Spring is on the Horizon

The daffodils threatening to bloom can only mean one thing, spring is on the horizon. And with that comes our busiest time of year. Lambing begins in T-minus one month and we are eagerly and apprehensively preparing for no doubt one of the most chaotic and stressful seasons we’ve had. Without getting too deep, to ensure we’re financially ‘okay’ for the year, we need to breed a pretty substantial number of lambs so that the payday can tide us over the winter until spring comes around again as the lambs will mature with us for around five or six months if not longer which means you have a financial drought through the summer.

I often say that lambing is just a gamble, often on a wing and a prayer in true honesty. We put the rams out with approximately four hundred and fifty ewes but will the rams work? Will the ewes hold the lambs? Will they all have singles rather than twins? Will they survive? Will we have an awful spring and the lambs would survive the wet? Plus a million other uncertainties that flood my brain at 3 am. 

The one thing we can do in preparation to try and quash a few of the intrusive thoughts is we can pregnancy scan the ewes a few months before their due dates. They use an ultrasound a lot like they do with us humans and then we can spray either a red dot for twins or a blue dot for a single foetus. This can then help us make sure they get the correct nutrition and also have a heads up during the birth if she may need a hand with the second or example. My husband and I are a little superstitious in a sense that we would never, then do some quick maths, and work out what the pay check could potentially look like in the autumn when it comes to sell them, but what we do often do is sit down and work out what breeds have or haven’t worked for us so we can have a head start planning for the following autumn when the rams will go in once more , ‘cause you best believe it flies by. 

We usually kick off lambing season mid-March and this is the first year we have pushed it back a whole month to try and catch the drier weather because the new farm lays really wet and the last thing we would want is lambs being born into the thick, sticky mud. This poses all kinds of health risks but not only that it’s miserable for us to be wading through the mud for fifteen hours a day, let alone with an 18-month-old strapped on back this year. Adding our daughter into the mix, the high number of ewes, a new farm and also being even further from our families is making this lead up even more nail biting than ever but what will be, will be. 

Hope to catch up later in the year to fill you in.

All the best, Zoe xx

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