Today both Muckle the sheep and Parsley the cow were due to give birth. Fortunately, only one of them chose to and it was Muckle. These two (a boy – white – and a girl) now bring our total to 14 lambs: 6 males and 8 females. Muckle must have given birth in the early hours because by the time we had started our checking (around 7.30am-ish), these two were very dry. She obviously went into labour just outside the field shelter (we saw the burst waters and afterbirth there) but when we arrived, she had one lamb in one side of the shelter and one in the other, so we moved them both to the same side and then penned all three together. Muckle was a little distracted by the other sheep and indeed the alpacas who had of course wandered up to say hello, and so we thought it best to give them some privacy and allow the much needed mothering to take place.
We also wanted to ensure that both lambs were drinking so we could be sure that they were getting the colostrum they needed and that Muckle was happy to stand for them. The girl latched on and suckled very quickly and we suspect she had already had a good drink or two. The boy was less confident and keen but we got him going in the end and then an hour or so later when we went back to check, we saw him suckling all on his own too!!
His navel was interesting with a huge amount of cord still attached, much of it quite thick and wide. We gave both his and the girl’s a good spray of iodine to reduce the risk of infection, a wet navel being a perfect entry point for nasty bacteria!!
The three of them had a very quiet rest of the day and we left them penned up tonight, mainly so we can check the navels again in the morning to make sure they have dried off. They are on clean bedding as we popped a load of fresh straw in their pen so fingers crossed all will be well!!!
We just have one sheep left to lamb now and she is due on Monday. We expect not to be kept waiting as so far the Shetlands have lambed on or incredibly close to their due dates. And in between times of course we may get our first calf, although we don’t think Parsley is that close yet!!!