing sheep no lambs have ever arrived on her birthday, so this was a first. However when we went back to check it was apparent that things were not going to be straightforward, as she was only trying a little bit and then sort of giving up. An examination quickly revealed that the first lamb was lying sideways on to the womb entrance and although I could feel the front legs of the next lamb I couldn't find the head or tail of the lamb whose back and ribs I could feel and I couldn't move him out of the way. We immediately decided to whizz her down to our vet as this was beyond my expertise and with three live lambs I wasn't for taking any risks. Anyway, all's well that ends well and the vet expertly turned him round and got him out closely followed by a brother and a sister. Gizmo is a wonderful Mum and got them dried and well fed really quickly.

The next morning, however, I noticed a cold area on her udder - the dreaded mastitis - so as well as the antibiotics that the vet had given her for the difficult lambing, I gave her a different one that helps fight mastitis. She is also still getting a daily dose of her high energy 'medicine' which she loves, lots of her favourite mix (Jim Peet's 321) and some soaked sugar beet shreds.

Just to complete the hectic twenty four hours, one of the young ewes was discovered with a slight prolapse which had to be cleaned and popped back inside and then she was strapped into a harness which she will wear for the next month until she lambs. This will hopefully stop her straining and so stop it happening again. She is now Mathilda's new companion so that I can keep a close eye on her.

The horses, or more specifically Buster, also got in on the act - he came in last night with possibly the most swollen head I have ever seen - you could not see his eyes at all, he was slightly trembling and his breathing was elevated - a classical allergic reaction, but heaven knows what to, the vet suggesting an insect bite as the most likely cause. He was given a steroid injection intravenously by James from our vets. He was very sweaty through night but was much better by this morning.

Hello to Jamie and Holly

The guests in the holiday house in February half term included Jamie and Holly, who absolutely loved the horses and very kindly sent us a lovely hand-drawn picture of Sonny and Fizz once they had returned home - thank you both very much, Fizz loved it and added it to his fan mail collection - make sure you keep up-to-date with his activities by following his blog too.

It's a waiting game

I have spent the last week on tenterhooks as Gizmo approaches the end of her pregnancy. She is absolutely huge at the moment and last week we separated her and her Mum Mathilda (for company) out from the others in the shed and put her in a little pen of her own so that she did not get knocked about too much in these last few days. I have also started giving her a small measure of twin lamb formula which helps maintain her energy levels at this late stage. She is supposedly due on Friday but does tend to lamb early so watch this space!

Tucked up warm (sort of!)

I brought the first group of sheep in today, as with snow forecast for tonight I thought those having triplets would appreciate a bit of comfort and shelter. They were all wormed and stood in the footbath for a good 5 minutes each and then put in the big shed. It was so cold today that the little drip from the pipe supplying their water had formed an icicle on the ground even inside the shed! A fair few of the twin-carrying ewes will come in too this week, although they have been enjoying the dry weather and the little bits of sunshine each day, if its going to be wet and miserable they will be happier inside.

Maternity wards nearly ready!

I've been busy this week pressure washing the big lambing shed and today I sprayed all the walls and floor with disinfectant. Once its dry, I can get some straw in and then the first batch of ewes can come in, although they will stay out until next weekend unless the weather turns nasty.
We've had lime spread on some of the fields this week to bring up the pH as the soil analysis done last spring showed a lot of fields were too acid for the fertiliser to work really well. Now we need some sunshine to warm things up and get a little bit of grass to grow.

The horses are getting quite fit now after a month of walking and trotting. They have both had a full clip (except for Fizz's head as he wont let us touch that) and are working for up to an hour a day. Fizz had not been out since late November due to an injury and being on box rest until that healed. We find it difficult to know what to do for the best with him as he behaves terribly in the field and this is usually where he injures himself, but after 3 months, he needed to go out as he was becoming too excitable and a bit scary to ride. He was quite stupid and galloped round like a nutcase for about 10 minutes, at times the speed was hair-raising, and yes, he tweaked something as he came in slightly lame. However, on Sunday morning he was not noticeably lame, so he will continue with a couple more weeks walking to let it settle down, and Sonny will go to the Pony Club rally this week.

Sonny will be for sale this summer as he has the potential to go further than I have the time and money to take him. This will be sad, if he goes, but if he has the ability to succeed at higher levels, now is the right time to give him that chance.

