Third Update From North Yorkshire...

April 12th:
So today was quite exciting. I'll just jump straight to the interesting part because the beginning of the day was quite uneventful. At around 12.20am, Tessie the Texel/Border Leicester cross was going into labor. Ellie told me about Tessie when I first got here and said that Tessie was all m;uscle because of the Texel in her. Ellie had said that I may have to rugby tackle Tessie when she delivers her lamb(s) because she will run the entire time. Well, I didn't have to do that, but she was still not a good ewe to deal with. I went out and saw that the water bag had come out and was hanging there. I made sure there was no head inside the bag, otherwise I would of had to have broken the bag. I went in for 15 minutes and we then saw half of a lamb sticking out of Tessie on the sheep camera in the caravan! I quickly ran out just in time to see that Tessie was bashing the lamb's head against the hay rack in an attempt to try and get the lamb out herself! I jumped over the railing and quickly pulled the lamb out the rest of the way. Once the lamb was out, Tessie bonded very well. Talk about a rude awakening for the lamb. "Welcome to the world, watch your head on the way out!".

April 13th:
No more ewes lambed during the night. We woke up around 9am. I looked out my window and saw that there was a very thick fog hanging about. It was gone within a couple of hours. Was very cold and wet today. Ellie and I mostly stayed in and worked on my EMS reports that I have to do along with this placement. Around 4pm, we noticed that there was a ewe going into labor. We looked and saw that the water bag had broken and there was a foot and nose sticking out. I gave it 20 minutes of watching the ewe push and strain with no indications that the lamb would be coming out anytime soon. I was by myself because Ellie was feeding. I was worried that the ewe would stand up as I put my hand in so I was partially sitting on her so she couldn't get up. As soon as I inserted my hand, she really started pushing and at that point I knew she wouldn't be getting up anytime soon. I worked the lamb out and it was very tight. The head was trapped so I had to really work around the head and push down on it to get it out. I finally managed to pull the lamb out. It was a big girl and the ewe bonded with her very well.

April 14th:
Today, Ellie left around 8am and left me to take care of everything for about 8 hours. She went up to Berwick, Scotland to pick up about 19 replacement ewes that she lent to this farmer. I fed everyone, which took forever by myself. I worked on some notes for my exam and Ellie showed up around 6pm. I noticed that one of the ewes was on the ground and beginning to push. I saw no water bag but it was quite wet on the wool around the vulva, so the bag must have broken. About 5 minutes later I saw the tip of a foot. I waited about 15 minutes and decided to go in to assist. Peter, Ellie's friend was here. He had driven up to Berwick with Ellie to help with the sheep. He went in to hold the ewe that was in labor down. I went to go wash my hands and when I got back in the shed, Peter had his dirty hands in and was feeling for the lamb. This poor ewe! Peter is quite a big man and each finger is like a bratwurst sausage! PLUS, he hadn't washed his hands! So he took his hand out and I put a lot of lubricant around my hand. I went in and felt both front legs and made sure that they weren't back legs. I found the head and attempted to work out the lamb. It was such a tight fit and it seemed like it was taking forever! The lamb started moving inside as well and every time I would go in and grab a leg, the lamb would pull it back. I finally pulled hard enough and managed to get both front legs out but the head was still inside. Peter pushed down up by the anus where the head was and we managed to get the lamb out finally. I stuck some straw up the lambs nose to cause a sneeze reflex so that it would start breathing and massaged its chest a bit. It was quite a big lamb as well. Afterwards, we let mum bond with her new lamb and we went out to give dewormer to all the ewes Ellie had just picked up. Peter left and we fed all the animals. Jerome was supposed to relieve us but he never called and was not answering his phone. Ellie and I decided that around 7pm, we would go get Chinese takeaway and come back to the caravan. We got back, ate dinner, watched the tele (guess what we watched? ...CSI!!!). We then went to bed.

April 15th:
Today was very uneventful. Fed the animals in the morning, sat in the caravan all day and watched movies and worked on studying a bit.

