During the past month there has thankfully been a considerable reduction in the number of new cases of foot and mouth disease reported each day. This has led to the removal of some of the restrictions on
the movement of livestock. April was good weather wise with lots of sunshine though slightly cooler than normal.
Sheep
The lowground lambs are now well grown and the hill lambing started around the 20th April. Iain and Hamish are on the hills each day and are reporting that it looks like there will be a good crop of lambs.
Now that the restrictions on moving of livestock have been relaxed, the hoggs wintered on another farm nearby will be brought home.
Twinning a Lamb
This process occurs when for some reason a lamb dies leaving the ewe with no other lambs to mother. In this situation a lamb from a ewe that has had twin lambs, is taken to be adopted by the ewe that with dead lamb. The dead lamb has to be skinned and the skin or 'coat' is put on to the twin lamb. The ewe recognizes the smell of her own lamb on the 'coat' of the twin lamb, she then believes it is her own lamb and will adopt and mother the lamb. With this process, the dead lamb's mother makes use of the milk that she has and feeds the twin lamb who would not have been fed so well as a twin where two lambs are competing for the milk of one ewe. The pictures below show the process.
Iain skins the dead lamb
The 'coat' is put on to the twin lamb
The ewe with her adopted lamb in a pen
Cattle
The cattle that were not able to be sold in March have been bought by the Market who have a buyer for them so they should be going direct to their new home soon. The cows now get out of the shed during the day to graze in the fields. Some more calves have been born during April and recently born twin calves are pictured below.
Crops
Alasdair has been continuing to spread dung and fertiliser on the fields. He also finished preparing the ground for the potatoes, which were planted on the 20th just before the hill lambing started.
