Lambing: The Prequel

What I learned last week:

1. High numbers make Ivie happy.
2. I might have to roll my sleeves up in March. 

Last year, I wrote three blogs about lambing (imaginatively entitled Lambing: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. I'm nothing if not creative). As time went on, I got more involved but only as much as squirting iodine on newborn lambs' navels and occasionally feeding the pet lambs. I've yet to actually lamb a ewe and, to be fair, I'm not sure I'd be trusted. 

It's a bit of a responsibility as so much can go wrong (and they're also not my animals). The lamb can come out the wrong way round - in lambing terms, you want the front legs first, then the head - or it can get stuck on the way out. It's not all cute lambs gambolling around and bleating, sadly. 

Anyway, one of the things I'd heard a bit about before was scanning percentages. Every year, a man comes with a special ultrasound to find out how many lambs are due in the Spring. I haven't actually seen it in action but I like to think of it as the self-serve counter in the supermarket. 

Each ewe is scanned and the man shouts out the number of lambs - hopefully 1, 2 or 3 - so the ewe can be sprayed with the right colour. And then Ivie hands over his Nectar card. Or something. After all the scans, the machine tots up the numbers and comes up with a percentage.

You want the percentage to be nice and high as that means lots of twins and triplets on the way. This year, the Spittal percentage was 205%, making Ivie and his brother very happy indeed (no, really).

There are 48 sets of triplets due next Spring. This is good as it means lots of lambs but it also means lots of pets. This does not make Ivie and his brother happy. 

Ewes have two teats which means that twins generally fare better than triplets, although ewes with just one lamb can often be persuaded to 'adopt' (more on that in a later blog). 

The maternity ward lambing shed is going to be a busy place with lots of multiple births, adoption hearings and the like. I'm a bit worried that I'm going to have to get a bit more involved than in the past. Hopefully, this will just mean filling water and feed troughs and not getting in the way, rather than scrubbing up and wearing gloves that go up to the shoulder. 

Now I'm wondering if #lambing2021 will require masks.