Good morning Mick and all from a drizzly (again!) Wiltshire. Nothing to report from the maternity ward yet - just lots of very fat ladies letting out little huffs and sighs as they waddle about with their heavy loads! Maybe I should offer them all a hot curry for tea tonight to get things moving!!
‘June’ is still causing me some concern/amusement - she has decided that she doesn’t want to eat her ewe-rolls (the sheep feed that they have twice a day in the run up and during lambing) from the floor, but will only eat them either fed by hand or from a bucket without the rest of the rabble around! So she now has to be ushered into an individual pen at feed time so she can enjoy her lunch in peace. “A table for one, if you please!” I think June has gone a bit posh!
Somebody asked yesterday - sorry, I can’t remember who - how I know if a ewes been covered by the rams. The rams have a coloured, oily paint (raddle) rubbed onto their chests at tupping time. Yellow for the first week, then red for the second, then blue. As they do the deed, they leave a raddle mark on the ewe. The ewes are scanned 3 moths later so we can see if they are in lamb and how many lambs they are carrying and I add a spray of paint on their backs to reflect this, ie red dot for a single lamb, no mark for twins, blue mark for triplets, orange stripe for empty. We hope for as close to 200% of lambs as possible, that is each ewe pregnant with twins in an ideal world. I hope I’ve explained that ok?
Today is going to be spent mucking out and keeping everything as clean and dry as possible - cleanliness is next to godliness (!) at lambing time, especially when everywhere is mud, mud and more wet mud! Hurry up sunshine pleeeeeease!
Just adding my condolences to auntiFlo - I’m so sorry for the loss of you brother ?. I am so jealous of the beautiful quilt - such talent. Wishing you all the best day possible.