Lambing Adventures

For two weeks during my Easter break I went with a fellow classmate and worked on a sheep farm near Kirkcudbright, Scotland.

Our trip started by discovering that the way we had been pronouncing Kirkcudbright (Kirk-cud-bright) was unbelievably wrong.  Apparently they ignore a bunch of the letters and pronounce it Kuh-coo-bree.  We drove through the Scottish country side and arrived at their farm to see fields filled with sheep.

We started work that first evening by basically being shown where everything around the farm was and how the farm worked.  We were served an incredibly tasty tea (Canadian translation = dinner) and pudding (Canadian translation = dessert).  Then it was off to bed to get some sleep.  Little did I know that the first night would be the only night I would get to sleep through the entire night!

For the rest of the two weeks we would have breakfast around 8am and start working after that.  We would generally work until 9 or 10pm with breaks for dinner (Canadian lunch), tea and if we were lucky a coffee break.  At night we would either be responsible for checking the lambs at 12am and 6am or 3am.  It was a lot of hard work and very little sleep but it was such a incredible learning experience.

Along with caring for sheep and lambs during lambing time I learned a lot of other things about sheep.

1. Sheep really like food

Feeding time for the ewes was always an exciting time.  Spreading the pellets for the group pens was quite a challenge.  The ewes would see you coming and jam up to the front of the pen so that once you were in the pen you had no where to go with the food.  I found you would have to fake one way and then dump the pellets the other way to have any chance of successfully spreading them.  They are also super aggressive with their food and have no problem pushing one another out of the way.  We decided we would run in with the buckets of food to try and catch the ewes off guard.  Except that then they started associating running with food so anytime anyone ran anywhere they would all start going crazy.

Feeding the ewes in the pens also involved some strategy.  You quickly learned which ewes had to be fed first.  Some of the ewes would climb the bars of their pen trying to get at the food.  That was scary because you were always worried they might step on their lambs when they climbed down.  Other ewes were less subtle and would just jump into another individual pen to get at food.

"Bucket Sheep" - Notorious for stuffing her head in food buckets while you are trying to spread the pellets

Did someone say food?

2. Sheep are flock animals.  When separated from the flock they are pretty unpredictable

I unfortunately learned this the hard way.  It was midnight and hailing when one of the few ewes that were left outside (and not due to lamb for another week I might add!) decided it would be the perfect time to start lambing.  At this point she had already had one lamb and was preparing to have another. The farmer wanted to get her inside before she had her second lamb.  So the farmer and I got her cornered.  She had two options, run between me and the fence and run between the farmer and the fence.  Well turns out she didn't like either of the those options.  She took one look at me, decided she could take me and ran full speed at me.  At this same time, the person holding the flashlight thought they heard something across the field.  So they turned their flashlight away from our cornered ewe.  When she put the flashlight back on the ewe, she was less than three feet from me running full speed.  I braced for impact but 90kg of ewe was too strong for me.  She blew me over backwards.  I did my best to slow her down and held onto her neck for a bit while she dragged me across the field but in the end it was futile.  She broke free.  So we called in more help and got her cornered and caught the second time.

She looks so sweet and innocent in this picture...

3. Sheep are tough

These ewes have their lambs and then immediately (for the most part) stand up and lick their lambs clean.  What human after a natural birth would be up for standing?

I think we found our toughest ewe during the second week.  She had started to lamb in the morning but she wasn't making any progress.  So the farmer decided it was time to intervene.  Normally pulling out a lamb that is in the wrong orientation or is just a bit to big for the ewe to push out, is well under a five minute task.  We were ten minutes into helping her and we were no closer to having her lambs out.  Both lambs were trying to come out at the same time.  So it was hard to figure out which lamb should come first and what legs belonged to what lamb.  As time went on, it was becoming less about the lambs and more about the ewe.  The farmer had become concerned with getting the lambs out (hopefully alive but as time was going on, it was looking less and less likely they would be alive) so that the ewe would survive.  After 15 minutes of manipulating the lamb, the first was born... and by some miracle alive!

We gave the ewe a five minute break so she could bond with her lamb and clean it up.  Then it was time to get the second lamb out.  10 minutes passed, no progress.  20 minutes passed, minimal progress.  It was in the right orientation but still not coming out.  30 minutes passed no progress.  At this point the farmer was getting very stressed.  For some reason he decided to let me have a go at pulling the lamb out.  Of the students there, I was the most experienced "lamber" with probably helping 10 lambs, 8 of which were straightforward and easy.... so all in all not very experienced.  So I worked at it for a for a while when all of a sudden the tension on the lamb gave way and it started coming free.  To this day I still have no idea what I did to get the lamb out.  We all expected this lamb to be born dead.  Lambs don't usually survive 10 minutes of being pulled, let alone 45 minutes plus.  But even more amazingly than the first lamb, she was alive!  So naturally for the next few days those lambs were treated extra special and were watched very very carefully

But what amazed me the most was after less than five minutes of us getting the second lamb out the ewe stood up and started cleaning her lambs!  We had hands inside of her pulling on lambs for the better part of an hour and all she needed was a few minutes to recover.  That is amazing.

Miracle Lamb Number 2!

4. Lambs are pretty darn cute

Don't need any words for this one.  Here are some cute lambs.

5. Not sheep related but... Scottish weather is very unpredictable

The first week we were there it was miserable.  It was cold, reaching almost freezing at night, crazy windy and raining a lot.  On, I think, our third day there the farmer asked me to check and count lambs in one of his fields.  So I set off.  As I was heading to the field dark clouds started rolling in.  Well, good thing I was essentially in a waterproof suit.  I started counting lambs.  I was supposed to count 12.  When I got to 8 it started hailing.  At first it wasn't awful.  But it progressively got harder and harder.  It was getting quite painful to be outside in.  So being probably a five minute run from any actual shelter I decided to take cover in a gorse bush.  And that's when I found the rest of the lambs.  They had the same idea as me but they had launched themselves into the bush and their fleece was all tangled so they were stuck.  So, while it was hailing, the lambs and I hung out in the bush while I freed them from the gorse.

The second week the weather was incredible. 15, sunny and no wind.  I could not have asked for anything better.

6. Also not sheep related but... Scotland is gorgeous

We were spoiled by the location of the farm.  My iPhone pictures do not do it justice.

Sunset with the Sheep and Lambs

Lambing was probably the hardest I have ever worked but I would do it again in a heartbeat!