May is one of the busy times on the farm; with the flock lambing, the cows calving, four Yurts to erect and the campsite to be ready for the first May Bank Holiday. Chatting to my farming neighbours on the road, we have come to a consensus that this had been a ‘slow’ spring. Although we had some decent weather in early April it has been a very mixed bag since with lower than average temperatures and quite a few nigh time frosts – even as I sit here writing this on the second May Bank Holiday it is blowing a gale, and through the rain lashed window of my office I can see the hunched forms of disgruntled campers traipsing across the yard.

Lambing went well generally, with only a few weather related deaths and quite a good crop of ‘doubles’ (twins). On one early morning I was accompanied by Churton (now 7) who had plenty of time to lamb a few sheep before his day starts at the village school.
“Can a sheep have three lambs Dad?”
“Yes – it’s called a triple and we sometimes get them with our flock”
“Dad – can a sheep have four lambs?”
“Yes – we’ve never had one, but it can happen. It’s called a quadruple”
“Dad, dad – can a sheep have five lambs?”
“Yes – I’ve seen it in the farming paper”
“What’s that called?”
“A quin-something”
“What about six?”
“Well…”
“What about seven??”
“Hmmm…”
 “What about eight…a hundred… a zillion!”

By one of those wonderful quirks of fate – as we get to the far corner of the lambing field that morning there is a ewe standing proudly over her three lambs! For a hill ewe to safely deliver three offspring by herself is quite a feat. Lots of sheep have trouble counting two lambs, so to have delivered three in the dark and successfully nurtured them all is good going.

There are a couple of problems with triplets. Firstly it is quite normal to have either one lamb much bigger than the other two or worse one much smaller, and secondly the ewe is only equipped with two teats. With twins, each lamb will stick with his preferred ‘side’ to drink from – with a triple one lamb is always undernourished. So after a few hours it is best to take one lamb away and adopt it onto any spare ewe you may have that has perhaps lost its own lamb.

All the sheep have now lambed and with all this rain the farm has really greened up and there is plenty of spring grass for everyone – if only I could get the campers to see the positive side!