#LAMBMETRICS for the day
Drysdale & English Leicester Flocks
Born 30/8 – today: 8
Total Lambs Born: 34
Drysdale lambs (live total): [no purebreds in 2019]
DrysdaleX lambs (total): 20
English Leicester lambs (live total): 14
Total Sets of Twins born: 7
Total Sets of Triplets born: 0
Total ewe lambs: 16
Total ram lambs: 18
Ewes lambed /68: 27 (39.7 %)
Lamb % : 126 % [live]
Assisted/Dystocias: 4
Losses: 0
Notable Midwifery tales:
Lamb-wise, things calmed for a couple of days but back to four ewes lambing today. Glad to be getting them whittled down.
Currently, there are two sets of twins (English Leicester) on the bottle due to their mums having insufficient milk. That’s making a bit of work (and taking up time) but they’ve responded well at this stage. This issue is one reason why we tend to pen overnight the new mums to make sure the lambs are getting sufficient milk. It also helps make them all very calm and relaxed about such behaviour.
One of the ewes is older than we realised, the other is the “wide load” ewe who featured on Instagram a few weeks ago. Will try get photos of those lambs tomorrow – forgot this afternoon as we raced to get new lambs in the shed as a thunderstorm hit! (The shed is a little full!)
Slightly sombre note: there was a newborn English Leicester lamb this afternoon as we rushed to get them in the shed. There’s something Not Quite Right with him, we fear. Have a horrible feeling his mother may have stood on him and damaged him internally. 🙁 If that has happened then there won’t be anything we can do. At least he is sheltered and he’s been given a dose of Lamboost, which is a special supplement to help newborn lambs.
Will be checking on him very shortly when the bottle-bubs get their late night feed. Fingers crossed?? Hopefully the stats above won’t have any “Losses” added tomorrow. We’ve done really well so far to have not lost anything. (There are always some losses but doesn’t make us feel any better to know that. Would prefer zero!)