The Lambing Season for The Chief Shepherdess

Spring this year looked a little different from the last. My partner and I have always worked as a team and nothing tests a team more than a combination of intense stress, exhaustion, hunger and pressure. That’s a standard lambing season for most farmers but this year we added a few more layers of complexity, to keep us on our toes.

We began the planning pretty early on as we always do, what fields we would keep clean (free of poo) for the ewes to lamb in, did we need to patch up any fencing, does the lambing caravan need any refurbishments. We then discovered a spanner in the works. Two little blue lines appeared one morning, although I had very strong suspicions and deep down I already knew. Due to a previous loss we didn’t allow ourselves to be too excited or plan too far into the future. But we needed to plan a little so the lambing season which is the backbone of our farming business was as successful as it could be.

I recall seeing printed signposts at farms growing up warning pregnant women not to touch the farm animals, potentially even one telling pregnant women not to enter the part where you could hand feed the overfed goats and donkeys. After a brief flick through Google it became very apparent that there most definitely were risks of diseases passing from pregnant animal to mother to foetus. The birthing fluid in particular carries bacteria that if ingested by the mother could cause illness that could even be fatal to the baby. Of course it's down to the individual but we made the joint decision that no matter how difficult it was, I wouldn’t come into contact with pregnant ewes or goats or their newborns either, for us it wasn’t worth the risk. The baby was too precious to us.

We toyed with the idea of hiring in an extra pair of hands but before we knew it we had lambs on the ground so we just made do. We had our families and a friend came and stayed to help for a few of the busiest days. Someone must have been looking down on us because not only were the girls incredibly ‘tight’ with their lambing (large quantity birthing together in a short period) but also the vast majority just got on with it and didn’t need assistance. I thank our lucky stars as some fluke but also we chose sensible rams that have easy lambing qualities too. Chris says my hands are his secret weapon as they are very little and nimble so I can birth lambs that most wouldn’t be able to or would need a vet to perform a c-section. This meant we were a little apprehensive what would happen without me being able to get my hands dirty, excuse the pun.

I can’t thank him enough for keeping us safe and well during such an important time. We popped a gazebo in front of the caravan so he was able to strip off his dirty contaminated clothes into a washing basket and wash his arms so we could keep the caravan germ free. I kept him fed and watered and tried to keep morale high as I was in the dark depths of pregnancy sickness, tiredness (it hits different) and all the other gorgeous symptoms your hormones cause. We disinfected the quad bike handles about thirty times a day and I stopped kissing the dog who was running around in the fields with the potentially infected fluids and afterbirth. The strain it put on him, and our relationship was at times pretty intense but luck was on our side and we had a successful lambing despite it all. Roll on the summer, selling them in the market. And the autumn, welcoming our first child.

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