The day started with #616 showing off her twins, a tiny ram lamb #918R and a normal sized ewe lamb #919E. #616 seemed to be looking after them both alright and letting them drink but I am a bit concerned that the ram lamb is very small.
Later we saw that #219 appeared to have had a small ram lamb, #920R. However, closer inspection showed that this actually belonged to #678 who, once we had removed #219 from the scene took to her lamb very well. However #678 has little milk and seems to have no colostrum – does that mean she fed the lamb and gave it the colostrum before #219 muscled in, or does she actually not have any colostrum at all. To be on the safe side we milked #616 and got some colostrum inside #678’s lamb #920R and Karola also gave it a good bottle feed of milk as well. Another one we’ll hope gets through the night.
Before all this I took 140 battens up to the orchard paddock and laid them out in fives ready to be stapled to the new bit of fence along the western side.
Postie came at the usual time, soon after 9:00 am and asked me if I would move the mail box out onto the road, despite our last ten years of having the box on the drive close to our back door. This annoyed me and set me thinking as to our options, post box in Stortford Lodge and the like, but the rural delivery service is so handy and saves so much time and petrol that it’s hard to think of a good alternative. We get mail picked up and delivered, and mail order packages are delivered too – you can’t get mail order to a post box. So eventually I cooled down and we decided to try for a place just outside our front railings. I’ve mocked it up so Postie can see it tomorrow – but not concreted the post in nor fastened the box securely to its post.
In the afternoon Karola and I tagged the recent lambs, from #908R up to #920R and we docked all except the very recent arrivals, #916R, #917E, #918R, #919E, and #920R. These last few lambs and their mothers remain in the Island paddock for now; the rest have joined the first batch of lambs in the Front paddock.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—23°C; 1.8 mm rain [74.2]
