Winter lambing 2011
Here at Penpont farm we have a flock of 750 sheep that will lamb in two parts, the first 300, our winter lambs, start at the begining of November and continue through until a week before Christmas. The second flock will then be scanned in Jan 2012 and lamb in Mar and Apr. All the sheep are brought into our large lambing sheds here on the farm, to keep them out of the winter weather and for a safe place for the new born lambs to find their feet.
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Once we start, there will be a constant stream of baby lambs being born both day and night. When a lamb is first born it is moved along with its mother to an individual cubicle where the mother and lamb can be monitored for a couple of days, to check that the baby lamb is feeding correctly and until we feel it is ready to be taken out into a field to start its life.
Here is a clip of Gav lambing a single lamb last year on the farm.
Once the newborn lambs and their mothers are ready they are taken out into a field close to the farm and will be checked morning and evening to make sure everything is fine and that the lambs are growing as they should be.
This year we had our sheep scanned by our local scanning man in Sep and we are expecting:
166 Doubles
107 Singles
15 Trebles
1 Quad
and 13 of which were scanned and found not to be in lamb. We have only ever had one other year when a Quad was born successfully, about 20 years ago. Here's a picture of Oliver with them a couple of days after they were born.
