With the days starting to feel a little longer and slightly warmer, we have continued to watch the Bureau of Meteorology website closely for any hint of rain.  Last weekend some areas of New South Wales received their first decent rainfalls in months, however we only felt a couple of drops.

I moved the cattle to our river flat paddock.  I have saved this paddock all winter, in the hope we could possibly cut some hay this spring.  Without enough subsoil moisture, this is extremely unlikely this year.  That said, it has the best grass on the Rock Farm, and the cattle gratefully put their heads down as soon as they walked through the gate.

This spring we sadly put down a couple of ewes with Pregnancy Toxaemia (lambing sickness).  When a third ewe started showing symptoms, we took immediate action.  After making the most ungainly tackle in sheep catching history, we moved the ewe to the house paddock.  The ewe seemed to know we were trying to help her, as she sat quietly in the ute with the Little Fisherman keeping her company for the short run back to the house paddock.

Thankfully the ewe responded to injections of glucose, and a few days later gave birth to twin male lambs.  It always seems that these moments of crisis coincide with periods when I am at work, and this was no different.  Jo calmly caught the ewe and administered the injections daily.

The poor little fellows arrived late in the afternoon with a bitter cold wind blowing.  They are only a matter of minutes old in the photo above.  We have kept a close eye on the three of them.  The ewe continues to improve and the lambs are now a bundle of fun.  We hope to put her back with the rest of the sheep in the next few days.

Pregnancy Toxaemia is often associated with fat ewes and twin lambs.  Wiltipolls are bred to respond well to feed, and our ewes could well have been described as fat.  Wiltipolls also are known to produce lots of twins, and the birth of these twin lambs brings our total lambs to 20, from 11 ewes.   We won’t make an official count until we mark the lambs.

This season we have learnt a lot of lessons, that we will put in place moving forward.  We will manage the ewes a little more closely, especially mid way through their pregnancy, to prevent them getting lambing sickness next year.