Despite being super-busy and exhausted, Graeme Bethune cherishes the time spent feeding his vulnerable lambs
LAMBING HAS drawn to an end. Just as well: I am on my knees with exhaustion, running on empty, working by reflex (no higher brain function used). It’s been extra hard this year - and yet it’s been successful. Good survival rates, nice lambs, and finally some good grazing for the mothers and their hooligans. All lambs have a touch of the street gang about them: they hang around in groups, lurking in mobs, chasing imaginary lures and driving their poor mothers to distraction.
Casper, my massively premature lamb which I told you about last month, thrives. He is seven weeks old now and is huge. Still has his puppy dog ears - in fact, he looks and is sized like a beagle. He is still getting two big bottles of milk a day, which he sucks down like a maniac. He follows me around the fields nibbling at my shorts and knees. He, in turn, is followed by his mum, who looks after him quite well although she never did come into milk.
Casper has been joined by five other bottle-fed lambs. They are in two batches: the Horde of Three, and twin Castlemilk Moorit white sheep crosses. The Horde of Three came together on the same morning in early April. Thin Ewe of Insta fame had her lamb, but had no milk and was too weak to rise. One lamb was dropped by his mum, who ran away; this sometimes happens with first-time mothers. And the last boy, his mother was bullied away by another baby-starved ewe, so the maternal bond never formed. These things happen occasionally, it’s just unusual to occur all on the same morning. It was very stressful!
I kept the Horde in a large pen with Thin Ewe. I contend that both ewes and lambs do better for the company. So now I was feeding Casper and the Horde day and night, while doing all the other lambing tasks. Thin Ewe took a week and some serious TLC to start to want to rise. She finally got up when the Horde started jumping on her like a trampoline. She was so narked that she got up, very wobbly, and demanded to go out. The Horde and Thin Ewe moved out to a small outside area and basked in the sun, and she happily began eating the grass. Hooray!
Just when I stopped feeding these lambs at night, we had a ewe die suddenly after having twins. This was the only ewe casualty of the lambing, and her dying shocked me. I had been giving her intense care; food, water, hay and a new drench full of calcium and sugar. She got up on t
