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.