April 16th:
Today a young girl (14 or 15) came to the farm to get some experience before she applies to vet school. She was extremely quiet and it was difficult to get her to talk. I showed her around a bit and educated her about what to do around lambing time. We had nothing until about 3pm when one of the ewes began to bleat quite loudly. I knew that she was going to pass a lamb within the hour. She kept lying down, pushing and then getting back up. She did this for about 20 minutes and the lamb's leg kept going in and out with no indications that she was going to pass the lamb on her own since she was straining so hard. I got both legs out but wasn't able to get the head out. I pushed one of the legs back in to make more room and managed to get the head out and then grabbed the other leg. I pulled the lamb out and it was quite large. We took care of the lamb and Jerome came to relieve us later. We went to Ellie's, where I had a great shower! We then got Chinese takeaway that was awesome! We headed back to the farm and one of the ewes had lambed while we were away. The ewe that had lambed was a very sweet ewe that was named Raquelle. She had two lambs that were smaller than what we had been seeing. We tried feeding them and one wasn't quite sure what to do with her tongue. It just flopped out to the side. We finally managed to get a bit of colostrum down the lamb and called it a night. I went out to the shed one last time and told all the ewes that there is to be no lambing until after 9am tomorrow morning, at least that was my wish.

April 17th:
My wish of no ewes waking me up early did not come true...At 4.45am, a ewe was pushing and I could heaer it from my window that I had cracked open because Ellie had the heater on so high. I went out and had no idea how long she had been pushing and two legs were out. It looked like she was straining quite hard so I decided to assist her. I managed to get the lamb out and it was ok. I fed it some colostrum and went back for a quick half hour nap and got up around 7.30am and got ready. Kristen's train was arriving at Darlington station for 10am. We went to Ellie's house before we went to the station so I could take a shower, and oh did it feel good to take a shower! I had a cup of tea before we left and went to go grab my jacket. However, in the rush of things, back at the caravan before leaving for Ellie's, I forgot to grab my jacket. Ellie was so kind as to let me borrow a fleece, a woman's fleece... It was dark blue and fit somewhat. If it was going to be cold in Whitby, I was going to need something. We got to Darlington at 10.15am and when we pulled up, all I could say was wow! I immediately saw Kristen and she was so gorgeous! We got her in the car and had to hurry to make the 10.38am train in Middlesburgh. Ellie dropped us off at what she thought was the rail entrance, but it wasn't. Kristen and I managed to miss the train but decided to hang out in Middlesburgh until the next train came, which was at 2.15pm. Middlesburgh was nice, but not a huge amount of stuff to do other than shopping. We got on the train to Whitby and wow was it beautiful! The scenery was great with a lot of tiny farms and fields full of ewes and new lambs. We arrived in Whitby and it was absolutely beautiful outside with the sun out and clear skies. The town was so busy but was absolutely stunning! We immediately fell in love with the town. There is a port that runs through town and there were loads of boat tours that you could take. We wanted to find accommodation as soon as we could, however, because there were so many tourists because of it being Military weekend, a lot of places had no vacancies. I had my iphone out and was calling hotel after hotel. Every person I spoke with had the same answer, "sorry, we are booked for the night." I walked into this pub/inn while Kristen waited outside. No vacancies either but the lady there pointed me towards some bed and breakfasts that would have accommodation available. As we walked along the port, the smell of fresh fish was pungent in the air. We walked by a couple of fresh fish bars and Kristen happened to notice a sign in the window of a pub called "BUCK INN" that was flashing the word, "vacancies". I thought that maybe they had forgotten to light up the "no" before the word. We walked in and it was a bar with 3 rooms upstairs. There was one room left so we took it and dropped all of our stuff off in the room. The room was very nice and cozy. We headed out to check out the town. We decided to go to the end of the pier towards the lighthouse. When we reached the pier, all I can say is wow!!! Words could not describe what I saw and pictures will surely not do justice as to how beautiful it was. There were huge cliffs lining the coast, a massive beach following the coast, a view of an 800 year old abbey on a cliff overlooking the town and a beautiful view of the ocean. We took loads of pictures and went up the lighthouse. It cost 1.20 per person to go up, but was worth it. The spiral staircase was so old and once at the top, the view was amazing! Don't worry because between her and I, we have loads of pictures that I will be uploading. We were hungry afterwards so we headed to the world famous "Magpie Fish and Chips". It was sooooo good. Was not greasy like most fish and chip shops. The cod was very good, almost melted in our mouths. We sat down overlooking the pier on a little bench and it was so nice. We walked around the town to check out all the shops, and the streets were so busy! The streets that that shops were on were very narrow too and had old cobblestone covering the streets. We had decided to go to Whitby Abbey and see the whalebone arch on Sunday and explore the town instead. We explored more and went back to our inn we were staying at. We changed and got ready to go out for drinks. We walked around for a while before finding a pub. We came across this weird shop that had these little bear figures. It was a collection called "Bad Bear", and the things they were doing were weird. There was one that had been bitten by a shark and was dressed in surfer gear holding a surf board. However, coming out of the bite wound were it's intestines. Very strange I tell ya! There were others, but I definitely will not go into detail regarding those. We finally came across a small pub called the "Golden Lion". It was very small inside but was a nice old pub. There were a bunch of French guys in the other room chanting "aluvetta....", not sure if I spelled it correctly. We had a drink and took pictures of our nerdy chics. Before Kristen left for home for Easter, she gave me an Easter bag full of things. She had put in two nerdy chics that were wearing glasses and a yellow ribbon each. We decided that from now on, wherever we go for trips, we are to bring the chics and take pictures of them together. Kind of like the travelocity gnome, but better...MUCH better! We went to another pub and called it a night.

