THIS month we visited the ‘in lamb sale’ which went well, with our two ewes being sold to a farmer from Wales.

We have been kept busy feeding the pregnant sheep with a concentrated food and hay. The reason we feed them every day is to give the ewe and unborn lambs energy and essential vitamins.

Another reason for feeding them is so that we can keep an eye on each of the ewes - we are looking out for any signs of blood or nasty stuff on their tails, as this can indicate problems such as abortion and infection.

Anyone who is pregnant or trying for a baby should stay away from ‘in lamb’ sheep as they can carry a disease that can cause abortion in humans. So for my husband Brian’s son Stephen and his wife Charlotte, who are having a baby, we’ll see you after April.

At this time, we also look to make sure that the lamb bed has not come out (prolapsed). This can happen in later stages of pregnancy and is due to the pressure of the lambs pushing against the cervix. In most cases we can push it back in.

We wash our hands with Dettol and, with the sheep standing, we put gentle pressure on the lamb bed and push it back in. As you can imagine this is unnatural for the sheep so she will push against you, so you have to be patient and let her relax.

When it is back in place we try and tie wool across her back end to try and stop it happening again, if it does happen again we have to stitch the vagina together - which is not as bad as it sounds. She will still be able to wee and she will lamb.

Sometimes more than just the lamb bed will come out, and in those cases we have to go to the vet. Unfortunately we had to have a sheep put down this week as she had a massive prolapse.

Talking of dead sheep, if you ever hit a sheep on the road with your car please tell someone. We had a sheep, which has been scanned and found to have been expecting twins, killed last week on an unfenced road that runs through our land and no one let us know. It was horrible, but we might have been able to save her IF we had known.

The weather this winter is more like it used to be 20 years ago, with snow, snow and more snow, and we didn’t see green fields here for about six weeks. This is another reason why the sheep need hay. But hey we might get a nice summer - ‘ha!’

Hopefully it will be nice as Shelley, Brian’s daughter, is getting married, but first we will hopefully have a lot of lambs to look after and, like us, they love good weather. Sheep thrive in fine weather - if it is cold and ‘clashy’ it can affect their health and in turn their ability to milk their lambs.

Anyway I’m off to get the lamb hospital ready for the new arrivals on March 24 or thereabouts.

Bye, Jayne Knowles