so... who else is 'lambing live'

[WestmorlandSausage]

.... and how fucking shite is this weather!!!

roll up all ye fellow lambers and lets bitch about leicester's sitting on their lambs, Suffolks being all nobbly kneed and pathetic and effing pedigrees that decide they prefer the smaller gimmer lamb to the strapping tup lamb.

You can tell I prefer hill sheep

I'm going out again in 20 mins ... into the cold and wet.

Brrrrr

Shhh, it's dry here. Don't jinx me! All in as half my fields were under water and are barely any better still. It's bugger all use having drainage if there is just water, water and more water Could have been much worse though. Expensive enough for me though.

I'm on my lonesome and so tired I nearly gave myself some pen & strep. But determined to enjoy as this is my last lambing
I'm off to the warm kitchen for a cuppa as all quiet for now.

Sorry, didn't mean to kill your thread.
I think two sad faces was too many for so early on!

I just followed that Kate Humble around waitrose ( helpful)

Oooh, claim to fame there Canutesauntie! Was she still looking all polished and unruffled? I look like the wrong end of a shit house broom mostly after a week of lambing.

We have had positively tropical weather - from biting wind to mild as you like in 24 hours. All the sheep are acting the giddy idiot, even my old hands have been spotted. We've lost a good looking twin eee lamb and had a prolapse but apart from that all has gone well, although that likely means trouble coming.
Glad I've only got a handful & I'm not a proper farmer though, I am knackered.

I was all excited to watch the lambing show but can't watch it here (US). It looked so cool.

Ohbye if you don't mind a question from a non-farmer how long does lambing go on for?

Or West of course. Hope it's going well.

I'm a smallholder so things go slightly differently for me than a proper farmer - my answer is more lambing lite!
I'm a waffler and it's fascinating so I can give long and short answers, but very basically -
Lambing will last, approximately, as long as the difference in time between when your first ewe conceived and your last.
Ewe's are seasonally polyoestrous with each cycle lasting between 13-19 days, during each cycle their fertile window is about 24-36 hours. A ewe will carry on coming back into oestrus until she conceives or the season ends.
There are lots of variables depending on your breeds, geography and lambing system.
I lamb for spring and only have a handful of one breed of sheep.
That means my tup has very little to do other than keep an eye on who is ready for him & he can cover them all easily.
Using a coloured marker on the boy I can see which ewes have been mated and when.
So my first to be mated gives me the first date I will expect to start lambing (approximately 142-152 days later depending on breed, individual and number of lambs) then I monitor who is mated when & the last one gives me the date I will expect to finish lambing (again roughly) all in cycles of roughly 17 days.
About 35 days after mating they will all be scanned to see how many lambs each is carrying & if any aren't pregnant. That gives me more information because I will expect a triple to lamb sooner than a twin and a twin sooner than a single.
Although technically lambing season is longer than the time I expect births as everything will be prepared beforehand and you start to get really involved 4-6 weeks before they're due.

Depending on your needs for lamb production there are various methods of managing oestrus in ewes so everyone is ready when the time comes - this can be hormones (sponges, injectables etc) or teasing by introducing a ram or any combination or none that the shepherd requires. Artificially controlling oestrus also means lambing time is more concentrated which makes pregnancy care and everything else easier particularly in proper herds where there could be hundreds of sheep.

If that makes sense
A proper farmer could give a much better explanation of flock management and different lambing systems than I can as I don't use pessaries or sponges due to 1) not having many 2) no commercial pressures so no issues just using a teaser (which is effective for syncing the older ewes but less effective with ewe lambs) as my replacement needs are low.

I'll sush now and wait for the pros

That was fascinating!! Thanks, you were so nice to write it all out.

I had no idea sheep could have more than one lamb at a time. And no idea at all that lambs could be born at any time of year. They always seem to be born in the spring -- maybe most people aim for that? I'm not sure why that would be though.

The colored marker system is really preoccupying me now.

And what kind of sheep are they? What, um, happens to them when they grow up, are they for wool? Do they like you? I mean, goats seem to sort of befriend people, or at least that is my impression. I didn't know if sheep would also do that.

I have no idea what your taste in fiction (or books) is like but you might find this fantastic. www.amazon.com/Three-Bags-Full-Sheep-Detective/dp/0767927052

thats a really good post on it Ohbyethen.

The only thing I would add is that most farmers (those with a few hundred sheep) will aim to lamb in time for a specific market or season as follows...

www.lovebritishfood.co.uk/british-food/lamb-and-mutton/when-to-eat-british-lamb-%26-mutton/

^Although available all year round, British lamb & mutton are seasonal products.

Spring lamb is available from early Spring until the Summer. It is very tender but does not have as much flavour as lamb later in the year as it has not had as much time to graze. It should be cooked simply.

Autumn lamb is available from the Summer until December. It has had more time to graze and grow thus developing stronger flavours that can take more adventurous cooking.

Lamb from Christmas until the following Spring is called ?hogget?, though few retailers and caterers use this term. Hogget has a pronounced flavour, which works well with seasonal root vegetables.

Mutton is at least two years old. Mutton is available year-round but is best, and most readily available, from October until March. It has a much stronger, gamier flavour than lamb.^

So essentially you can buy local/british most of the year round. Which begs the question why supermarkets insist on shipping it from New Zealand for huge parts of the British lamb season...

As I mentioned in another post we only have about 60 sheep (including lambs/rams etc). This year we had 16 ewes put to ram and he did his job fine.

But we had another 20 sheep in another field we are renting and had no intention of introducing a ram to them. Till DH went there one day & found our neighbour's ram giving a sheep a right seeing to! DH shooed him out to the lane and off he went up the road (the roads round here are common land so they're everywhere). a week later he was back!

we had 18 unwanted lambs from that field........ typical amateurs we are eh!