One week into lambing and everything is going well. As any shepherd will tell you, lambing is all about the weather and the last seven days have been wall-to-wall sunshine. With only a couple of hundred ewes to lamb this year we decided to do most of the work on foot (as opposed to roaring around on the quad bike). This means we are keeping the expectant ewes in just a few acres and moving them out one-by-one onto fresh pastures as they lamb.

This has been very pleasant, with the worst problems being heat stress for the birthing ewes and sunburn for us!

A few years ago we moved the date for the start of lambing forward to about the 20th April from its traditional 1st April start. This was to ensure that as organic farmers (without the option of pushing the early grass with nitrogen), it would have warmed up enough to get the spring growth well under way. Well global warming has made a nonsense of this decision (despite the fact we only implemented it a few short years ago) and now I have to consider moving it back a few days each year.

Once we have moved the ewes and lambs out of the lambing field we leave them in a small holding field before ‘ringing’ them. This involves using a special applicator to stretch open a small rubber ring, through which the lambs tail can be threaded. Once in the right position the ring is then slid off of the applicator and sits tight around the tail, stopping the flow of blood. After a couple of weeks the portion of the tail below the ring will simply drop off and leave the lamb with a shorter tail which will be much cleaner and so less prone to fly strike.

If you are male and over the age of 13 you might like to look away now, as exactly the same method is used to castrate the boy lambs. The ring is simply slid over the testicles and ‘pinged’ shut thus stopping the blood flow. 14 days later and the two nuts in their sack simply drop off and are picked up by passing crows looking for a tasty snack.

All very neat and relatively painless – only please don’t try this at home!