Joyful time of the dancing lambs
It's that time of year again, when spring lambs are literally springing and dancing in the fields and along the hedges.
Nothing like a bit of sun to make us happy. I'm not actually springing, my knees won't let me, but I feel like it, which is good. It would be even better if I was doing my own lambing and the dancing lambs were mine, so I'm also grumpy.
This happens every year. I want to be out there in the middle of the night struggling with a lamb that doesn't seem to want to come. Or feeding bottle lambs who should be with their mother. Or trying to sort out mis-mothered lambs, pinched from the mother by a ewe whose hormones tell her she wants it. Or the very worst, a ewe who has no milk or refuses to have her lamb.
Every year, sheep farmers brace themselves for weeks of stress, tiredness, cold, deaths and bad weather – for starters! Why, you ask yourself? The answer is they love it, most of the time anyway, and to pass on these experiences to your children makes it even more special. I'm a sad person!
Rosemary Allen is a retired livestock farmer living near Ellesmere
