Lambs by the fire

Back in April 2019 we took on our first bottle lambs from our neighbours Huw and Emyr, a farming family with several generations of Welsh sheep hill farming under their belts - they were awarded GI status for Cambrian Mountain lamb in 2021, I digress.  We adopted two little lambs from different ewes which looked to us like unlikely twins so we called them Arnie and Danny.

Both ewes went on to have lambs of their own first Arnie had twin ewes and Danny a single ewe, then Arnie skipped a year and Danny had an enormous ram lamb that grew as big as her by shearing time and in 2022 Arnie had triplets.  Ewes only have two teats so more than two lambs can present a problem.  You can keep the triplets with mum and supplement the feeding with bottle-feeding ewe milk replacement or after a day or so (to ensure the lamb has had vital colostrum from mum) take one lamb off the ewe and raise entirely with bottle-feeding (which is how we ended up with Arnie in the first place).  We decided to bottle feed the ewe lamb and let Arnie have a greater chance of successfully raising the two ram lambs (Jay and Liam).  By hand feeding the ewe lamb we named Kathy, we would improve our bond with her and she would be a well-handled edition to the flock.  We adopted another ewe lamb from neighbour Emyr and named her Megan.  As building work had begun and with the floor due to be dug up at a later date, we decided to set-up their creche (a mix of straw bales, cardboard and sheep hurdles) in the old living-room.  There is a long tradition in farming of warming baby animals by the fire or aga so it seemed fitting.

22nd March 2022