Lambing at The Lint Mill

Today lambing started at The Lint Mill. Our neighbours’ Shetland tups Fudge and Picasso ran with our breeding ewes for a few weeks from mid-October and now we have nine ewes that could be in lamb.

The Shetland sheep is an attractive, traditional breed with 11 main colours and 30 recognised markings bearing Shetland dialect names. Our current breeding ewes are 3 Moorits, 4 Katmogets, a Dark Brown (rather predictably called Brownie) and a Smirslet, affectionately known as Snowy. We also have 6 Dark Brown Shetland maiden ewes and 3 Hebridean maiden ewes (two and four-horned from Wester Gladstone Hebridean Sheep)

The Shetland is small fine-boned sheep but is a very hardy breed, they make good mothers, are easy lambers and produce plenty of milk.

Today we had the first two pairs of twins. Here they are just minutes old. I can never get over how tiny these Shetland lambs are. The unusually warm weather for March is wonderful for the new babies.