Who lives in a house like this?

Who lives in a house like this?

Cosy shavings inside.

Snuggly nest box for making nests in.

Whose house is it?

Ours!

I can report that guinea pigs 'roost' much, much earlier than the hens (who are ridiculously fond of late nights) but they haven't laid any eggs in the nest box yet.

F1 lambs #3

It's about time I caught up with the naming of the F1 lambs.

Number Seven. Nico was part of twins, but Rosberg was small and cold and we just couldn't keep her alive. Nico is being kept in for additional attention and bottled top-ups. He does 'asleep' so well it looks like 'dead' so I keep having to check he's breathing. We're bottle feeding him at regular intervals. He's perfecting the art of peeing on us.

Number Eight - Kubica arrived without fuss while we were worrying about Nico and Rosberg. Absolutely no trouble at all. A nice friendly lamb. His mother is totally devoted to her little chap and spends all day cuddling him.

Number Nine - Schumacher - is a big Teutonic lamb with little personality but will undoubtedly do well. He's not much to look at (neither is his mother really) just a solid, dependable pair.

Number 10 Barrichello. This was the one born with an underdeveloped cerebellum and had to be euthanased. No picture. I spent too much time with this lamb. Despite the problem with his neck he was a real cutie.

Number 11 Sutil. Put inside the skin of Barrichello and offered to the number 10 ewe. This didn't work (admittedly it was a long shot). Little mouse-sized Sutil was being bottle fed every two hours but was very small and weak. She died on Saturday, despite our best efforts.

Number 12 - The twins that caused all the trouble on Thursday. Sadly one died during birth but Kamui is a big, strong enthusiastic lamb and has already recovered from the drama of his arrival into the world. His face got a bit squished so his eyes were lopsided but things are slowly getting into their proper shape.

Number 13 - Vitaly and Petrov or should that be Vitalia and Petrova as they are both girls. I have such a soft spot for these two. They're lovely big white happy lambs with a calm, sensible mother. They are utterly charming and were springing around in the lambing pen just hours after being born. These two will be kept in the flock so you won't be able to buy these (or Hamilton) as Welsh organic lamb chops in Sainsbury's.

Number 14. Hulk(enberg). My what a big lamb! He spends all day eating and bouncing. A fine lamb.

Number 15. Vitantonio. Another whopper. This one can reach its mum's udder from a sitting position and when standing up he has to bend his knees and reach down to get to the milk bar.

Things could only get better

I was feeling quite despondent when I wrote yesterday's post. Lambing does that to you sometimes but as well as the downs there are ups and the day improved as it went on.

While we were dealing with the little lamb in its Astrakhan coat and milking the increasingly reluctant ewe I looked up and saw this:

(This is why I always have my camera in my pocket.) Another lamb being born - the 13th ewe. Who says number 13 is unlucky? She's an experienced ewe and had things very well organised.

We finished annoying the ewe by milking it and I went around the corner and found this:

Twins! She's also got an assistant who enthusiastically cleaned up the lambs and acted as a helper. This sometimes happens with ewes who are about to lamb themselves. The helper was furious when we moved the mum and babies out to an individual pen and shouted at us all day, standing on her hind legs with her feet on the hurdle looking in to the lambing pens at the twins. (When I went out to check them at 11pm she'd had a lovely big single ram lamb and a very proud mum she is too. Funnily enough she also had an enthusiastic helper who lambed this morning.)

Meanwhile, as it was a truly lovely spring day, it was the perfect time to put the eldest lambs out in the field.

Off they go... well, the ewes and two of the lambs...

What about us...? The ewes, with their eyes on the spring grass, seem to have forgotten something.

One comes back for hers, we deliver the others, sorting out ensues.

By the afternoon, everyone's happy.

Mother love: Birth, death and the whole damn thing

The theme for this week's Gallery at Sticky Fingers is mother love. I'm still knee deep in this year's lambing so my post can only have a sheep flavour.

Most of our ewes are wonderful mothers. This one is Patch, is no exception but things haven't gone as well for her this year as she would have wished. She's letting us know about it. Loudly.

Her lamb was born yesterday morning and straight away it was obvious something was not right. It couldn't lift its head. That's disastrous for a lamb - it couldn't reach up to its mum to get milk. My mum milked the thankfully amenable ewe and we spent considerable chunks of yesterday getting the poor thing to drink it.

Late last night when I should have been snuggled in the comforts of my bed I was sitting with the lamb on my lap feeding it a bottle of milk, knowing my efforts were probably futile.

This morning when the vet was here to assist with a difficult lambing she had a look and said it looked as if the lamb's cerebellum was not developed.

"Shall I...?" said the vet reluctantly. She did.

Patch, meanwhile, was desperately calling for her baby. My long suffering and fortunately widely skilled husband had the task of skinning the lamb and slipping its coat, like over big pyjamas, on to another lamb born yesterday to an elderly ewe that has no milk.

Patch got this oddment back - a scrap of a thing in another lamb's clothing. Will she transfer her motherly love to this one? Watch this space.

Meanwhile the other mother, the one the vet had attended to, was lying exhausted in her pen. Her lambs - huge twins - had tried to be born side by side and failed. The vet went in to sort them out but it was too late for one of them. Mother love? It's tough when you're a sheep.

All this happened before breakfast as the sun rose on an exquisite misty morning. The birds sang in the trees and more blossom bloomed in the early spring sunshine.

Dear weather...

... please stop raining. We're wet enough now.

Egg-straordinary!

The hens have turned into big feathery show-offs:

Small, medium, large, show-off

 We're now getting an egg a day from each hen. That's eight per day, 56 eggs per week.

You get your money's worth with this one.

We've also had the biggest egg in the world from one of the Bluebells. She was rather proud of herself.

Well, what did you expect?

Of course it was a double-yolker. We ate it as part of scrambled egg for lunch. It may be omelettes for dinner, coddled eggs for breakfast... then more scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, fried eggs, poached eggs...

The F1 lambs #2

After the initial rush the F1 lambs put the brakes on a little. Next to arrive was:

Jenson and Button. Cool and very laid-back, these two have been no trouble at all. They're very sociable and love to have their photograph taken.

Little Felipe arrived this morning. He was very slow to get going. Smaller than the others, he looks a little weak by comparison. The top five are leaving him behind at the moment.

Numbers one to five have grown up enough to be moved out of the lambing pens and into the stable. Here they learn about being in a small group before they all go out in the field together.

Mark heading across the yard with Rosie. Mark and Webber settled down after their noisy, restless first day and are now happy and very friendly little chaps.

Webber with his mum in hot pursuit.

Fernando gets a lift with Hannah.

The ewes sorting out who's who and what's where.

Finally a short bit of film of the ewes and the first five sets of F1 lambs in the stable. The lambs use the extra space to test their springs and suspension.