Tuesday 20 April 2010

We're back with additions

I am sure many of you will already have read the Zanzibah blog announcing Duke's arrival at the weekend, its official Duke is now Scottish.

We were heading off to Scotland early on Saturday so we could get Duke settled before bedtime, we knew it would be a 7 or 8 hour drive with all the stops to make sure Duke was ok.

When the trip was booked we purposely made it after the sheep were due to lamb and before the alpacas were due to birth so my poor mum didn't have too much to worry about. Sadly the sheep seemed to have other ideas and on Friday night not a single lamb had been born!

Ebony decided that she would lamb Saturday morning, so we hung around to make sure all was well before we left so we were later leaving than we had intended.

The drive to Jayne's went well and Duke was a good boy. To be honest he didn't complain once and just wanted a kiss each time we stopped; no food or water. That could wait until we'd arrived at our destination. Once we arrived he was soon up and eating then he introduced himself to his new mates.

Sunday morning I received a text from my mum saying that she thought Mia (my pet lamb from 2008) was going to lamb! Thankfully with numerous text and calls with mum the lambing bit went ok, mum had to break the sack of the second lamb. Mia doesn't like sheep so I was always worried she would reject her babies. She wasn't keen on the twin ewe lambs initially and mum was worried about her bleeding so I called for Alan's back up.

We got home late last night, about 11.30 to be precise so too late meet the new lambs who were still shut in to try and get them to bond. I've named the girls Ruby and Annie as it was my parents Ruby Anniversary the day they were born and they were just fine this morning so they are back in the field. In fact Mia is really good with them now.

It is a good job we were back today as Pepper decided it was her turn. We went to check on her this afternoon and there was a head poking out of the side of the prolapse harness she had on! No legs, just a head. Pepper decided that she was going to run across the field with this poor head bouncing all over the place. My mum thought the lamb was dead.

When I finally managed to grab Pepper I had to push the lamb back in slightly to reposition the legs which were well and truly back, once I'd sorted them out and with a little help the first boy, a black one was born. The second white boy soon followed still in his sack so I had to break that too.

I've never had lambs born in their sack before and this year there has been two. I now have all five of my lambs born so the next arrivals will be our cria; it's so exciting.

2 comments:

Zanzibah Alpacas said...

I feel like I have lived through the whole experience...with you !

Im glad that all was well in the end.....Oh...ps....Duke is doing fine....Im getting all the kisses now ! :-)......Jayne

Denise said...

Glad the lambing has gone well and all lambs have arrived safely. We quite often have lambs born in their sac and we have to help the ewes break it. So far 17 ewes lambed, 9 to go!!!!