As we have eventually had some days without rain and the fields have dried up a bit we have put about half our cattle out of the sheds into the fields. We did not turn them all out as they are forecasting snow showers for tomorrow. If we had put all the cattle out at once they make a mess of the grass if it comes wet.
We have weaned 20 lambs off the milk buckets they are in a big shed with lots of room to run and play. They are getting fed on special lamb pellets and silage so they are not missing their milk.
 

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Lambing has progressed well we have 20 hogs left to lamb which should lamb over the next 2 or 3 weeks. The wet weather over the last week has not affected the sheep and lambs that were already outside in the fields. We have kept all the ones which have been born last week in the shed. So I got a nice photo of a lamb lying in the straw making the most of a short burst of sunshine. For the children who came to stay at Easter the lambs in the boxes that you named are all growing well and drinking the milk from the buckets I do not have to bottle feed any lambs at the moment.

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We have gone from hot sun to snow in a week.

The lambing is going well we just have 10 ewes and about 50 hogs left to lamb. The hogs are last year’s lambs so this is their first time lambing. This gave us room to keep sheep with new lambs in the shed for a few days when they forecast colder snowy weather. All the lambs out in the field are looking well today despite between 6 inches and 1 foot of snow lying in the fields this morning. Thankfully it stopped snowing for most of the day and the sunshine melted a lot of the snow. Due to the good weather we have had for the last few weeks we have plenty of grass for the sheep and lambs this year so the ones which were born first about three weeks ago are really growing now. If the cold weather does not last too long it should not affect the grass growth too much.

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The reasonably dry weather gave us an opportunity last week to get some of our muck spread on the grass fields. It is very good fertiliser if it is spread on the grass now it will help the grass grow once the weather warms up hopefully in April. We pay a neighbouring farmer to come round with his tractor and muck spreader to spread the muck. Neil uses our tractor to load the muck into the spreader.

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Yesterday morning we had a ewe give birth to 5 live lambs, all active and healthy. We have had sheep give birth to 5 lambs before but one had died before it was born. In the afternoon we had a ewe have 4 lambs then in the evening we had another ewe have 4 lambs. As a ewe only has 2 teats it is not possible for them to rear more than 3 lambs. As these ewes had given birth to so many lambs they did not have a lot of milk for the lambs so I had to bottle feed all of them last night. This morning we took some of the lambs away from their mother to rear them on artificial sheep milk leaving each ewe with 2 lambs. To start with the lambs we took away from their mother will be fed by bottle then they will be trained to get their milk from buckets with teats attached.

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Lambing has started a few days early, we were not expecting lambs until today but the first ones were born on Wednesday. All the sheep lamb in a big shed once they have given birth they are put in individual pens with their lambs for a couple of days so we can make sure the lambs are getting enough milk from their mum. We have had one of our black sheep lamb and she has a black lamb. Often the black sheep can have white lambs or even one black lamb and one white lamb.

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Yesterday we visited the local spring agricultural show at Thainestone market, Inverurie. It is a small show by the standards of the summer agricultural shows but it has a bit of everything so it gave us a chance to talk to people about animal feed and look at machinery. They have a good show of pedigree bulls which are then sold and a small show of other cattle, sheep and horses. This year the show was visited by Princess Ann, she is patron of the Royal Northern Agricultural Society who organise the show. As we left home in a rush, having taken longer to feed all the cattle and sheep than we had expected, I forgot to take my camera which was a pity as it was a nice sunny day and I could have got some nice photos of the show.

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This week we got 170 ewes into the sheds ready for lambing. Before we bring them in to the shed we sort them so we bring the ones we think are nearest to lambing into the shed and the rest have to say out in the fields a bit longer. Before we sort them out we treat them for worms and run them through a foot bath which helps to treat any sore feet. In the shed they have silage and feed buckets which they can eat when they want and they get fed sheep feed on a morning. The ones which are still out in the field get silage and feed.

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We have started feeding the sheep in preparation for them lambing. This year the weather has suited the sheep they are happy outside eating silage and getting some feed once a day. The dry frosty weather makes it easy to feed the sheep as the ground does not turn to mud. I managed to get a slightly better photo of Meg when she was sitting outside the cottage door watching as I cleaned the kitchen.

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We will not be able to get much time away from the farm once we get nearer lambing and start feeding the sheep  so we thought we would make the best of a nice sunny frosty day. Once we had finished feeding the cattle we went for a drive out to Aberlour for our lunch at the Mash Tun hotel. We went for a walk along the Spey, the North bank was white with frost but the sun had melted the frost on the south bank. The frost on the plants at the side of the path was really pretty.

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