No piece of cake caring for lambs

THE lambs have started arriving but, alas, springtime hasn’t.

There’s no grass at all and we are giving huge amounts of high-energy cake feed to the sheep to at least compensate for the lack of forage.

Every building and barn is occupied by sheep who are due to lamb imminently, while the rest of the lambers remain at the moor.

There’s little point bringing them down and into the confines of the pastures and meadows when there’s nothing for them to eat and the land is saturated.

At least at the moor there’s plenty of room to wander and shelter from the weather – though, equally, there ‘MUM’ are a lot of natural perils and many places for a lamb to get into bother.

Sometimes you can hear a lamb bleat and not be able to see where it is owing to the thick cover of heather and undulating ground.

We have put a few of the strong, early lambs outside in their plastic biodegradable macs.

They skip and gambol as lambs do, but it would be much better if it were in the sunshine.

There are a couple of pet lambs. But we lost one of our older yows and will attempt to find foster mothers to adopt them. Until then, we will bottle feed them.

It’s not ideal but the children like to have pet lambs to look after.

Last year things were dry and mild, this year it’s wet and hungry. But we will get through it. It will be harder and more expensive but nothing is insurmountable.