The trials and tribulations of the lambing shed.

I was brought up with chickens and sheepfor my first friends. My grandad started work at 13 as a shepherd boy high on the Clee Hills in South Shropshire, living for weeks on end in a shepherds hut thingy on wheels that would be towed about to various locations depending on the task in hand. I remember sitting in the firelight while he told tales of gypsies, campfires, lambing, strange happenings and a couple of murders. He left the sheep to join the police force but the sheep never left him and after his retirement would be off to Welshpool or Craven Arms market with another wiry old shepherd and would return with a couple of lambs ...'just to keep the orchard down....' he would explain to my mother as she with hands on hips, exasperated beyond measure at more animals arriving to our already bulging ark. These lambs soon became my first playmates and along with a flock of mismatched bantams we all played happily under the old fruit trees.

Is it any wonder then that I have this 'thing' about sheep, and when with a twelve month old baby on hip we went off to a farm sale and purchased 50 fiesty ewes I'm sure Grandad looked proudly down ...and mum stood there with her hands on her hips...exasperated beyond measure ...well I think she did bless her.

So, for two or even three weeks every year I take leave from the paying job and don the regulation uniform of a shepherdess ....boiler suit and wellies...and take over the ante natal and post natal care of my ladies. There have been some hilarious moments over the past 16 years, and some sad ones and one horrific morning when two evil dogs got into the ante natal field and made a dreadful mess. The police were called...one of the offending dogs bit the policeman ...not a clever thing to do ...but then that's another story. I have loads of stories all carefully written down, perhaps I will root them out and give them an airing sometime......

Morning starts early ..preferably before dawn. Today by 4.30 I was in the kitchen making up bottles. Unfortunately this year's spring of water water everywhere and only mud to drink has meant the mothers are not coming into ooodles of milk quickly enough and a few of the lambs need topping up especially twins and triplets. Not that we have a set of triplets anymore because the hefty wench sat on the middle one yesterday and it suffocated. Now we have a set of mismatched twins and a bottle left on the windowsill.

We are halfway through the lambing now and hopefully the rain has stopped for a while. Sunday found me alone in the lambing field, the lord and master and junior shepherd had gone to work. Torrential rain went in through the neck of my waterproofs and came out in my wellies but I managed to deliver twins in the open field, one of which was breech. The first lamb and I ended up at one stage in the ditch on our faces but the job satisfaction had to be second to none. As I changed out of wet clothes for the third time on Sunday a friend muttered ..'why do you do it?'

Bed time is about midnight after the last feed of the day and a fox watch. Last year we were over run with foxes and together with all the farmers in the vicinity lost lambs to the hungry vixens. Our neighbour lost 11 lambs in one raid. We lost 2 newborn lambs that had been born to a first time mother. She wandered around bleating for her babies for days, hopefully she will have better luck this time but she has yet to lamb.

Yesterday morning as a grey misty dawn crept over the purple hills we were performing like a comedy act in the field as a ewe gave the Lord and Master the runaround. Obviously in labour, he went to ensure everything was OK...it wasn't. Holding a bucking ewe with one hand and the iondine spray with the other he yelled for me....'quickly ...come and help me'.....'just drop the iodine spray!' I yelled back.......'dont effing well tell me what to do ....' came the reply drifting on the breeze towards all the overlooking cottages ...they must think they are watching a sit com on the TV. Ewe delivered big lamb with assistance from not speaking shepherd and shepherdess...but hated it with a passion. Maternal instinct ...dont make me laugh. She was supposed to lick the messy article ....forget that for a game of soldiers. She looked at me as much to say ....'lick it yourself!' She is now confined to a pen in our ramshackle shanty town collection of home made sheds ...best corrugated and telegraph poles ...where she will remain until she learns to behave as a fit mother should. Twice she plonked baby in the water bucket yesterday and as for feeding it .....she manages to do about thirty circles in one direction at an amazing speed then swaps before threading herself into the floor. Perserverence is the name of the game and we will see who wins.

Bottle making time again I see ......off to the sheds to watch sheeps bottoms, listen to the woodpecker drilling away and no doubt stand on my head in the ditch .......I actually know people that would prefer to jet off to sunnier climes for their hols...just how strange is that?