Eight days of Lambing!

The most amazing work experience ever was my eight days of intensive lambing that I did recently! I thoroughly enjoyed it mainly because of the exciting new things that I learnt daily but because of the responsibility it gave me. Because it was on the same farm as the cows the farmer left me in charge of the lambing pens for the majority of the time-leaving me to do it by myself.

What I learnt:

• Penning of lambs and general hygiene/organisation system that you have to have to stay on top of the mass of lambs that are being born. 
• How to iodine the lambs navals and administer Spectam within a few hours of birth for prevention of disease and to allow for effective absorption. 
• Ringing the lambs tails, navals (if they are ballooned and not dried up) as well as castrating the male lamb's testicles making sure that both of them are in the ring.
• Ensuring new born lambs got adequate colostrum and milk from their mothers and tubing if necessary to make up this loss.
• How to prioritise the workload as three ewes could be lambing at once.
• Skinning dead lambs to use on unwanted/rejected lambs that can then be accepted by a foster mother ewe. 
• The dangers of releasing these vulnerable lambs into their new fields as some were mauled by badgers. 
• How to tag and label the lambs according to who they belong to.
• How to get a ewe to follow it's lamb by holding it near the ground and making 'baa-ing' noises. 
• How to be around them as to not cause a fuss- but also being able to catch any that may need help with delivering their lambs

As well as all this I delivered multiple singles, twins, triples, breeches as well as dead lambs. Besides from all the gore and blood I really found this the most enjoyable work experience!