Ystrad Organic Farm “Lambing”

At last we have dry weather in Wales! Glorious early spring sunshine makes our daffodils gleam in the sun and the fields are full of gambolling lambs. Ironically, while the countryside looks wonderful our farmers are looking decidedly the worst for wear. Lambing is a stressful and exhausting time for sheep farmers, and it’s not unusual to see someone with a shirt and jumper on inside out because they got dressed in the dark. The general lack of sleep means that they look bleary eyed and often there are bits of straw stuck to their clothes from where they’ve taken a nap on a bale rather than leave the lambing shed.

Sheep aren’t the most sensible of creatures, and leaving a pen of newly born lambs and their mums to their own devices can result in chaos. Lots of the enthusiastic new mums aren’t quite sure which baby is theirs, so there’s lots of milling about going on. And going in there to sort them out isn’t easy either what with lambs doing figures of eight around your legs and bleating very loudly.

There’s the occasional disaster when a young ewe won’t accept a lamb and if it can’t be fostered on another ewe then it has to be bottle fed at regular intervals. Bottle fed lambs are so sweet when they’re tiny but soon grow into noisy demanding creatures that charge into your legs when they think you’ve got food for them. So then you have bruised legs to add to the bags under your eyes!

A farmers life isn’t an easy one at lambing time, and though it’s wonderful to see the fields full of new life and energy, let’s not forget the hard work that’s gone in to making sure that the new crop of lambs arrive in this world safe and sound.

Ystrad Farm Lambing Photos