I had to feed Ant and Dec as soon as I got up. Ant drank enthusiastically but Dec didn’t drink as well as he had the night before. Neither of them looked empty though. It’s still early days with them though so hopefully they will be ok. I ate my breakfast as fast as I could so that I could make the massive amount of milk required for the other 8 (9 if I included Apache) pet lambs.
I was running a bit late so I asked Chloe to check on Apache while she waited for me. She had a quick look but Apache was missing. So she looked all over the well field. She went all the way up the top, over the far side and in the end she had to go searching through the rushes. My bad. I hadn’t mentioned how boggy it is there. Chloe nearly got stuck! She couldn’t find Apache anywhere so she headed back to the barn to wait for me. Literally a few minutes later, I arrived. “How is she? Did you find her?” Chloe told me the whole story. She was worried she was going to have to tell me that she couldn’t find Apache. But there she was, back in the barn where she had been with her mother! We were so pleased she was safe. Even though she doesn’t trust us yet, she had come back to the place of safety. Bless her.
Next job was to feed all the lambs. What can I say? It’s chaos. 8 mouths, four teats. Difficult. With everyone eventually done we prepared some milk for Apache. Chloe sat on the folding chair to feed her. Apache is too nervous to drink. We decided to tube her in order to give her a full belly. With that done, she retreated to the pen. I took a bucket of ewe rolls out to the silvernoses and we fed them on our way to Cai. We got the bucket for the outfield sheep. I called them and Chloe fed them. After that we went over to the cabbage field to start our check.
There were a few ewes and lambs in there. One of the lambs was a twin. But unfortunately there was only one of them. We struggled to read the number. 6 maybe? While we were looking for it’s twin, Chloe went down and I went up. When I was by the wall I noticed an ewe in the Chestnuts. That would be one of our ewes 🤦♀️ That went on the back burner though. We had to find the other twin and mother ewe first. We hadn’t long fed the sheep so the mother could still be there. It was likely the other twin was with the mother, or so hoped. “We’ll come back and check after we’ve been around”
No problems over the quarry way so we checked in the nursery. Two lambs. No ewes. Not again mun! They weren’t twins as they weren’t numbered and not brand new lambs. The smaller of the two had been marked by me as an ewe lamb so she was about 2 weeks old at least. She was hunched over and did not look well at all. We caught her. She was wet because of the rain. I slipped my rucksack off my shoulders onto the floor. My first thought was to take her temperature but when I caught her she wasn’t cold. “I’m going to give her Lamb Boost. It will tide her over while we find her mother.” The Lamb Boost was administered and we put the lamb back down. There weren’t any ewes in the vicinity. We went over to the Bedw as there were three ewes there. We set them back through the nursery but no one claimed her. “We’ll quickly check the alpacas and then hopefully her mother will be back for her by then.”
All the alpacas were fine. We didn’t feed them because of the rain. We collected the mule because we were going to muck the pen out. I reached in my pocket. No key. I started rummaging through all my pockets. “You left it in the bucket in the barn didn’t you?” Chloe asked. “Yep!” When we got back up the slope we checked the nursery again. She wasn’t there. Ooh! Then we saw her over the other side of the brook. Alone. Right, we’ll give her mother a bit longer while we got the ewe out of the Chestnuts.
Off we went. Josh had said we could just go and get her but I didn’t like to without knocking the door. We did knock but didn’t get an answer. We had a look around but couldn’t find her. Well that was just great wasn’t it 🤦♀️ We walked all the way back down the lane and tried the bottom gate. It’s one of the ones with a grid on the bottom. There was no way I was going to be able to climb it. Chloe hopped over easily and looked for the ewe. No bloody sign whatsoever!!! We saw the place where she was getting in though. Neil messaged to say it was probably Broken Leg. She has number 8 twins. That made sense. Josh had told me that one of the number 8s was badly written and looked like a 6. “Cabbage field then to see if she’s back.” Off we went. She wasn’t there either. I was getting wound up now. I’m giving up on her. Let’s check the nursery lamb”
Off we went. It was raining again now too. When we walked passed the pen, there was Broken Leg with her twins, looking smug as hell. I gave her a look. She didn’t care. She showed zero remorse. I’m annoyed with her now.
No lamb in the nursery or on the other side of the brook. We went down the steep slope. This was the one I fell on so I was going much slower than Chloe. “NO!” Chloe ran. I went as fast as I could manage. I could see the little was lamb lying flat out. She started thrashing her legs and her head was thrown back. I have seen this plenty of times in my lifetime. She was dying. 😞 Chloe picked her up. I suggested going over closer to the wall where there was more shelter. I didn’t hold out much hope. I didn’t know what was wrong but she looked really bad. We took her in the mule to the barn. Chloe lay her down and I looked up the symptoms online. With a bit more of an idea I went onto a Facebook group called Ladies Who Lamb. I did a search on that site. From there I had something to try. It could be meningitis so I needed to try Vitamin B. I mixed up the vitamin with some glucose and got the tubing kit. I started by giving her some pain relief and then tubed the vitamin glucose mix. I wasn’t hopeful but at least she wouldn’t be in pain.
The other lambs were happy to have us around. Some of them slept at our feet, other ones were climbing all over us. We wanted to stay with the little ewe lamb though. Lazarus started bouncing about and then went out through the gate. He likes going out. He’s always doing it. This time, Mabel followed him. We watched them to distract us from the sad situation. Even though he’s at least 3 weeks older, Mabel and Lazarus are the same size. The bounced their way up the wellfield. Living their best lives.
We left them a while as they were staying together and grazing. The little ewe lamb’s breathing was shallower. I decided it was time to get Lazarus and Mabel back in. I called “Come on then” They both looked up and began running towards us. We were both impressed with them. Then they saw another lamb and veered off. Very easily distracted. I called again. They looked up but did not come. “Come on then” I called too loudly. Every single ewe in the field looked in my direction and began running full speed down through field. This spurred the lambs on and they got back to the barn first. Close call though. The rain started a few minutes after they got in. The rain is loud on then barn roof. It got louder and louder. Hailstones! “Baaa!” It was Caramel running down the field asking to come in the barn. Unfortunately I couldn’t let her in because she would eat the lambs’ food. I told her to go up to the machinery shed. Lazarus and Mabel were so lucky to have got back in time!
It was time for us to go home. We were just waiting for the hailstones to stop. Our job for today had been to muck out but we didn’t do any of that. We had been rushing round rescuing lambs. We had done all we could for the little ewe lamb for now. Josh checked her later and she was still alive. But when he got back from feeding the alpacas, she had unfortunately died. 😞
Helen x
