Second Update from North Yorkshire...

April 2nd:
Well, today we had no lambs and just a day of work. We had to feed the chickens and the rest of the animals. For dinner, I made beef Cantonese with oyster sauce, however, I forgot to put the oyster sauce in. It was still tasty! We went to sleep with extremely full bellies and were awoken by the sound of bleating ewes. I went out to go check around 1am to see what was going on but the ewes must have been spooked by something. I went to go stand in with one of the ewes so the lamb could feed because if no one stands in with the lamb, the mum head butts the little lamb around. She never bonded properly with her lamb and hasn’t taken him since. As I was standing there, all of the ewes closest to the outside area were spooked by something yet again and it really frightened me! I wasn’t sure what the heck was out there that scared them because all I could see was the darkness. Was most likely a fox or badger though. I went right back to sleep after that.

April 3rd:
Today we woke up early and started feeding the animals since Gary was not here. A man named Jeoff came around 11am with two bags of hens that Ellie purchased from him. I went out to the chicken coop to help him get them in and we had a hard time getting them out of the bags because they kept gripping the bag with their claws. We finished and then spent a lot of time in the caravan since it had rained all day. We had chili for dinner and it was extremely tasty. Right as we were going to bed, Ellie noticed that there were two new lambs walking around the big pen! So we ran out and immediately isolated the mum and two lambs. We cleaned them and gave them scour drench and sprayed their navels with iodine. After we were finished we went to bed.

April 4th:
Happy Easter! At around 3am this morning we woke up and noticed a lamb walking around the pen on the sheep camera in the caravan. We immediately went out to go take care of the lamb and we couldn’t find the mum right away. After looking for a minute, we found her in the corner and when she turned around, we could see that her uterus had prolapsed. You could see the cotyledons and the remnants of the placenta attached to one of the cotyledons. We called the vet out and when she arrived she administered an epidural to stop the contractions and obviously for pain as well. It took her about 5 minutes to get the uterus back in. We finally went to bed around 4am but did not get much sleep because one of the twin lambs that were born the day before was quite cold and had labored respirations. We figured he had come down with pneumonia as a possible result of him being born backwards and aspirating fluid. So we took him in the caravan where it was warm because Ellie’s heat box for the lambs was not working. The lamb bleated all morning so we got no sleep. When we got up we put the lamb back in with his mum since he was much warmer and respirations had slowed down. We fed all the animals and had to trim sheep feet today. That entailed me catching sheep and flipping them over. My back was so sore after we were finished. We went to Ellie’s house for dinner and she made roast beef with Marsala and onion sauce, which was excellent! We came back and were so tired so we went to sleep right away and quite early.

April 5th:
Today was uneventful with no lambing activity, We went to Farmway to pick up bedding for the horse stalls and headed back to the farm. We were exhausted by the last couple of days and had slept until noon so the day had gone by quite quickly. We had pinnochio pie for dinner(minced meat, potatoes and gravy in a pastry filling). Sort of like a shepards pie. It was very good and we also had watercress soup that Ellie had made that was excellent. We watched Blades of Glory and went to bed.

April 6th:
Today was a sad day. The mum that had the twins had been getting worse over the last two days. We gave an injection of Calcium to see if that would help and it didn’t. We gave calcium because we were thinking that the ewe may have milk fever. We left her in the pen and went inside to watch them on TV. About an hour passed and we noticed the ewe’s respiratory rate had significantly increased and her abdomen was distended. I gave an injection of an anti-inflammatory and we gave some oral glucose since she had stopped eating altogether. As time went on, the ewe’s condition worsened, except not she was showing neurological symptoms. I smelled her breath and it did not smell as if she had ketosis. She began bobbing her head and foaming a bit at the mouth. I palpated her abdomen and it felt like bloat to me. Her menace response was poor and pupillary light reflex was ok. The vet came out after we called and gave more calcium and then left. About a half hour later, the ewe gave a couple of big breaths and fell silent. Ellie will be getting a necropsy done tomorrow to see what exactly happened to the ewe. We now have two lambs that we need to pair up with a new mum. Hopefully she will take them. We had curry for dinner tonight at this Indian food restaurant near where Ellie lives and I kid you not, the first breath I took when inside this restaurant felt as if I had inhaled fire. My lungs stung and I started to cough. The smell of Indian spices in the air was strong. We ordered curry and had a few kebabs with nan bread, delicious! We headed back to the farm and checked on the sheep when we got back. Again, a very uneventful evening for lambing. I think they are organizing a massive lambing night and will all decide to deliver at the same time. Oh well, if it happens…it happens. Went to sleep around 12am and the two lambs inside the box in the caravan were vocal ALL night long as well as this bloody rooster behind the caravan that vocalizes at the most random times. It gets quite annoying when you are trying to catch some Z’s.

April 7th:
Today we woke up and fed the animals. At around 12pm, there was a ewe that was showing signs that she was going into labor. We isolated her in a separate pen from the other ewes. About six hours went on and the vulva was still closed with no signs of mucus or a water bag and the ewe was straining as if trying to deliver but couldn’t. We called the vet out and he did a vaginal examination and said that the cervix was still closed and that the ewe was in her first stage of labor and that we should expect a lamb within the next 24 hours. We adjusted the camera so that we could see her a bit better. Ellies friend brought us homemade curry, which was delicious! Her friend left and I checked on the ewe that was in labor and the vulva was still closed tightly with no signs of mucus or a water bag still. There was a bit of blood, which was most likely from earlier when the vet did the vaginal exam. Around 12am, we checked again and still no signs of a lamb. We went back in the caravan and watched a few movies on my laptop. During the movie, Ellies greyhound Archie, climbed over the cardboard box that was housing the two sick lambs. Denis, one of the lambs, looked up and saw something on Archie’s abdomen that resembled a teat. Dennis latched on and Archie had this look of shock on his face. We were laughing so hard, but Archie was seeing no humor in what had just occurred. We stayed up until 4.30am and I was so tired that I had to lie down. We woke up around 7am and checked the ewe again, but still, there were no signs indicating that the lamb was going to show anytime soon. We went back to sleep until about 10am.

