We are well over half way through lambing time.  It has not been without a few problems though....  

One sheep we had to take to the vets as the lamb was so large,  the vet struggled too trying to assist the sheep  unfortunately the lamb died a few minutes after being born.    During assisting the birth we can use some ropes around the lower part of the lambs legs to help guide and gently pull the lamb out and a snare type soft wire around the back of the head to help keep it raised.  We returned home with the sheep and she adopted a spare lamb without any problems at all!  This was done by dipping the spare lamb in warm salty water then rubbing the dead lamb which was still wet over the adoptive lamb so they smell and taste the same!  This doesnt always work though - sheep are quite astute!   

We have also put spare lambs onto sheep who have only lambed one single lamb so now they have two - this has been quite succesful as we try to catch them lambing , again rubbing the adoptive lamb in the sheeps waters etc!

Ocasionally a sheep will give birth and a lamb may be weak, in which case we stomach feed the lamb using a tube with colostrum  initially and place under a heat lamp, trying to keep the lamb in the pen with its mum.  

When the weather gets better we will put some sheep and lambs out into the fields, so at the moment they are in pens in the shed.

 This year we bought a Charollais x Texel ram for our sheep (previously using a Suffolk Ram) so the lambs are white faced.

 A Set of Twin lambs....

 The proud father ram

  This sheep was scanned for a single lamb so we caught her lambing a sucessfully 'wet' mothered a spare lamb onto her.  One happy family!