April 18th:
We woke up around 7.30am to get the day started early since Ellie was coming at 3pm to pick us up. We decided to grab a bite to eat. We each had a full English breakfast, which did a great job at satisfying our bellies. Afterwards, we headed back to the inn to see what time checkout was. The lady let us keep our bags in our room until 3pm since no one was there during the day. We headed towards the hill that had the whalebone arch. The lower whale jawbones were from Anchorage, Alaska. While we were up on the hill, we noticed that there was a military show going on. There were some tents with a bunch of war memorabilia and the men were dressed in uniform. There was even an American tent at the very end! Afterwards, we walked to the abbey where we ascended 200 steps to reach it. There was a graveyard where Bram Stoker's story of Dracula was written. There is such an amazing history here it's amazing! We walked around the abbey a bit and took LOADS of pictures! We walked to the graveyard and took some pictures. The view of the eastern coastline was absolutely gorgeous. It was a very picturesque view and I could hardly believe my eyes at how beautiful it was. We descended the steps and headed back into town where we decided to grab lunch at a cafe. We sat upstairs where we had a view of the harbor and the abbey on the hill in the distance. While eating, Ellie had called and said she could not pick us up because a ewe started lambing. She was supposed to pick us up because no trains run out of Whitby on a Sunday. Kristen and I had to rush to the bus station. We managed to get to a bus right as it was leaving. We met Ellie in Guisborough where she picked us up. Ted and Archie (Ellie's dogs) were also in the truck with us along with Ted's littermate Bruno. They really liked Kristen and huddled up next to her in the front seat. I'll have to admit, I was a little jealous of those dogs. Here I was sitting in the back seat alone and Ted and Bruno were hanging out with Kristen in the front seat. That's ok though, Archie hung out with me in the back seat. We headed back to the farm. I showed Kristen around and she helped me feed all the ewes. Ellie warmed up some milk and I showed Kristen how to bottle-feed a lamb. She fed the lamb that we suspect has a selenium deficiency, which causes White Muscle Disease. Basically, the lamb is too weak to get up right now. He should get better after a couple administrations of seleium. Kristen managed to get 100mls of milk down the lamb, which was great! Better than what I had gotten down him the first time. Jeoff was there helping Ellie and he left the gate that divided the ewes from the tups. We had to go and get the four ewes straight away. Afterwards, we headed out for a very quick dinner at this really good Chinese restaurant. We literally had like 15 minutes for Kristen to eat. Ellie had the lady that worked there hire a taxi for Kristen. I helped her out to the taxi and Ellie and I finished dinner. We went back to the farm and there had been no lambs. We called it a night and headed off to bed.

April 19th:
Today, there was no action at the farm. I fed the animals and watched some tele. We had dinner later on and went to bed early. The ewes were nice and did not lamb at all through the night.

April 20th:
Well, today is my last day. We woke up around 9am and fed all the sheep. My train was at 12.46pm (so I thought). We went to Ellie's daughter's house for a cup of tea. Her daughter has this enormous estate! The front drive was huge but the backyard was HUGE!!!!!! It even had it's own forest with thickets of trees all over! There was a little pagoda in the middle of a small pond that was lovely. I walked around with the dogs. After I walked around a bit, we left and headed back so I could get ready. Ellie's friend Heather and her husband picked me up and drove me to Darlington station. I got there and had missed the train. I had thought originally that the train was at 12.46pm when in reality, it was at 12.26pm. Oh well, I had to purchase another ticket and wait another half hour before the next train arrived. I got home to Edinburgh and was so relieved to be back in my flat. I went grocery shopping and had Kristen over for dinner.

PICTURES: So, I am now going to work on uploading photos for you all. Check the link at the top on the right.