Cold, wet and miserable

 


And the Met office forecast shows the wind and then rain (11mm so far today .. 1/2 more-or-less) and the temperature  -feels like 3 degrees . So we've still got the fire going . At the end of May. Hmmmmmm. And to think the longest day is in  just under a month .





So the pond is  overflowing and the field next to it is waterlogged












 And the water is cascading down the path






And the stream is full.














And in the main field ,the water has created another stream and flooded bits of it
 






  

And the sheep are spending their time in the shelters, trying to get away from it all.

Fed up with it ?  How can you tell ? 

But we are alone. the Radio Orkney facebook page haas had a whinge about it all as well . As has the Orkney Lambing facebook page today

Emma and Nick

One of the hens ( named Emma) went broody and so was sat on a clutch of eggs, aiming to replace the ducks that are taken by otters (or, seeing how they go exploring,become roadkill) and to replace the laying hens as they get older and stop laying. Due to a bit of problem, they got cold half way through  and we werent sure that the chicks had survived and would keep on developing .

But one did.
So the mother  has one chick.
It has been named Nick. Better hope it is male.

And we wait for another one to go broody

sadly

we were told that one of the reasons  ( other than forgetting about it , if its the first of a multiple birth)  fro a ewe rejecting a lamb is that there is something 'not right' with it.

We brought the lamb inside , warmed it up and then attempted to bottle feed it.

but
- it was taking approx 30 mls when it should have been taking ~100ml each feed.
- there was coughing after each feed.
- it would stand stock still and look hypothermic  when it wasn't.

So in spite of our best efforts the lamb died this afternoon .

things we have learned

* we assume it wasn't feeding much when it was born. So it still looked relatively well after 36 hours of not feeding.
* perhaps it should be tube-fed instread of persevering with a bottle
* there are casualties during lambing.

Its not just us - there is a facebook page by a  farmer  in Orkney describing   their experiences  - An Orkney Lambing

Our own caddy lamb

So the Boreray ewe had twins, as reported 3 days ago . They seemed to be a bit slow to feed from the ewe, from our experience of not much at all. But we were letting them get on with it.


At the first check this morning , there was mother and one lamb , but no sign of the other.  A hunt found it , in a shelter, a long way from its mother. So it was taken out of the shelter and across the field to its mother, who showed little interest.




 And it also had the typical behaviour of hypothermia (low temperature), so it was brought inside , wrapped up as we don’t really have any heating lamp for these animals and slowly it warmed up

 So it wasn't wanted by its mother,  and wasn’t old enough to venture out and survive by itself, so we have erected a temporary ( ie a few weeks) home for it.

  


  And we are back to bottle -feeding it. The lamb weights 2.2 Kg , so that is 140 mls every 4 hours.  As it is a few days old and (we think) has had some colostrum from its mother  the feeding isn’t as intensive as it might otherwise be.

 Of course it may have been rejected by the mother because it is not healthy. She certainly  seems slow to feed and develops hypothermia easily. We will just have to wait and see.

Some TLC

So it was a wet and very windy night last night , the latest lambs 'first night'. Adn we were concerned about hypothermia - small lambs, a string wind and intermittent driving hail are not a welcoming combination. Some details are here of hypothermia in lambs

We didn’t measure their temperatures - memo for next time : it would be a good idea to see of the symptoms we were seeing ( 'mild hypothermia' ) were actually due to temperature of just due to general miserableness .

So we brought them inside for the night into a small pen and then added some straw bales and some hay and some food and water for the mother.

All OK the next morning , so let out into the big wide world.

Two more

I happened to be outside just after 1pm when one of the expectant eyes lay down int he field and her chin came up and she started straining. We suspected something was imminent because there was some 'bagging up ' - the udders swell and fill with milk. It can happen a few days or even weeks before lambing.

The rest of the days' events are eloquently described here.

New Boreray

They don't  lamb at night, they said.
So you wake up to this

And being Borerays the whole thing went on in the wind and rain, turning down a shelter that had been provided 'just in case',


 The lamb is the size of a small cat.

Mother and lamb doing well so far

Triplets

 We've been expecting the Gotlands'  to produce for the last 10 days or so.  Lambing doesn't usually occur through the night, but here ,at this time of the year the day starts at 4am and ends at about 11pm. So an eye needs to be kept on them in case they get complications . So this means checking on them about every 60-90 minutes. The first one lambed ( a singleton) at about 2pm .
The most pregnant ewe found her way back into the sheepshed mid morning, and then at 11am , one appeared. But we were expecting twins, so we waited .
A couple of hours later the 2nd one made an appearance

a brief  interruption whilst we helped clear the membranes and rupture the amniotic sac, and then the ewe did her bit

And then 30 minutes later the third one appeared 

So after a couple of hours we have mum and 3(male) lambs

things you run out of

I'm sure that we have all run out of things  over a bank holiday weekend.
The usual important things  that cant be obtained because of the weekend or the shops being closed.

• milk
• sugar
• tea

for example.  Of course it doesn't happen so often nowadays because of long supermarket opening hours. 

But we had a phone call at 930 pm on  a saturday night because a neighbour had run out of something. And with the Bank Holiday on monday  the relevant shops would be closed. 

And its surprising what counts as  essentials when you live in Orkney . 

Castration Rings 

They want to let their new lambs out into the fields and  don't want to do that until the rings are in place. You'd have   to recatch them to do it later.  We don't need them yet - our  ewes are still walking round, munching grass, looking very large. I've had a stern word with  our ewes, but they seem to be ignoring me .

so the neighbours  can use the packet until our lambs appear.