Rachel is returning to university in September to do her PGCE as she wants to teach primary school, so time will be at a premium as she will not be around to help me much over the winter.

We have been introducing Buster to riding (see pic) and this will need to be carried on through the winter, and in the spring when he is four years old, he will be able to do his first ridden classes. Rachel has said that I can ride Fizz next year if Sonny has been sold -thanks Rachel!

How many lambs?

All the groups of sheep have now been scanned and I am pleased with the results especially considering what they all went through in November. We have 14 sets of triplets due - rather too many for my liking as if all is going well we often leave them all on if the ewe looks like she is coping, and with this many sets it will be harder to keep a check. Several of this group have had triplets before - Gizmo, Toffee, Steffi, Joey, Jill (pictured right) and Blanche, and also Sacha who was Percy's mum so as she rejected him last year she will need to be watched carefully.
Also in with this group at the moment is Betty, one of the few ewes we have with horns. They are only small scur-type horns, and unfortunately she must have banged one quite badly at the trough as she stopped going for food and on examination it is quite sore. She has had antibiotic and lots of blue spray and this will hopefully keep her okay until she lambs mid-March. Then, it will be re-assessed and the vet may have to remove it. She currently eats her ration out of one of my little blue buckets while I stand guard to stop any of the others trying to steal it!
Most of the young sheep are having singles which is good as they cope better with one first time round.

Milder weather this last couple of days has allowed us to hack the two event horses out (Sonny and Fizz). We are also starting to back Buster, and although he doesn't mind Rachel on his back, he has no concept of forward movement at the moment - we persevered with patience and me on Sonny leading him and got him along the old road and back today.
It was quite alarming yesterday as the thaw was in full flow to see how fast water levels rose - our main stream and the river Derwent were both about to burst their banks at the peak and the lonnin was also flooded somewhat - it all went back down as quickly as it came up, thankfully.
This weekend I have got most of the inlamb ewes dosed for liver fluke as they were coughing a bit and the vet said it was a possible cause - especially as they have been living on wet pastures since about June. We have to dose them about every 10 weeks living in this flood plain. Very soon those having triplets will come inside until they lamb - the shed has a lovely new roof and just needs a hot pressure wash.

Gizmo -supermum!!

Gizmo has been scanned as having triplets - she looks happy, doesn't she!

from flooded to frozen in six weeks

Six weeks ago, the lonnin stream overflowed during the floods, washing a lot of gravel out which all had to be repaired. Now, its reduced to a small trickle under a thick bank of ice. Both the Keswick lakes are freezing over, too

New shoes but nowhere to go

Fizz and Sonny had their shoes put back on just before Christmas in anticipation of starting their 2010 fittening programme - I think their has been frost ever since! So, Fizz is still confined to his stable due to behaving badly in the field and laming himself when given the chance, and Sonny has the occasional day out on his own in the field due to his constant niggling of the others to (play)fight if he goes out in company. Buster and Roscoe go out during the day and Jaffa lives out but now has two rugs on.
On Christmas evening, we tucked Fizz, Sonny and Roscoe up in their stables and fed Buster and Jaffa at the gate at 5pm - four hours later the police called to say some horses were out, were they ours, and it was them - I thought they must have broken the fence, but someone had opened the gate, untwisted the barb wire round it and pushed it inwards to open it - A stray walker, a drunken prank or an attempted theft? Nothing has been ruled out and those that were not microchipped now are, which along with the ones that are freezebranded at least will help us to find them if they get out again and make it more difficult for people to move them if they are stolen.
Hopefully we will soon be able to get them all back into work, with several weeks of road work to strengthen the legs first, and then some local dressage classes before lambing starts.

Happy New Year 2010

Christmas has been and gone, with plenty of food and a little bit of drink, and an awful lot of cold weather. Its just getting colder and colder now and it makes life on the farm more difficult as most of the water troughs are frozen up and any grass there was is under snow or frozen solid. It is safe to say the ewes are currently eating us out of house and home! Each day over 100 gallons of water have to be carried by bucket to the cows and to the various fields of sheep.

The first batch of sheep were scanned on 28th December, and 14 are carrying triplets, so these have been separated to be given extra feed. Pixie, one of our older ewes and Rachel's favourite, was not in lamb so she has been chucked back in with Jarvis and if it works this time this will be lambs in June.