As more ewes lamb space within the lambing shed naturally decreases, and after a few days getting acclimatised to their new-borns, ewes and lambs must be moved from individual pens into bigger nursery pens alongside other ewes and lambs. As lambs grow older they require more space to roam around, and as sheep are social animals it is important that from a young age lambs become comfortable around each other.

Making up a nursery pen for older lambs and their mothers, allows us to free up space in individual pens for the next upcoming birth. Before being moved across into nursery pens, ewes and lambs must be marked and numbered up. Numbering lambs and ewes helps us identify a ewe and her lambs and allows us to differentiate between the numerous ewes and lambs both out in the field and inside the nursery pen. Different farmers will have their own system of numbering lambs and ewes. At scanning, we will mark ewes with varying colours depending on the number of lambs they are carrying. For example, a ewe carrying twins will be marked red, whilst a ewe carrying just one lamb will be marked blue, triplets green. Consequently when marking and numbering our lambs, singles will be numbered in blue, twins in red and triplets if the ewe can rear three are marked green. Marking and numbering lambs is an important way to identify which lamb is which.

Maintaining the health and well-being of ewes that have lambed is also of paramount importance as lambs grow older. In order to ensure lambs grow and develop at a strong rate it is crucial that ewes are given plenty of food and water after giving birth. Ewes with new-born lambs specifically require a lot of water to produce the milk needed to maintain a young lamb’s health and enable it to grow quickly. If ewes are not fed well or provided with enough water, not only can they lose condition and energy but the loss in milk production will hinder and restrict a lamb’s growth.

The recent wet weather has led to us keeping many of our lambs in longer than usual and as the weather improves it is important that any lame ewes are caught and treated, at the same time we worm-drench the ewes to maintain their health. During the build-up to lambing it becomes more difficult to treat any lameness in the flock as the traditional method of turning over a ewe on to her back can be very dangerous when ewes are heavy in lamb. Therefore the best time to solve any lameness is after a ewe has lambed and before she is turned back outside with her lamb into fields of hopefully new spring grass.

We are now gradually moving more and more lambs outside to create more space inside the shed, although the wet weather means that we are having to split more of the flock between several fields to avoid causing too much damage to fields flooded from the recent storms. Splitting the flock and deciding which ewes and lambs go where is an important decision and over the next couple of weeks I will explain how we do this to ensure each lamb gets the best possible care and conditions to grow and develop at a critical stage in their life.

If you have any questions on lambing please feel free to email me on [email protected] and I would be happy to help in anyway I can.