My Little Ovine "Friends"

I am back in the land of the living after quite a few weeks. Lambing was tough - really tough. I was working from around 10-11am until 3am every day for two weeks. Oh, and Sheep haven't heard of weekends. Grr. Still, it was an experience I'm glad I've had - I must have lambed around 100 lambs if not more, and I'm much more confident with the animals themselves. I know that when my muscles are working (i.e. when they havent been battered by 100 hour weeks) I can floor a sheep and pull smaller sheep out from its backside. Hurrah! Such skills a London lad thought he could never dream of learning. But, seriously, I'd not be doing anything else. I love this vet thing.

My general day was as follows:

• *10.30am - get up
• *11.00am - go out to sheep shed, and have a quick walk round, see if anything's lambing, if it is, pull it out, or leave it if it's doing ok on its own. Memorise where sheep are that are lambing. Put any sheep that have lambed overnight and cannot be put in small pens (cos there are none left) in a large pen with no other lambs in to prevent them getting mixed up.

• * anytime between 11.10 and noon, start feeding and watering all the sheep in small pens. Throw out the water the sheep have crapped in and refill buckets with water from a slow hose. Give "nuts" (concentrate feed) to sheep. Repeat, 60 times. Constantly re-check sheep, and disinfect and move sheep into pens as farmer takes sheep from small pens outside.

• * 2-3pm - LUNCH
• * 4pm - go back out, and repeat - lamb sheep, check sheep, feed sheep, including hay this time.
• * 10-11pm - DINNER
• * 11.30pm - midnight - check sheep again, lamb and move anything required.
• * 2.30am - 4am - BED.

I have used the word "move" and "put" with regards to sheep. Moving sheep is much much easier said than done, as anyone who has done this will vouch for. Still, while it was a little soul-destroying at times, and I was counting down the hours by the end, it was fun at others.

On the last Thursday (the day before I came home) I got Ill, which, we came to the conclusion when I was better the next Wednesday must have been E-coli from the sheep. They didn't like me.

I've included some photos for your perusal. They're mobile-phone pics so not of the greatest quality, but you get the general idea that there were sheep! Lots of sheep. The pic at the top is me and Vinnie Jones, the stockiest cheekiest houdini of a lamb you ever did meet. Hehe.

Tom
xx