In the early hours this morning, our Jacob sheep decided to start lambing...
Nigel had noticed that she was quite hotchy when he went to check Mitsie at midnight, so we set the alarm for 3.00 am..... with droopy eyelids we dragged ourselves into the car and went back to the barn to see what was going on...
She was definitely straining by then but hadn't dilated properly.... as we had had such problems with Dora and ring womb, who had needed a c-section, we rang the vet. Davinia, who sounded just as groggy as us, came out and with her very small hands managed to deliver the triplets, something that we would have had trouble with....... I have to confess that I went back to bed, as it didn't need all of us loosing a whole night sleep!...
At 7.00 I returned to check them all, and took some colostrum in a bottle with me, just in case there was any difficulty...... all were ok, although I couldn't get any milk out of one teat, so asked Nigel to have a look before he went to work..... he confirmed it. Later, after feeding the lambs to keep them going, we milked her out into a bottle and fed it to the lambs...... all were filled and mum felt much better.... they will now smell of her too... we watched as they all started to suck from the one working teat...... we'll have to watch them carefully!
The only sheep that was having trouble was Mitsie..... she has been suffering from twin lamb decease, and had started licking all the Jacob lambs through the dividing gate, she was so intent on adopting them that she had got herself into a real lather...... I'll let you know more details about her later, but she's ok.. shes expecting triplets any day! I moved her along to give the Jacob some space and to let her relax with her new family. It took hours for Mitsie to calm down and she's now exhausted!
At lunch time I went for my midday visit, only to find that Smudge had given birth to her twins, with no help whatsoever..... so I put them all in a pen to bond... she's a brilliant mum and parked them while she tucked into an extra meal and half a bucket of water!
Nigel had noticed that she was quite hotchy when he went to check Mitsie at midnight, so we set the alarm for 3.00 am..... with droopy eyelids we dragged ourselves into the car and went back to the barn to see what was going on...
She was definitely straining by then but hadn't dilated properly.... as we had had such problems with Dora and ring womb, who had needed a c-section, we rang the vet. Davinia, who sounded just as groggy as us, came out and with her very small hands managed to deliver the triplets, something that we would have had trouble with....... I have to confess that I went back to bed, as it didn't need all of us loosing a whole night sleep!...
At 7.00 I returned to check them all, and took some colostrum in a bottle with me, just in case there was any difficulty...... all were ok, although I couldn't get any milk out of one teat, so asked Nigel to have a look before he went to work..... he confirmed it. Later, after feeding the lambs to keep them going, we milked her out into a bottle and fed it to the lambs...... all were filled and mum felt much better.... they will now smell of her too... we watched as they all started to suck from the one working teat...... we'll have to watch them carefully!
The only sheep that was having trouble was Mitsie..... she has been suffering from twin lamb decease, and had started licking all the Jacob lambs through the dividing gate, she was so intent on adopting them that she had got herself into a real lather...... I'll let you know more details about her later, but she's ok.. shes expecting triplets any day! I moved her along to give the Jacob some space and to let her relax with her new family. It took hours for Mitsie to calm down and she's now exhausted!
At lunch time I went for my midday visit, only to find that Smudge had given birth to her twins, with no help whatsoever..... so I put them all in a pen to bond... she's a brilliant mum and parked them while she tucked into an extra meal and half a bucket of water!
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