Lambing - Moving Day

When a set of twins or triplets has been born, the ewe is kept in or near the barn for at least twenty-four hours before being transferred to a large holding area before finally being moved to an open field using a trailer. The ewes with single or double lambs are kept in separate fields. Before being moved to the open field, there are a variety of checks and tasks carried out on the ewes or lambs, such as deworming, tails docked, castration, number tagging to allow matching of ewes and lambs, etc.

Moving a ewe and lambs to the trailer.
The noise is incredible as the ewes and lambs call out to each other.

Lambs up top, ewes on the bottom.

Someone would climb up and squat or kneel in the top level of the trailer (the two times I helped with a load of lambs I was up top) and a guy would stand below and move one ewe at a time into the back part of the trailer and announce the number to the person above, who went through the crowd of lambs to find the right pair to match the ewe. The lambs were passed over the rails and held out to the ewe, the gate opened, and the trio deposited a short distance from the trailer. We would slowly move across the field to provide a bit of space between each trio to avoid the lambs and ewes getting mixed up. After unloading all the sheep, we would do a check over the field to see if any ewes or lambs looked or sounded distressed or alone, making sure that missing family members were reuinited.

The field for twins is reached by leaving the farm and driving up a nearby road to reach a top field - the farm is huge and the fields nearest the barn are used for singles, with the twins being moved to larger fields farther away.

The twins field is on the right.
This road goes along a ridge with fields to the right and fields leading down to Eastbourne and the beach on the left.

A ewe calling her lamb away from the crazy girl with the camera.

A lamb enjoying the sunshine and cool breeze on the hill.

Two pairs of adorable ears.

One evening at midnight, my friend, Sarah, and I were out at the barn feeding orphans, checking water and feed, and just enjoying spending time in the barn. Henry was checking lambs and he stopped in one pen and said, "Now this is a cracking pair" and promptly named them after me and Sarah by tagging them with an "S" and an "A" - Sarah's has a dot after the "S" and mine has a dot after the "A". They even have my favourite markings - black faces and legs! Robyn had told me previously that Henry normally refuses to mark the lambs with anything other than numbers... Robyn is South African so we agreed that the story we'd tell her is that the lambs are named for her home country. About a week later, Henry marked a ewe and lamb with "SK" for "Skippy" as a shortened version of Robyn's surname so she has a lamb named after her too.

L-R: Sarah and Amanda.
"A cracking pair."
(if I do say so myself...)

L-R: Sarah and Amanda
"A cracking pair."
(almost three weeks old)