And they keep on coming... today we welcomed this little fella to the Relaxed flock: a stocky looking ram lamb from Noss. It was a textbook birth, Noss was apart from the other sheep much of the afternoon and then around 6ish, she took herself into the field shelter and lay down. After a not inconsiderable amount of pushing and crying, out the lamb popped and Noss immediately set to work cleaning and licking. Noss is our most timid ewe and so we waited quietly, staying well back, to see if she was going to be okay for suckling. After twenty of so minutes and a fair amount of ‘near misses’ the ram lamb found what he was looking for and took his first colostrum. Noss was pretty unfazed by this and was indeed more concerned by our presence, even stamping her foot at one stage!! (A sheep’s version of ‘stay well back, do not approach’!!).
Out tally is now five ewe lambs and five ram lambs from six sheep which equates to a lambing rate of 180% with our percentage for assisted births still at a fabulous ZER0. As Noss had obviously bonded and the lamb was feeding well, (we checked on him again around 8 and 10 and he was suckling on both occasions), we decided to leave the pair of them in the field shelter rather than get them into the barn. Our final check of the night found them behind the pallets all snuggled up in the straw.
Noss gave birth just a day after her due date, same as Ness on Saturday so based on these timings, we feel we may be lamb-less for a couple of nights now as the next birth date is not till Wednesday when Whalsay is due.
In the meantime we will carry on enjoying those we have and watching them, as today, get bolder, more playful and running around in their lamb gangs which at times drives the mothers mad.. but never us: the sight of a group of lambs skipping, leaping, racing up and down our field in the sunshine, is always to be enjoyed!!!