16 to come

Rather than waiting and seeing which of our sheep are pregnant, we decided this year to get them scanned.
Easy !

Round up the sheep .  Not easy as they often don't wish to be rounded.  But  a couple of days of planning and they are all together, adjacent to where the action will be.

 the man with his van, containing an ultrasound scanner, backs up and we line the sheep up

Once they are at the front of the queue,

a snatched image of the scanner. 

 Here is  is a better youtube clip of the  scan you get with sheep

and once scanned , they were lined up to receive a dose of minerals ( Orkney  is deficient ins some key minerals ).

4 of them have twins and the other 8 all have singletons .
That is potentially 16 lambs come May , if they all carry all of the foetuses to term.

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.