The Hard Realities and Great Joys of Lambing - Weather Woes and Spring Surprises!
- alice3166
- Apr 14, 2025
- 5 min read
Life on the farm has been dominated by two things this last two weeks - lambing and the weather. Each day, starting at 5am and ending at 11pm the farm team take it in turns to check that all is well in the maternity ward, and if help is needed we have two “LRU’s” (lambing response units!) in the shape of the farm vehicles waiting to bring reinforcements. More on that later! Looking at our blogs and photos from this time last year we were also thinking a lot about the weather, but for different reasons. Whereas last year the farm was entirely submerged in puddles or overflowing ditches, this year March gave us only 6mm of rain, and April nothing more than a cursory shower. This has been excellent news for the farm’s insects with many butterflies already about, but much less good for the grass which has barely grown at all. We are lucky to have plenty of hay still in our barn so we can keep the animals fed, but we have friends who are down to their last week’s worth of fodder. On balance though, we have decided that the sun is better (as long as we have rain soon!) - besides, it has been lovely to be warm and cheerful!
When speaking to a wise farmer friend, we commented that we thought we might have to start doing rain dances to get the grass growing. An amusing thought, but he told us that we don’t need to worry about that, as the grass would not be growing anyway with the blackthorn blossom still on the trees. As is often the case there is some science behind this bit of folklore, in that the grass will not grow well until the ground is consistently about 7 degrees C, and typically the blackthorn blossom won’t drop until the cold nights have finally ended, making it a very good indicator of average temperature rises. True to form following our first warm night for weeks, the blossom is starting to drop off. Fingers crossed the rest of the lore follows through!
Other signs of spring have been making themselves known, with the first whitethroats (two varieties) heard near the wood. The skylarks are becoming more and more vocal, adding their trilling song to the cacophony of the dawn chorus. (On that note - we have a dawn chorus safari coming up at the start of May, with 50% of profits going to our local wildlife charity. Click here to find out more). Excitingly we have seen two swallows already. They won’t be staying as the earliest ones are typically en-route to Scandinavia for the summer. It is still wonderful to see them though!
We have welcomed our latest WOOFer to the farm, Helene who has travelled from Norway. She has been telling us about the wonderful system of Folk Schools in Norway where students are able to learn traditional and useful skills such as carpentry and agriculture in a supportive environment with no assessment. The only goal is to learn. Of course, all countries have their problems, but it really seems to us that the connection to nature and land in Scandinavia is something for us in the UK to work towards. We are grateful to have an extra pair of willing hands at the lambing barn and in the veg garden. On that subject, we would also like to say a big thank you to Tom, local volunteer Charlie, and our new helper in the Pantry, Rose. They have kept everything ticking along with Tom helping in both the Pantry and the barn most of the time!
Back to lambing, and it has been what feels like a tough week. Looking at the numbers, our mortality rate is fairly typical, but perhaps due to the rush of ewes lambing it has felt high. The sad reality of lambing is that you always lose some, all you can do is your best. We are very pleased though that our attempts to keep everything especially clean and orderly has meant a reduction in diseases such as watery mouth (so far, we will continue to keep our fingers crossed). What cases there have been we have been able to treat with good success. Following a suggestion from one of our wonderful vets, we have started giving all newborn lambs a probiotic which seems to be helping. We have only two ‘orphan’ lambs in the Lleyn flock, thanks to some successful fosters. They aren’t really orphans, but cases where a triplet doesn’t have enough milk for all three. Sadly in the Shetland flock we do have two real orphans. It seems that one of the ewes had a long standing lung condition. The vets tell us that it is incredibly difficult to treat lung issues in sheep as the very rarely show symptoms until it is much too late. Thankfully we had two vets in attendance and when the poor ewe gave in, they were able to do an incredibly speedy emergency caesarian. It took 3 days of careful care to get the lambs to the stage where we felt like they were really ready to be alive, and now they are bouncing around all over the place causing mischief! Another Shetland lamb was found in the field in a poor state, and it seems he was being bullied by his brother and not allowed to suckle. He is now in with the other orphans and is steadily getting stronger. We hope you agree that they are very cute!
A final mention for our upcoming events on the farm. Firstly many thanks to everyone who joined WildFoodUK on the spring foraging course at Rush Farm - it looked like they all had a great time and the weather was wonderful! We have our Spring Festival coming up on Saturday 26th April (free admission) and we're looking forward to showcasing not only the farm but the other businesses within the Stockwood Business Park. There will also be all sorts of practical demonstrations such as cooking, wool spinning and quilting as well as Rush Farm catering and kids activities - plus tractor rides and an opportunity to see the lambs. If you would like to experience the wonder of a dawn chorus, then come along to our dawn chorus “Safari” which is on Saturday 3rd May. It will include breakfast at the Pantry and 50% of profits will go to the Worcester Wildlife Trust. We hope to see you there!
Until next time,
The Rush Farm team
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