Bad Day

So far - today has been dire, horrible.

Last night one of my new Black Welsh Mountains decided she would like to start lambing at 8 o'clock in the evening - as it started to get dark it became apparent there might be a problem.  No problem, we have the new lambing light attached to a battery in the Mule.  Problem, the battery had somehow managed to discharge itself and I had no light.  Black sheep in black field with black lamb coming from mostly black rear end!  With the aid of a tiny key ring torch the head was turned and leg brought forward and out came a monster of a girl.  I then wasn't sure if there was another and saw no sign of afterbirth so sat around in the Mule stumbling about every now and again checking until the early hours.
Today got worse.  I was in the top corner watching out for Greenibix (another Welsh Mountain) when I heard frantic lamb noises coming from down by third field gate.  It sounded worse than the, "I've lost my Mum!" shout so I jumped from the Mule and charged over, closely followed by Reg who thought it was some sort of new game.  What I found was horrid.  One of ReddyBreks lambs had somehow jumped through the electric fence, wrapped the fence around him and jumped back again.  He had live electric fence looped all round him.  I pulled him out and got a belt just through him so it must have been dreadful for him.  In fact it must have given him a stroke or something because he could only walk in circles.  To cut a horrible story short he had several horrible fits and finally died just now.

Never before have they had to be in electric fence so young but there has just been so little grass.  Carl is coming up with me in a minute to see what else we can do - for the moment I have turned their electric off and hope they haven't taken advantage of the situation and legged it over Land Rover Man's.

Only ray of sunshine today (apart from the actual sun which has been shining) was a email from an old Salisbury friend (she's not old - just a long time since I have seen her) which brightened my day.