April 8th:
At 10am we woke up to check on the ewe. We noticed that she had passed what looked like afterbirth(placenta, umbilical cord), but there was no lamb. We called the vet out to see what the heck was going on. Liz, the vet, felt around and the cervix was well closed. She worked the cervix open and felt the tip of a foot. She went through an entire bottle of lubricant trying to get this lamb out. She finally got a rope around the head and pulled the head out far enough to see if it was alive or not. The eyes were cloudy and it also smelled quite gross, indicating that the lamb had been dead for a few days. Warning to those reading on, this may get a little too descriptive for the squeamish. Liz ended up cutting off the head so that the body could come through the pelvic canal easier. She finally got the body out and it was the largest lamb I had ever seen yet! It was sad that the lamb died and the weird thing was, when we pulled the dead lamb out of the ewe, every single ewe in the stable began bleating like crazy. The good thing was, that the ewe was better. On another sad note, Dennis, the lamb that was sickly with what we thought was pneumonia began having bloody diarrhea and it got more bloody today and respiratory rate was extremely high again. The vet decided to euthanize Dennis. To cheer you all up, the lamb that lost it’s mother and was orphaned, we paired him up with the ewe that lost the lamb and they bonded very well. We fed all the animals and ate dinner and tried to go to bed…

April 9th:
At 12.45am, I heard a ewe bleating. I went out to see who it was and saw that it was a ewe in the larger pen and there was a water bag hanging out. I woke Ellie and Adele up and when we al got out there, another ewe started to go into labor. So two ewes were going at the same time. The one I had first noticed really started pushing and only two front legs were showing. She was pushing and pushing and the legs were not advancing. I was concerned so I went in the pen to check out what was going on. When I got my hand in, I felt the head, but mum was not able to push hard enough. I noticed that the lamb’s tongue was purple, so as fast as I could, I pulled the legs and worked the head out, which was extremely difficult and finally managed to get the lamb out. The lamb started breathing and I was happy. Adele was assisting the other ewe and she finally decided to deliver. The first lamb had to be pulled out as well and the second lamb too. However, the second lamb was in a breached presentation, meaning that the lamb was coming out backwards. Fortunately for the ewe and for us, the lamb was small enough where it wasn’t a problem. If it were any bigger it would have gotten wedged in the pelvic canal. We got all of the pens set up and lambs taken care of and went to bed around 3.45am. At 5.30am Adele went out to check and saw that two new lambs had been born in the big pen while we were sleeping. We got them taken care of and went back to bed around 7am and woke up around 9am. We fed the animals and at around 12pm, Adele shouted to me that there was a new lamb on the floor of the big pen. I jumped over the railing and went to check if it was ok and as I was drying the lamb off, another lamb literally just fell out of the same ewe that had delivered the lamb I was with. We made up more pens to fit in the new lambs, which took forever. After that, Jeoff and I flipped the rams and trimmed their hooves and cleaned them. They were quite infected some of them. About halfway through, Adele yelled out that there were two new lambs lying in the field in the mud outside where we had let the pregnant ewes hang out for a bit. We took care of the lambs and put them in the heating box. Jeoff and I finished with the rams and my back hurt so bad as well as my hands, which had blisters all over them from cutting the thick hooves. Ellie’s friend Heather brought dinner and afterwards, Adele left to head back to Edinburgh. We went to sleep and luckily, no ewes decided to deliver through the night and when I checked at 4am. Woohoo! Finally caught up on some well deserved sleep!

April 10th:
Today we woke up and check the ewes. No one delivered over the night. We spent all day reorganizing the pens and making room for more lambs. We let the rams go outside and the mums with the older lambs all go into the same pen. I got to drive a truck in the UK for the first time today. Granted it was only to reverse the truck, but hey, give me some credit here! No ewes decided to deliver through the night thankfully!

April 11th:
Woke up this morning at 8am to the sound of a bleating ewe in labor. Ellie had left for the day so it was all me. I gave it 45 minutes from when the water bag broke. I have been given words of wisdom by Ellie regarding lambing. Always go by OBI when lambing.
OBI = Observe Before Intervention
After 45 minutes, there was only about 1cm of a front leg showing. The ewe was pushing and pushing but the leg did not come out any further. I decided to go in and assist. When I got my hand in, I felt both front legs and the head, but it was very tight. After about 5 minutes, I finally worked the lamb out. It was a very big female lamb. I sprayed the navel of the lamb with iodine and gave an oral suspension that protects the lamb from E. Coli. The mum hadn’t let down much milk yet so I made up some volostrum (articificial colostrum) so the lamb had something in her stomach. For the rest of the day, Jeofff and I did work around the farm and around 6pm, Ellie and I went to her house for dinner. We had steak with sautéed mushrooms in a chili cream sauce with homemade chips (fries as we say in America). We went back to the farm around 10.15pm and came back to the caravan where Jerome was sleeping. We opened the door and startled him. Jerome is the nicest bloke I’ve met since I’ve been here. He works all day long and voluntarily calls Ellie to tell her he will watch the sheep for her. We walked out into the sheep shed and went to the ewe that had been sick for a while. It was a ewe that was sick before I got here for my placement. She had a pair of mummified lambs and hadn’t been well since the removal of the lambs. We went to bed around 12pm and no ewes decided to lamb during the night thankfully.