Snow on the way - time to save some lambs

The first two minutes of life (and the last two) are the most precarious, a lot of lambs are lost around birth.

Probably as many are lost now, in the second month of pregnancy when nutritional stress leads to re-absorption of foetuses in the womb.

The heavy snow and deep cold in Northern Europe is moving our way this week so we have started to feed silage to save those foetal lambs.

We will bring them into the sheep house later in the month for the second half of pregnancy, they will stay inside until they lamb in April. they can be much more closely

supervised and manged indoors and kept in for at least two days if the weather is wet and cold.

It's the wet cold weather that kills, with hypothermia. If the lmb are dry and have enough milk they can survive below zero temperatures.

Hopefully they will be turned out into the sun with lots of milk.