Surprise Lambs

Well, we’ve had a very busy week. Before we ‘tupped’ our small breeding flock last autumn, we moved last year’s ewes and our three Hebridean ladies into another paddock. Confident that we had finished lambing on 3 April, imagine our surprise when early last Tuesday morning two of our young Shetland ewes gave birth to single lambs!

We’ve wracked our brains to figure out our apparent ‘immaculate conception’ and there were only two possibilities; our neighbours’ tups had hopped over the fence and serviced all our other ladies, or one of our own wethers (castrated males) hadn’t been castrated effectively last year! As our fences are good and have an electric top wire, the first explanation seemed unlikely, leaving us to think that one of our own boys must have had a lot of fun before going into our freezer!!

Anyway, we have nine more lovely lambs. They all had singles, they all survived and are thriving. We are keen to keep the diversity of colours in our flock but sadly all the katmoget lambs are ram lambs! We do have couple of lovely moorit twin ewe lambs and their colour is really beginning to show as they grow.

We now have a flock of 35 sheep, more than we expected so there will be some sorting out to do after weaning! For now, they are all running together in the hilly paddock. The older boys are in a lamb gang and tear about the place looking for mischief. It’s such a rewarding time of year.