The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Shepherdess pulls two lambs from pipe in heroic rescue
A HEROIC shepherdess has rescued two lambs from a waterlogged culvert after they became stuck deep inside.
Marian Porter was filmed crawling backwards out of the pipe with the two small Scotch Mules in her arms.
The shepherdess, who farms at Dawyck Farm in Peebles, laughed as she reverse commando crawled out of the fast-flowing stream in a video filmed by her fiancé Gary Thornborrow.
The young lambs, still wearing clear plastic macs to protect them from the wind and rain, were able to stand upright and call to their mother after they were pulled from the culvert.
The macs are clear plastic coats which are designed to protect lambs from the wind and rain during their first weeks of life, when they are most vulnerable.
The horned ewe then walked towards the lambs to greet them as they shook their coats and tried to suckle her.
The shepherdess, wearing a green t-shirt, waders and wellington boots, was captured laughing and smiling after her daring mission.
Martyn Archer, a breeder, commented: “Well done Marian … and Gary for your chivalrous bravery.”
Meanwhile posted the video on social media and said: “Sheep farmer Marian Porter with one of the greatest rescues we have ever seen.”
Mr Thornborrow and Miss Porter are contract farmers at Dawyck, where they breed Scotch Mules and Bluefaced Leicesters.
Scotch Mules are a longwool crossbreed of Scottish Blackface ewes and Bluefaced Leicester rams.
March and April are the peak lambing times in Britain but the main season runs from February to April.
Some farmers even lamb before Christmas so they are ready for slaughter ahead of Easter, according to the National Sheep Association.
Farming Connect, a Welsh Government quango, estimates that 15 per cent of lambs die in their infancy, and 50 per cent of those deaths occur in the first 24 hours after they are born.
Contributing factors include birth trauma, rejection by their mothers, disease and predators, it adds.